When Express closed down

Khasa Subba Rao

Trade unionism among journalists was a controversial issue from the time it started soon after Independence. While recognising that journalists were exploited with appalling wages and service conditions, many journalists were apprehensive that an approach based wholly on labour laws would sap the essential creativity of the profession and devalue merit. Proprietors for their part felt harried by what they considered insatiable labour demands from journalists. In 1959 the situation reached crises proportions. Ramnath Goenka tackled the situation in his own style; He closed his operations in Madras for a while and opened shop elsewhere. Khasa Subba Rao commented on the issue from his vantage position. A former employee of Goenka, he was an eminent current affairs analyst. In his widely read column ‘Sidelights’ in the May 30, 1959 issue of the weekly ‘Swarajya’, he wrote:

Some weeks ago, when Sri Ramnath Goenka called on me to enquire about my health, he said
he had decided to close down his Madras newspapers. I did not take him seriously then but later events have shown that he was most serious. He said there were only three reasons to induce one to run a newspaper - profit, prestige and patriotic service - and none of these inducements held good now.

The Indian Express, Dinamani, and Andhra Prabha had been built up with prodigious effort running over two to three decades, and each in its class had reached the very summit of success and popularity. To destroy wilfully the grand result of so many years of hard striving, throwing out of employment some eight hundred persons, is a feat of unimaginable difficulty for any man. There is no knowing whether, left to himself, Sri Goenka would have stuck to his declared intention, or resoled at the last minute, appalled by the spectre of consequences, and the toil of misery blighting the lives of ever so many entitled to his care and consideration. But his employees chose this, of all times, to strike work! The strike precipitated the closure of the papers and made it easier for Goenka to go forward with his original plan. No strike could have been more suicidally timed.

One cannot think of the victims of this grave crisis in the newspaper world without deep emotion. The shadow of the train strike still casts its gloom over the city, saddening all who have not learnt to get over its tragic recollections. This, in spite of the fact that manual workers are rather advantageously placed in the matter of employment. When they lose one job, they can easily get another, and the period of enforced idleness is not ordinarily likely to last long. In the case of journalists it is quite a different story.

Journalism is fast ceasing to be an open profession with free admission for new entrants. The ever-privileged, legal status of journalists, compared to other employees in the same office, like clerks, has made employees nervous, and they are not eager, when vacancies arise, to fill them promptly. They prefer to wait till some relative or other hopeful aspirant, proven reliable and safe is trained to fit the vacancy. The outlook is bleak indeed for intending or ousted journalists lacking the power of influence or kinship for securing employment or reinstatement in the newspaper industry.

Whatever the grievances, let them not cut their own throats by rash or ill-considered action that might throw them into a condition worse than the one they rebel against. Undoubtedly there is much in Sri Goenka’s newspaper empire calling for drastic reform.

A firm demand on the part of journalists for the righting of these wrongs is just and proper. But they do not advance their cause by wild and unruly slogan-shouting not befitting educated persons, or making a nuisance of themselves to the whole neighbourhood. Others who do not feel drawn into their quarrel are entitled to go on with their work. To act as though the opponent can be subdued with intimidation tactics will only establish them in the public eye as hectic and intemperate, and it will not shed credit on the profession which they belong.

The hope that Government will come to their rescue is illusory. Even if the Government can force a closed newspaper to re-open, it cannot create the drive, energy and enthusiasm essential for running it successfully. Let it not be forgotten that when a man of grit, stamina, resourcefulness and determination like Goenka, and one too who has given so many of the best years of his life to the building up of newspapers, is disheartened, or driven by whatever cause, to the point of deciding to close some of his papers, there will not be many others in the country left with a reasonable chance of survival. It is ominous that as many as 160 newspapers had to close down in India last year.

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