The perils of secrecy

THERE used to be a healthy relationship between editors and the government. Prime ministers would take them into confidence on matters of importance. Seldom did one betray the confidence of the other. Nor did anything untoward from their meeting appear in print. Even Indira Gandhi had regular sittings with editors. But the relationship got snapped during the Emergency. And it has never been entirely revived since. P.V. Narasimha Rao had a co- uple of meetings with editors on the Ram Janambhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, like Rajiv Gandhi, has been selective but not consistent.

Of all the prime ministers, Lal Bahadur Shastri was the most forthcoming. Before he went to Tashkent, he talked to editors. Haji Pir and Tithwal, the two posts overlooking parts of Kashmir, had been retrieved from Pakistan during the 1965 war. The question he posed to editors was whether India should vacate the posts if Moscow, which was the interlocutor, put pressure on him to do so. He told them how Soviet Prime Minister Kosygin had already made it clear to him that no country would be allowed to retain territory it had won during the war. (India had to return the two posts.)

Mrs Gandhi, the most reticent of all prime ministers, explained to editors once why she decided to take away the finance portfolio from Morarji Desai, deputy PM in her cabinet. He represented the conservative face, she argued, at a time when her government had taken progressive measures like nationalising banks. I recall objecting to the treatment meted out to Desai, whom I described as a Gandhian. ‘‘How long have you known him?’’ she asked. Before I could say anything, she said, ‘‘One word explains him: humbug.’’

At the meeting of editors with Rao, the demolition of the Babri Masjid was discussed. He explained how the BJP had let him down, particularly UP chief minister Kalyan Singh. I asked Rao how a makeshift temple came up overnight at the site. The state was then under president’s rule. He said he had sent by air the BSF force from Delhi but it could not land at Lucknow because of fog. It was not a convincing reply. He assured me that the temple would not be there ‘‘for long’’. That was nearly nine years ago.

Vajpayee talks to mediapersons but he selects them himself. I know of no meeting with editors as such and he has seldom placed all his cards on the table. After assuming power he has become too secretive even in his off-the-record observations. Still Vajpayee gets good press as he is believed to be the most liberal in an otherwise closed, cloistered pro-Hindu party. He should have convened a meeting of editors before the Agra summit to explain why he had invited Musharraf and what New Delhi wanted to achieve. Again, after the summit, he should have told them all about the declaration which the Pakistan president claims was about to be signed twice. If Vajpayee could talk to opposition parties, why not editors? But then the attitude of the Vajpayee government towards the media is archaic, bureaucratic and steeped in suspicion. In fact, it is busy restricting their area of operation and putting shackles even on the Internet.

Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh may pontificate — and this is not the first time — that the government does not hold negotiations through the media. But he should know that purveying information is not disclosing secrets, if there were any. He should at least explain why he and his foreign office were so ‘‘unstructured’’ that they made a mess, which even Vajpayee admitted before the opposition parties. On the crucial day, July 16, the government issued a one-sentence statement, pompous in tone, after midnight, having kept the media waiting the entire day. I do not think Jaswant Singh and his office even appreciate, much less understand, the requirements of the media. Formulating foreign policy is one thing, putting it across is another. Communication is the most important part of selling it in a democracy.

I personally think the government should appoint a committee of top mediapersons to determine what went wrong at Agra. Jawaharlal Nehru did so when he found that New Delhi had failed to put across its viewpoint during the India-China war in 1962. The conclusions of the report were never implemented because bureaucrats joined hands to kill the proposal that a secretary-level journalist be appointed to brief the press and that he sit at cabinet meetings. The Vajpayee government believes that Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pramod Mahajan is doing a wonderful job. I wish he was. No doubt, he briefs the media but he seldom goes beyond the surface, never explaining why and how a decision was reached. Mediapersons interpret events in their own way, depending on a leak here or a plant there. The government is invariably at fault for wrong information being circulated.

Somehow those who occupy high positions in government labour under the belief that they -and they alone - know what the nation should be told and when. They get annoyed if any news which they don’t like appears in print or on TV. Their first attempt is to contradict it, dub it mischievous. Later, when it is realised that a mere denial will not convince even the most gullible, a lame explanation is offered that things have not been put ‘‘in proper perspective’’. At that time, the government gets away with its version of the story. What is not realised is that such methods only decrease the credibility of official assertions. Even honest claims begin to be questioned. In a democracy, where faith stirs the people’s response, the government cannot afford to have even an iota of doubt raised about what it says or does. Somehow rulers are not conscious of this fact.

Islamabad believes it did a better job than New Delhi. Probably it did. But it did not play fair. When the Pakistan high commission announced at the intellectuals’ meeting with Musharraf that ‘‘everything was strictly off the record’’, practically nothing came out. It was presumed that the meeting of editors with Musharraf at Agra would also be ‘‘off the record’’. Some of the editors did not even know that it was being telecast. One editor rightly objected to the breach of confidence.

The summit was an opportunity to span the yawning distance between the two countries since Partition. True, New Delhi mismanaged the media. True, Islamabad did a competent job. But the summit was not about scoring points. It was about the differences, about the danger of hostilities, about restoring normalcy and about the poor left in the cold. The two sides should ask themselves whether the summit addressed those problems seriously and whether the forthcoming summit and other meetings would move towards the solution of the issues which confront India and Pakistan. At present, I am afraid, there is very little hope of anything beyond recrimination.

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