Focus of media has narrowed: Tejpal

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Even as he insisted that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh makes criticism difficult by being personally upright, Tarun Tejpal, the firebrand editor of Tehelka magazine, termed Singh a manager more than a leader. “A leader should have a voice. A manager manners. What Mr Singh has is manners. The problem is, there is only one axiom of power within the Congress party and that is Sonia Gandhi. When things work well, this can be a worthy dichotomy, but at other times, it creates a dangerous void,” he said while discussing with author Nayantara Sahgal, the cross currents of media, literature and politics in an age of intense scrutiny, on the second day of the Hay Festival at Kanakakkunnu Palace.   Sahgal, niece of Jawaharlal Nehru and author of the award-winning political novel Rich like US’, had spoken with a measured detachment that comes from age and experience until she stated emphatically, “Lal Bahadur Sasthri was a very small man, who looked quite insignificant. But he led the country through one of the most tumultuous periods n history. You do not have to be physically impressive to be a prime minister, but you do have to speak.”   Pointing out the media’s lukewarm response to the arrest of Chhattisgarh’s tribal teacher Soni Sori on charges of Maoist activities, Tejpal said, “with the most number of dailies, magazines, and TV channels, we have a saturated media. But this media is not interested in the story of Soni Sori. Even when the media industry has grown, its focus has narrowed.”   He added that Soni Sori was being harassed and silenced for having shown the courage to stand up. “We have become a dangerous country,” he said, citing the examples of the jailed human rights activist Binayak Sen and Kashmiri journalist Iftikhar Gilani, imprisoned for six years on charges of espionage.   In answer to moderator and journalist Rahul Pandita’s question whether he felt obliged as an editor to concur to popular taste, he said that it was more a question of deciding on what to prioritise. “I have no problem about covering cricket or Bollywood. But it becomes a problem if that is the priority of the media. There is no point in the argument that you are catering to the readers. It is the editor who has to lay out a good menu for the reader,” he said.Transplanting the thought to the context of literature, Sahgal said, “the dumbing down phenomenon is visible in literature also. One is not seeing enough novels that could be written only in India. On the other hand, while there are novels based on a lot of research, in some novels the research is so very evident it is not a novel anymore.”   Tejpal said in reply that the very strong commercial compulsions on Indian English writers perhaps destroy the emotional experiences in India. “Every Indian English novel addresses a white man somewhere, publisher or reader.”