By Rajan Narayan

MY formative years were spent in Bombay (what was then Bombay, today’s Mumbai), in the 70s and early 80s. The left was very strong in Bombay Times and particularly in academic circles. Bombay University was dominated with students discovering Marxism. The elite colleges of Elphinstone and Xavier were also colleges which enjoyed a high standard of discussions and arguments about what life should be for the common man in general and specifically. We thought we knew it all and could change society and the world.
As a matter of fact all the prettiest girls were part of the left movement but getting to date them could be very costly even if they were leftist-thinking girls. They did not want to go to a fancy restaurant and could be happy to time pass in discussions in Irani restaurants and drinking endless cup of tea – the revolution past or present or to come again was a hot topic to discuss.
To be fair many of the young women walked the talk. Radha Iyer the daughter of the managing director of American Express, married the president of the Siemens Employees Union. She also gave up her designer outfits, perfumes and whatever else considered upper crust to take up a job as a shop-floor worker in an electronic company. The objective was to organize the women workers.
Similarly, a young woman who had got a Master’s in sociology joined the Naxalite movement in the jungles of Vidharba. This was the environment I grew up in and naturally became a part of it. A natural corollary was that I was an outsider if I did not dislike the BJP. The BJP became very powerful after the Ram Janmabhoomi Yatra and the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992. This become part of my consciousness and conscience in the years to come even when I came to Goa to edit the OHeraldo in 1980 right up to 2003 when I had leave to save my soul if nothing else.
So much so when we started the Goan Observer it was inevitable that when we favored the Congress party we attacked the BJP. It was not a question of personalities but ideology. The Congress claimed to be a secular, democratic party. The 2007 election gave Goan Observer an opportunity to demonstrate the power of the media. Mind you we were just a small political weekly tabloid and not a daily newspaper. I decided to get into the campaign mood to stop the BJP from returning to power in the 2007 election. In any case, the BJP had captured the Goa government through the backdoor. The party had come to power by toppling Francisco Saldanha and taking the help of mercenaries like Atanasio “Babush” Monserrate.
I remember approaching the Congress party for an eight-page supplement targeting Manohar Parrikar and the BJP. The proposal was to print over two lakh copies. In Konkani, English and Marathi. Margaret Nazareth Alva, who had been my contemporary in the Bengaluru University years ago, was now the Congress High Command Observer for the 2007 assembly election. I was pleasantly surprised when my proposal for the supplement was accepted.
And shocked when I was asked to come to the Cidade-de-Goa where Margaret Alva was staying. To meet the expenses of the special Demolish Parrikar supplement, she gave me a plastic bag with Rs10 lakh cash in it. I had no hesitation in taking it as it was for the larger cause of keeping the BJP out of power. But I was shaken as never before any politician had given me such a large amount of cash and remember how very nervous I was about taking it back home with me.
Fortunately, the PSO I had during that time, ensured the amount in payment for doing the supplement. The next day I deposited the money in the Goan Observer bank account. I like to believe that the supplement we did and distributed had a major impact. At that time Goans had not yet accepted Manohar Parrikar, a far humbler Parrikar.
They were also concern about the communal agenda of the BJP. The Goan Observer supplement targeting Manohar Parrikar was supplemented by another supplement in Konkani brought out by the social activist Datta Damodar Naik. Datta was also opposed strongly to the BJP. I recall Datta giving a talk at the Kesarwal Motel on the temperature at which paper burns. This was symbolic to dramatize the danger of encouraging the BJP. We printed a few lakh copies of the Goan Observer reporting Datta Naik’s attack on Manohar Parrikar.
I like to think the supplements aided the defeat of the BJP and the Congress won in the 2007 assembly elections. As it is traditional in the Congress there was a fight between Pratapsingh Raoji Rane and Ravi Naik for the chief minister’s post. The high command decided on Digambar Kamat as the compromise candidate. Manohar Parrikar was quite upset as Digambar had played a part in toppling the Parrikar government. Digambar historically had been a staunch member of the BJP and was the power minister in Manohar Parrikar’s cabinet in 2000. There was a revolt against the party and Digambar has been asked to look after the flock on the eve of the low-confidence motion; but Digambar himself defected to the Congress.
