On the anniversary of his decision to quit the Herald for not succumbing to the pressure from the Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, RAJAN NARAYAN retraces the events leading to his decision to part company with the paper he edited for 20 years.

IT ALL BEGAN on August 22 nd 2003, the first birth anniversary of the late Gines Viegas, the proprietor of O’Coqueiro restaurant in Porvorim. Panjim was in the grip of a jaundice epidemic. Triggered by contamination of the public water pipeline in the heart of the city which served several popular restaurants and cafes. The Health Department and the Corporation of the City of Panaji had after inspection of the sanitary conditions in various eating places ordered many of them to shut down. Likewise the gaddos and the handcarts in the various parts of the state capital of Panjim including the Miramar beach had been shut down. The Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar kept making pompous statements about his determination to protect the health of the citizens and enforce sanitation rule stringently.

DOUBLE TALK: Manohar Parrikar's actions speak louder than words.

It was common knowledge that the Chief Minister, Manohar Parrikar, was a regular at the gaddos near Alankar Cinema in Mapusa. The Chief Minister used to visit them late at night to eat omelette pao and drink fruit juice. After the commemoration dinner at O’Coquiero, I suggested to the better half Tara Narayan, a senior journalist in her own right that we should check out the sanitary conditions in the Chief Minister’s favourite street side food stalls near the Alankar Cinema. We got there around 11 pm. Tara who is a fanatic in hygiene walked around the cluster of food stalls paying special attention to the Chief Minister’s favourite fruit juicewallah. The owner of the stall not only confirmed that Manohar Parrikar was one of his privileged customers but told her that he dropped by at least twice a week if not oftener. A close inspection revealed that the juicers were grimy with dirt. That the fruits were rotting. That the fruit stalls including the Chief Minister’s favourite fruit stall seem to be totally oblivious of the minimal sanitary requirements. It was a breeding ground for jaundice and other water borne diseases.

Tara Narayan wrote a story on the irony of the Chief Minister patronising filthy unhygienic food stalls even while lecturing the whole state on the importance of hygiene and ordering the closure of established eating houses and gaddos in his constituency Panjim. Manohar Parrikar has never been able to take any criticism. He has always been totally lacking sporting spirit. The story appeared in the Herald issue dated August 24 th , 2003. Bright and early in the morning at seven a.m. there was a call at our residence from the Chief Minister himself. Like the proverbial little boy whose greedy little hand got stuck in the cookie jar, the Chief Minister, Manohar Parrikar, started off by outrightly denying that he frequented the food stalls adjacent to the Alankar Cinema. When Tara told him that the Chief Minister’s favourite fruit stall owner had boasted of what a loyal and regular customer Parrikar was, the Chief Minister back tracked. He admitted he was in the habit of going to the stall. But he went there only once a fortnight.

I thought that the matter had ended there. After all it was not the first time that Manohar Parrikar had called me at home in the early hours of the day to complain or protest about some report or editorial I had written. But apparently the Chief Minister was so furious about his hypocrisy being exposed that he called up the proprietor of the Herald Raul Fernandes. And in the tradition of Marie Antoinette the notorious and whimsical French queen, demanded that Tara should be barred from writing for the Herald. Tara used to write a regular food column for the Saturday magazine Insight. A popular column she had been writing for 12 years for the leading tabloid like the Midday and the Afternoon in Mumbai. I had sent the latest instalment of the column by email to the office.

When I got to the office the girl in charge of the Saturday magazine Insight told me that the proprietor had called her up and told her that Tara Narayan was barred from writing for the Herald. Not only was the column discontinued, she was barred from writing any other features or articles for the Herald. Tara called up the Managing Director and pointed out to him that there was no justification for stopping her regular food column which was totally non-controversial. The main focus of which was food linked to health. The proprietor Raul Fernandes, who has never been in the habit of reading anything including his own newspaper was rude to her and insisted that it was in bad taste to write about the Chief Minister’s eating habits. The worst part of it all was that at no stage did the proprietor consider it necessary to talk to me - the Editor. What hurt me most was that he went over my head and humiliated me by giving direct instructions to my subordinates. It became clear to me that the Chief Minister, Manohar Parrikar, had finally got to my proprietor and succeeded in his longstanding desire to silence me.

Tara was understandably agitated over the issue. She was concerned that she had placed me in an embarrassing situation vis-a-vis the management. She wrote to the Chief Minister, Manohar Parrikar, trying to explain the rationale for writing the story. Being a gracious person, she even apologised to him if unwittingly some of her remarks had hurt him. The Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar wrote back or rather e-mailed her. How little attention the Chief Minister pays to details was obvious from the fact that he had referred to Tara Narayan as Shri Tara Narayan. The Chief Minister assured my better half that he had highest respect for her as a journalist. Otherwise “he would not have spoken to you on the correct position.” The Chief Minister went on to add “that the timing of the article was not appropriate in the middle of the jaundice cases.” At no stage did the Chief Minister deny the charge that he was in the habit of patronising and frequenting the food stalls near Alankar Cinema. Nor did he dispute Tara’s observations that the conditions in the food stalls including the Chief Minister’s favourite fruit juicewallah were horrifyingly unhygienic.

