Bengal's yellow brick road

Aveek Sarkar founded Business Standard in 1975, but sold the paper in 1997. Here, the first editor shares his thoughts on the milestones and millstones in the newspaper's journey.

What prompted you to start Business Standard?

Well, why does one want to shoot six under par at the ITC Classic? Even those who take the lift from the first floor to the second know the answer: because it is there and, therefore, it is a challenge.

Long, long ago "" and because the rest of India thinks that Calcutta is another world "" in a galaxy far, far away, there did not exist a business paper. We did publish an English daily. But that paper had to put up with the prefix "Hindusthan" in its title, a careless act that associated the product with the likes of Rabri Devi. Bengal was then still pucca and as Russi Mody famously said, no one wearing a dhoti was allowed north of Kurseong.

So we were off to see a wizard. The yellow brick road to success, he ordained, was to go where no Bengali had gone before. The makeover began with the beginning. Out went "Hindusthan" from the title; in came "Business."

If the smile could exist without the cat, so could Standard without Hindusthan. I thought, therefore I was.

The re-engineering of a general purpose English newspaper had to wait its time. The stigma of being a native had to be overcome. The ISS Enterprise had to make the long and tortuous journey from Kolkata to Calcutta.

But for all that, Business Standard almost did not make it.The word "Business" ends with two Ss and the word "Standard" began with an S. That, horror of horrors, meant three Ss in a row, a sub-editor's nightmare if ever there was one. That was a googly. I was baptised into a faith that recognised the primacy of the sub-editor. A reporter is no more than a Priya Trivedi or a Yana Gupta swirling into the limelight in somebody else's clothes.

What was your strategic vision behind the start of a financial paper from the east? What did you seek to achieve?

In that era, even if a company's name was mentioned in Parliament, it was not mentioned in a newspaper. Newspapers were so docile that Lok Sabha proceedings were censored. Individual company names were not mentioned.

We wanted to change all that. That was one of the aims. So we reported the battles, for example FICCI and family schisms.

What were the high points and the low points during your editorship in particular, and also during the first 20 years of the paper's existence?

High points: we broke epoch making stories "" the Birla family split, the FICCI battle. Low points: we missed a lot of things. We didn't pursue many Bombay stories. We didn't handle economic stories well.

My personal lasting regret was that I had to part with Business Standard.

Looking back, how do you think Business Standard has grown over the years?

Business Standard has grown. In certain areas, in reporting and analysing economic policy, it has emerged as the voice of authority, though it is no longer as well subbed as it used to be.

What kind of a paper would you like Business Standard to become in the coming years?

I would like Business Standard to be more authoritative, more fair in its criticism. Hopefully, one day it will muster enough courage to point out the defects of the Mercedes Benz.