TAKEOVER: Industrialist Gautam Adani had made an open offer for buying NDTV owned by Prannoy Roy and Radhika Rao.

By Rajan Narayan

The Fourth Estate has to ensure that all three estates, the Legislative, the Executive and the Judiciary follow the rules led down for them in the Indian Constitution.

THE government of the day, whether it is the BJP or the Congress, believes that journalism is only the art of reporting and all reporters should do is report what they hear and nothing else. Nowadays, it is a story of report the facts as your government wants you to report. In other words reporters should be like the government gazette.
It is not the role of media to ask why a particular policy like the Smart City policy has been planned for Panaji? It is not the role of the media to ask if the Atal Sethu, dream project of late chief minister, Manohar Parrikar, has become a disgrace to his memory. It is not the role of the media to find out how Shaina Nana Chudasama was able to build a three- bedroom bungalow within the CRZ zone of the Old Goa heritage complex.
And of course there have been various job scams where people from the constituency of Health Minister Vishwajit Rane, namely Valpoi, have been granted jobs in the GMC and the jobs have not even been sanctioned by the government. The bakra is Goa Medical College & Hospital – this is because it is not ministers who sign orders.
Traditionally, the media is recognized as the 4th estate of democracy or democratic government. The other estates are legislature, executive and judiciary. The media has been given an exalted status because it is that of being the watchdog or the job of keeping a watch on the functioning of all the three other estates. It is for the media to ensure that the rules that cover the functioning of the other estates are followed strictly.

FOURTH ESTATE
IT is for the Fourth Estate, the media print and electronic and now presumably even social media, to act as policemen and policewomen over the executive legislature which includes parliament and the judiciary. It is admittedly till sometime ago it was the wisdom of the court that even truth could not be a defense in a contempt case. A contempt case is any material published in a newspaper that might undermine the dignity of the court. This could be carried to absurd lengths.
For instance a Professor N Menezes of the St Xavier’s college had some problems with the Saligao Panchayat. An enterprising sub-editor gave the item the heading “Justice Goan-style.” The then Justice Gustav Couto took great offense and suo moto called me up for contempt of court. His reasoning was that the title was offensive and suggested that Goan justice was inferior to justice in the rest of the country.
Despite the arguments of my lawyer Ferdino Rebello, who later on became the chief justice of the Allahabad High Court, Justice Couto let off Professor N Menezes lightly since she was a lay person, and said as an editor I ought to know the law instead of being a “habitual contempner” of law.

CRUCIAL ISSUES
WHEN it comes to the Legislature there are several crucial issues involved. If a member of the ruling party decides to defect what should the speaker do? Depending on the party loyalty to the speaker, he can delay the hearing indefinitely. The opposition may have to move the Supreme Court to get an early hearing. While the courts cannot interfere with the day-to-day functioning of the legislature they have jurisdiction on the procedures followed by the legislature.
A most interesting case was the disqualification of Ravi Naik, chief minister of Goa in the 90s, by the Goa bench of the Bombay High Court. Promptly, Dr Wilfred d’Souza toppled the Barbosa government. Dr Wilfred d’Souza, waiting for the chief minister’s post, was promptly elected as chief minister. Unfortunately for Dr Wilfred the Supreme Court overturned the decision of the Bombay High court. This meant that the disqualification of Ravi Naik was squashed. This meant that Dr Willy had to resign to make way for Ravi Naik.
Unfortunately, then Governor of Goa Bhanu Prakash Singh did not take the permission of the Union minister to sack Dr Wilfred d’Souza and replace him with Ravi Naik. This dramatizes that everyone has to follow the rules, including the governor. The consequence was that both Governor Bhanu Pratap and Chief Minister Ravi Naik were sacked.

TRICKY SITUATION
THE Executive has to function on orders of ministers. The role of the babu is very tricky. If they follow orders bad in law they are likely to get into trouble with the Vigilance department of the Judiciary. As for instance in the case of Goa Medical College & Hospital dean, Dr SM Bandekar, who has been hauled up the Vigilance department for the recruitment of a large number of so called multi-utility workers by his boss, Minister of Health Vishwajit Rane.
The Executive has its own problems. This comes from the fact that the all the orders issued by the chief minister and the ministers have to be signed by the bureaucrats. What do officials do when they have to sign orders so apparently illegal? It is like recruiting people without permission. Or failing to supervise and check the tenders given to “friends” of a state government, as happened in the terrible tragedy of the Morbi bridge in Gujarat. Reportedly, the tender for the Rs2 crore contract was given to refurbish the bridge — the company spent only Rs12 lakh to paint it. The company is Oreva belonging to one Jaysukhbhai Patel who goes free, the police may not touch him for reasons best known to them.
Ironically, the owner of the company responsible for the tragedy which claimed the life of 140 people and more is an act of Goa according to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s understanding. A bit like our former chief minister in Goa, Digambar Kamat, claiming that his God told him to quit the Congress and join the BJP for all to be forgiven.

HILARIOUS CASE
THERE is the other hilarious case of a very top executive, no less than the managing director and chairman of the National Stock Exchange Chitra Krishnan. The National Stock Exchange is the official equivalent of Dalal Street, the private stock exchange. Among the employees of the NSE was the husband of Chitra. The report is that Chitra made all her decisions in consultation with some “rishi” from the Himalaya who had a laptop. This was the strangest case of a top executive going by the advice of an unidentified godman who was making her take crucial decisions regarding the stock exchange.
The biggest scams of course are to do with the banks. The chairman and managing directors of banks are anxious to increase their loans to big industrialists as they are the main source of interest income to the bank. We have the early case of Nusli Wadia allegedly cheating the banks of several thousand crore. Nusli Wadia, who owned Bombay Dyeing which makes towels and Brittania biscuits has fled to the UK. Nusli Wadia was given loans on his personal guarantee.
If you and I walked into a bank and asked for a loan on a personal guarantee, we won’t get a paisa. Then we have the case of Mehul Choksi and Nirav Modi who allegedly stole Rs18,000 crore from the Union Bank. The most notorious of bank robbers was Harshad Mehta who kept borrowing money from the banks to boost the stock market. Harshad used the same stocks to borrow more money. It was the case of a benami company. When the truth was exposed by Sucheta Dalal of the Economic Times the entire stock market crashed and there was shock all around.
But for the Media none of the institutions of the Executive, Legislature and Judiciary would have any fear. They would continue to loot and plunder the country. Which is why industrialists are taking over independent media, not because they are interested in protecting the integrity of newspapers or any media but because they want to be control to silence wrongdoing.
Rajdeep Sardesai’s CNN18 was taken over by Dhirubai Ambani. The Adanis are trying to take over NDTV. In Goa the only independent media is the small time alone and lonely Goan Observer which continues to come out at least on line every Saturday without fear or favor. If you want to know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the unvarnished truth support the Goan Observer to come out in print or on line as goanobserver.in. Support the Goan Observer which has for whatever reasons has just been selected for the receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award for journalism, at least its editor has been selected.