It was then that I decided that I could no longer work for the Herald. It was not as though this was the first time the proprietor of the Herald had sought to interfere with the day to day functioning of the paper. But at least earlier he had not been so blantant about it and he had not gone to the extent of totally and completely succumbing to the Chief Minister’s diktats. When I announced my decision to quit after 20 long years, many approaches were made to me to change my mind. And I would have perhaps reconsidered my decision but for even more serious attempt at muffling the Herald.

A controversy broke out in September over who was responsible for looting and plundering the apex finance body in the state – the Economic Development Corporation. Manohar Parrikar had fired the first salvo and accused former chief minister and incumbent Goa Pradesh Congress Committee President Luizinho Faleiro of looting and plundering the EDC to the tune of over Rs 50 crores. The Chief Minister alleged that when Luizinho Faleiro was the chief minister he had been party to extending loans to steel rolling mills without checking on their credentials. That the deterioration of the financial health of the EDC was due to the irresponsible and questionable loans advanced by the EDC during Luizinho Faleiro’s tenure. Manohar Parrikar threatened to bring out a white paper which he called the black paper on the transgression of the Luizinho Faleiro. Unfortunately for Manohar Parrikar, Luizinho Faleiro beat him to it by bringing out his own black paper. In which he alleged that under pressure from the Chief Minister the EDC had extended a very generous one-time settlement to Simchem, a pharmaceutical company floated by the Chief Minister’s brother-in-law Prakash Shankwalkar.

Manohar Parrikar could dish it out but could not take it. Whenever he made allegations against Luizinho Faleiro and other opposition leaders he expected the media to report them promptly and prominently and on the front page. I know that he used to even go to the extent of calling up not just editors but proprietors of the newspapers to ensure that his charges were given very prominent coverage. When all sections of the media in the state carried the report of the press conference of the President of the Goa Pradesh Congress Committee Luizinho Faleiro in the Congress office alleging that the EDC had favoured his brother-in-law, the Chief Minister went into a rage. In an action that is unprecedented not only in Goa but in the annals of post independence journalism in the country, Manohar Parrikar issued a blanket gag order.

In a legal notice dated 26 th September 2003, sent to the Editors, Publishers and Owners of all daily newspaper published and printed in Goa, the Chief Minister demanded that they “refrain from publishing any further or other defamatory statements made by any person including Mr Luizinho Faleiro against my client (Manohar Parrikar) failing which my client will proceed to file appropriate complaints and a suit for injunction and recovery of damages. In the legal notice sent by Narendra Sawaikar on behalf of the Chief Minister, the legal notice was served upon editors, publishers and owners of newspapers “to refrain from any way publishing any articles or statements by Luizinho Faleiro or any one else or the consequences would ensue.”

Incredibly the proprietor of Herald was against even carrying the text of the legal notice. I was expressly forbidden from making any comment on the brazen attempt to muffle the entire media in the state. The absurd rationale or logic of the legal notice was that the media was welcome if not obliged to carry accusations and allegations made by the Chief Minister against opposition leaders but would have to refrain from carrying any criticism against the Chief Minister under threat of being sued and criminal charges being brought against them. I was even more horrified by the fact that the other newspapers in the state did not even report on the legal notice, though they had all received the notice and I had spoken to all the editors about this unprecedented assault on the freedom of the press. This only reinforced my determination to quit the Herald. How can any self-respecting journalist work for a newspaper whose proprietor was willing to crawl when merely asked to bend?

I organised a meeting of concerned citizens to focus attention on the unprecedented attack on the freedom of the press in collaboration with the Goa Union of Journalists. The only editor who put in a brief appearance was Suresh Walwe the Editor of the Navprabha, the Marathi daily. Leaders of the GUJ included the then President, Gurudas Sawal, made fiery speeches. There was even a proposal to boycott all press conferences of the Chief Minister. But the chamchas of the Chief Minister sabotaged the decision. Their argument was that the newspaper would suffer if they did not carry reports of Chief Minister’s post cabinet meeting briefings. In any case the Chief Minister’s favourite journalists continued to informally meet him and carry reports. The GUJ finally developed some courage and submitted a memorandum asking the Chief Minister to withdraw the legal notice. The Chief Minister very glibly told the delegation that they should consider the issue closed as he did not intend to pursue the legal notice. Never mind that the Chief Minister did not give any assurance that the legal notice would be withdrawn. In fact the legal notice was never withdrawn.

To compound it all, the Chief Minister brazen facedly lied when the issue was raised in the Legislative Assembly. He insisted that he had asked his lawyer to issue the legal notice in his personal capacity. This despite the fact that the covering letter from the lawyer, stated unequivocally that he was sending the legal notice on behalf of on the instructions of his client, the Chief Minister of Goa Manohar Parrikar. When I exposed the lie I was served a breach of privilege notice by the Speaker.

PS: After Tara Narayan was stopped from writing a column Eating is Fun in the Herald, she approached the other English newspaper including the Navhind Times and the Gomantak Times. The editors of both papers told me that they had strict instructions from their proprietors not to carry anything by Tara Narayan. Even non-controversial columns on healthy eating.

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