The first India assignment for Nira Radia, who was fascinated byairplanes, was to smoothen the entry of Singapore Airlines to India in 1990s.
That project failed to take off, but it introduced her to two important personalities — then aviation minister Ananth Kumar and Ratan Tata, chairman of the Tata group, which was to be Singapore Airlines’ Indian partner.
Never the one to be put down, Radia created ripples in the aviation ministry in 2000 when she applied for a license to start an airline under her own firm with a capitalisation of all of Rs1 lakh. Ananth Kumar was the aviation minister at that time. But it was a controversial project and her application was rejected. Later, Kumar was moved out of the civil aviation ministry.
However, it was her second meeting with Ratan Tata that became her a biggest stepping stone as a businesswoman. Tata was so impressed with her that he appointed her to manage the corporate communications of the Tata group — leading to the birth of Vaishnavi Corporate Communications in 2001. For many years, Vaishnavi’s main client remained the Tata group, so much so that that it was mistaken for being a Tata firm.
Radia, who grew up in Kenya and holds a British passport, transformed her prized catch into a magic wand that opened bigger doors. Soon, she had a client list that comprised 50 big companies. Then, she had the most powerful industrial baron in India, Mukesh Ambani, in her kitty, who was looking for some kind of assistance in media management in 2008-09.
In between, she also allegedly got involved with the issue of new 2Glicenses in 2008, partly because her own client — Tata Teleservices — stood to gain or lose from how the licenses were issued.
Why can’t they file a case against’ OutLook’ which has released the Audio tapes of Radia and Burkha?
They could have at least denied that the voice in the Audio was not that of Burkha.
Tamil Poet Bharatiar said Demons were to Rule ,Moral Codes shall eat Corpses’
”பேய் ஆண்டால்,பிணம் தின்னும் சாத்திரங்கள் ‘
There have been unconfirmed news reports about big payoffs to two journalists through Radia [ Link : The rise and rise of Niira Radia ] for services rendered (no names mentioned yet). Radia herself is said to have fled to London earlier this year when the news of her meddling around and batting for A. Raja broke. However, she apparently reached out to her vast network of powerful contacts, arranged that she won’t be unduly hassled or arrested on this account and returned to India about two months later. Apparently, recently she has been interrogated at length by the ED [ ED grills Niira Radia for 8 hours in 2G scam ]
After several days of silence, hoping that a collective blackout by the self-proclaimed mainstream media will ‘kill’ the story, Barkha Dutt first came out and tweeted a rebuttal. This singular fact alone should make many wonder about her level of maturity and her standing as a credible, balanced and ethical journalist, leave alone a News Editor. Subsequently, ND TV & Barkha Dutt have also threatened to initiate legal action against OPEN magazine [ Link ] for carrying the leaked ‘audio’ clips. One wonders why OUTLOOK, which also carried them, has not been threatened similarly.
During 26/11, Barkha Dutt and some of her colleagues were thought to have endangered the lives of some of the victims through their thoughtless, insensitive and unprofessional ways, all for the sake of sensationalism and a jump in TRPs apparently. When this was blogged about by an individual [ Link about Cheytanya Kunte’s blog piece after 26/11 ], he was threatened similarly with a defamation lawsuit, forcing him to issue an apology on his site and withdraw the ‘piece’ (naturally he must have felt that it was way beyond him to take on NDTV and its news editor Barkha Dutt singlehandedly). There were hardly any murmurs from the rest of the mainstream media about this episode.
Contrast this with the fact that Barkha Dutt and NDTV have, time and time again, mounted sting operations and let loose volleys of innuendoes and allegations against various personalities, based on hearsay and little tidbits of information, often without detailed corroboration and ratification, merely to spice up their news, sensationalize the item and as a result achieve consistently high TRP ratings. News Channels on Indian TV are generally packaged commercial products, surviving and thriving on ad revenues and attracting mass viewership nationally by playing to the lowest common denominators of political gossip, Bollywood and cricket.
Niira Radia taped conversation has been a talk of the town, and has become a byword for journalists lobbying the ministry for personal benefits. It is needless to say, how outstandingly this amoral act has tarred the image of the Fourth Estate that the masses bank upon for the truthful representation.