At the end of Digambar Kamat’s tenure in 2012 Manohar Parrikar came back to power with the help of the Catholic MLAs. Parrikar had played a major role in the rise of Narendra Modi. Way back in 2002 when Parrikar was the chief minister the national executive committee of the BJP was held at the Marriott hotel in Panaji. This was soon after the post-Godhra riots in Gujarat. At the meeting of the BJP executive meeting the Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had demanded that Narendra Modi should resign because he did not followed the “raj dharma.”
I recall that at the dinner at the Raj Bhavan LK Advani managed to persuade Vajpayee to permit Modi to stay on as chief minister. Flash forward to 2012 when Parrikar was again the chief minister of Goa. At the meeting of the executive committee of the BJP in Goa Parrikar proposed that Modi should be the face of the BJP in the 2014 parliamentary election. This was pushed though even though there was opposition from senior leaders like LK Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi. Modi went on to become the country’s prime minister and promptly marginalized his mentor and guru LK Advani on the claim that party leaders should be retired when the reach the age of 75.
Modi himself had to decide whether he will resign when he reaches 75 next year in 2025. In any case, Modi rewarded Manohar Parrikar with the post of defense minister at the centre. In fairness, Parrikar was reluctant to shift to Delhi. But Parrikar could not refuse the honor of being the Union Defense Minister of India. So Parrikar resigned as chief minister of Goa in 2014 to take on his new role as defense minister of the country. During his brief tenure as defense minister Parrikar carried out a surgical strike against terrorists within Pakistan.
Parrikar returned to Goa in 2017 when he probably discovered that he had developed a deadly cancer, pancreatic cancer. Manohar Parrikar did not live long enough to enjoy his return to Goa and he passed away on March 17, 2019.
The Goan Observer learnt a very painful lesson. A media organization cannot take sides. As the editor I had made the mistake of putting all our eggs in the Congress basket. Admittedly, the Goan Observer was successful in defeating Manohar Parrikar and getting the Congress back to power. When the BJP returned to power it began targeting the Goan Observer. All advertising for Goan Observer was withdrawn. When Modi came to power he cracked down on independent media. Remember, Shekar Gupta was forced to leave the Indian Express.
Similarly, the independent TV channel NDTV led by Pranoy Roy and CNN18 started by Rajdeep Sardesai were taken over by Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani. With the BJP government at the Centre and the State turning hostile private advertisers also began boycotting the Goan Observer. Simultaneously, there was a sharp drop in our desktop publishing assignments. Covid-19 and its lock-downs delivered the lethal blow. The second decade of the millennium saw the rise and fall of my political weekly Goan Observer but we still survived online to keep our head above water.
While the print edition has been suspended for want of funds our online Goan Observer has a reach of over 30,000 readers. I would like to believe that we played a role in limiting BJP to less than 200 seats and the NDA with just 240 seats. The failure of the BJP to secure a 2/3rd majority has strengthened the opposition and forced the BJP to respect the minorities.
In retrospect, I believe that editors should never take responsibility for the management of media organisations. Editors may be very good journalists but are rotten managers. All through the 21 years that Goan Observer has been alive and kicking we have been functioning from rented premises. We should have listened to one of our much respected directors, the late Frank Martin and bought our own premises.
As the saying goes the rich build houses which the fool takes on rent. We also invested very heavily in computers and other equipment and this was a mistake because the technology was moving so fast that all IT equipment became obsolete. The depreciation on computers was as high as 90%. Perhaps we also spent too much money on staff welfare. At the peak of the Goan Observer’s success we owned two four-wheelers and several two-wheelers for staff use. Perhaps if we had been more prudent we could have continued our print issues longer.
There was of course the problem that printing and distributing the issues became a very expensive affair after Narendra Modi came to power. The GST on paper was hiked to 18% and there was a separate GST slapped on printing. Plus, we have to pay 5% on all advertisements. The cost of printing the Goan Observer went up to Rs10 per copy. If only we had a huge advertising revenue like The Times of India we could afford to price the weekly at an affordable price. They are giants with other business sources to augment their media house, in comparison we’re just a pygmy.
However, the Goan Observer be it online, continues to be committed to independent journalism. Although now if I may say so, it is a luxury to continue to be critical of the government.