To Write or Not to Write

For many journalists, reporting in the volatile decade of the 1970s was both exciting and challenging

- Kumar Ketkar

FOR a journalist, the seventies were one of the most challenging periods. I was in my mid-twenties and a young reporter at The Economic Times, with politics as my beat. D K Rangnekar, renowned economist and a London School of Economics alumni-who had a Left of Centre and Nehruvian political line-was my editor. He was a national intellectual elite.

The beginning of the decade was quite eventful. In March 1971, Indira Gandhi won by a landslide, demolishing the Opposition. The Grand Alliance of the Opposition consisted of the right wing Swatantra Party, the Socialists, the Jan Sangh and the breakaway of the Congress-commonly known as the Syndicate. "Garibi hatao vs Indira hatao" was the political rhetoric that dominated the campaigning and the elections.

The "Indira wave" eventually swept the electorate. The widely discussed and debated "Indira phenomenon" began with this wave. She was at the peak of her popularity.

I had covered that election as a reporter and, frankly, had not anticipated such a landslide victory. The entire media-there was only the press then, no TV-was hostile towards her. Erudite editors and prominent journalists like Frank Moraes and B G Verghese either condemned or ridiculed her. No self-styled political pundit-cum-columnist anticipated that she would win by such a huge margin.

Soon after the elections, the 'Indira phenomenon' swept the nation. However, to understand this phenomenon-not only the one that was manifested in the election but also comprehensively-it is necessary to understand the political environment in the Indian subcontinent in the seventies as well as the political perception of the elite class.

In the same year, the Pakistani Army invaded East Pakistan. The reason was the fantastic electoral victory of the Bengali Awami League's Mujibur Rehman in East Pakistan. Under the normal democratic process, he would have become the Prime Minister of the whole of Pakistan.