Radia tape evinces the fact that journalists now act from expediency, not from principle, though they are reckoned to be a watchdog of governing agencies. They have forgot their social responsibility and shunned their obligation to serve the society by putting up and doing what is right & true and what is for the interests of the masses.
But none of those involved have denied that it was not their voice nor have they denied the Stories.
Notice
A press release on the 2G scam was issued by AIADMK leader Jayalalithaa in Chennai on April 28, 2010. The Hindu is unable to verify the authenticity of a 14-page document purporting to be an official account of intercepted phone conversations and is, therefore, taking it off its website.
While the Spectrum scam tapes have been talked about, what has not received adequate notice so far is the lobbying and controversy surrounding the division of gas between theAmbani brothers. The conversations in this set seemingly include journalists Vir Sanghvi of the Hindustan Times; Prabhu Chawla of the India Today group; and G. Ganapathy Subramaniam and M.K. Venu of the Economic Times…
M.K.Venu.
While we are yet to fully absorb and understand the various intricacies and ramifications of the very many conversations on record, and clearly, there are many serious issues at stake here including those of privacy (who authorised these taps), timing of their made public and on-going corporate wars but it is eerie how casually a discussion, for example, about the battle for power sector involving Tatas and Reliance in Maharashtra segues into instigating the likes of Shiv Sena and other groups like the MNS and how easily corporates play and manoeuvre the “protests” by goon-gangs of political outfits to further their ends.
Also, how easy it seems for these power-brokers to casually fix not just politicians — e.g.Venkaiah Naidu of the BJP here is mentioned as amenable to persuasion, as against Arun Shourie, for example — but also, in their narration, the higher judiciary.
Some of the abbreviations:
MM: Manoj Modi, Mukesh Ambani‘s right hand man in Reliance
Following files said to be K. Venugopal, Editor, Hindu Business Line
Vinu-fudged RCOM figs-gas-Curse on AmarSingh-20090616-200515 &
Vinu perhaps-All issues-mainly spectrum-20090616-195137
The file-names below are as in the CD handed over to the Supreme Court. They seem to follow the format of the date and time of the recording in the file name, thus -20090620-143207 seems to refer to a recording of 14:32:07 on 20 June, 2010.
M.K. Venu: You saw Rohini’s story. It has come today.
Niira Radia: No, I haven’t seen it. I’m going to see it now. I finished at 1.30 in the night.
MK: But it’s all tucked away. You’re also keeping Manoj Modi’s timings. 2 o’ clock!
NR: It’s tucked away, is it?
MK: Yeah, but in ET you can’t miss it. It is the inside page but it’s the top half, the lead story of the page.
NR: You know this one, Ganapathy has been chasing me but I don’t want to give it to him. I have a letter from the Andhra chief minister.
MK: Hmm.
NR: I don’t want to give it to him, I am scared to give it and find the story killed. What do you think I should do? He has given a scathing attack. He has written to the PM.
MK: The Andhra CM. Two years ago, he used to sing Anil Ambani’s tune. It is a very strong letter, yaar.
NR:Kya karoon yaar. I don’t want it tucked away.
MK: Objective advice. Isko aise akhbar ko do jo isko lead flyer carry kare. Isko CNBC ko do. Then these people will be adequately provoked. If CNBC carries it as a lead 10 times a day, then everyone will start running helter skelter. If I was the editor, Rohini’s story was a clean Page 1, top half, like a lead story. Do you think a letter to the MD is possible? Broadly saying that we congratulate the launch of ET Now and then you can raise this issue that there is this raging controversy that is of national interest and we hope you can take which is, you know, which is in keeping with what Y.S.R. Reddy has written. Aisa karke you should lagao one.
NR: How is Prabhakar Sinha in Times?
MK: My information is that he and his brother Arun Kumar are retainers on the other side. About Arun Kumar, I am quite sure. He and Sandeep Bamzai used to be so openly partisan. I met Shekhar Bhatia at dinner, he used to be executive editor then, he told Sandeep Bamzai ki kam se kam ek hafta to chhod do. At least three to six months, you don’t plug him. This is what Shekhar Bhatia told him publicly.
NR: Yes, I don’t blame him. I met Sukumar and Sanjoy Narayan.
MK: That Sanjoy Narayan has an old friendship with that Tony (Jesudasan), na? They have some great common interests.
You must be logged in to post a comment.