Media stalwarts might accuse Beni Prasad Verma of defamation for boasting he bribes reporters. Some would dub him a cynic. The Union steel minister himself makes no bones about claiming to be a down-to-earth realist. His explanation - "I am a trader and I know where to invest to get good returns" - reminds us that the free market has always flourished here. Everything could be bought even during Indira Gandhi's rigorous socialism.
Mr Verma wouldn't know what to make of Humbert Wolfe's much-quoted lines - "You cannot hope/ to bribe or twist, /Thank god! the /British journalist./ But seeing what /the man will do/ unbribed, there's/ no occasion to!" No wonder Dean Acheson sneered, he would say if he had heard of Acheson or his comment, that Britain had lost an empire without finding a role. If British reporters do things unbribed, their country doesn't deserve a role. And yet, Mr Verma might wonder (if his information goes that far) that since Napoleon himself called Britain a nation of shopkeepers, there must have been a time when the British knew that everything has a price and nothing has any value.
Actually, he is only following in the footsteps of none other than Jawaharlal Nehru. No doubt Nehru idealistically believed he was helping struggling members of the Fourth Estate place a roof above their heads when he gave them plots of land in New Delhi. He didn't know that some of those plots would blossom into blocks of flats worth hundreds of crores of rupees. Indonesia's "white envelope" culture pales into the inconsequence of petty cash.
Nehru didn't give only land. In fact, when people mocked the so-called "embedded journalists" who disgraced journalism during the US invasion of Iraq, I argued that the phenomenon started (and still continues) in New Delhi. Favoured journalists become ambassadors and Rajya Sabha members, go on foreign trips and sit on official committees. The astute Mr Verma must have noted that the Press Council's long and worthy report on "paid news" makes nary a mention of such official patronage. Canny strategist that he was, Nehru also won liberal hearts by saying he "would rather have a completely free press with all the dangers involved in the wrong use of that freedom than a suppressed or regulated press." But, when the chips were down, not for him the "friction of freedom."
Nehru conveyed his exasperation with newspapers that were still stuck with Victorian colonial attitudes to Jim Rose, an English journalist who became the first director of the International Press Institute (IPI). "I can't reach the people through the newspapers," he complained. In short, the media was free only to live up to Nehru's expectations. He wanted the IPI to do something about it, and Rose sent Harry Evans, who was later knighted and became a global celebrity, to launch a training course for journalists. Whether those seminars improved Indian journalism is another matter.
Jack Kennedy singled out members of the press for invitations to his poolside parties. Lyndon Johnson bestowed Texan hats inscribed with the name of his ranch to favourite reporters but he also believed they responded best to a kick in the pants. The ultimate accolade from Henry Kissinger was to be called by your first name. Listening to one of our shrill TV anchors slip in "Rahul" in the course of a programme - as if he and the prime minister-in-waiting were first-name buddies - reminded me of a veteran Delhi editor who never spoke of the high and mighty save as "Bobo", "Tikki", "Tinu" or "Jeh". He stopped short of "Indu". Of course, the others were not around to hear him so glibly bandy their nicknames. But his little pretence of intimacy with the great succeeded most if you admitted to being baffled by a nickname. "J R D Tata, of course!" he would explain with smiling condescension. "Everyone calls him Jeh. I thought you would know!"
Mr Verma is too hard-headed to be impressed by social pretensions. If the Congress is too woolly-headed to appreciate his realism, there's his old boss, Mulayam Singh Yadav. If the Samajwadi Party is out because its electoral prospects aren't too shining, there's always the rising star of the Bharatiya Janata Party. So what if he made angry speeches about Narendra Modi only the other day? A week is a long time in politics, some British politician once said. The essence of trade is that everyone has a price. Everything is up for sale.
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