The Story No One Else Would Carry

By Sandeep Pai

I know and have learnt only one form of journalism – anti-establishment journalism. I strongly believe that the role of a journalist is to speak truth to power and hold the powerful accountable.

This idea, however, does not find favour in some media organisations, as I found out when I began working on the RTI series as part of the investigations team of Hindustan Times in Delhi. Like every journalist, I would meet people every day to scout for good stories. Many a times, I would get good stories, but the newspaper would not find it interesting or our armchair editors would say: “So what, why would Neha Chadda from South Delhi be interested in such a story?” Neha Chadda is a Punjabi lady who lives in South Delhi and was at the time considered HT’s archetypal reader. She was fictional, of course, but stories were judged on the basis of whether Neha Chadda would read it.

I would routinely get frustrated at not being allowed to pursue the stories I wanted to – some stories were killed at the idea stage, and some after I wrote them. It was during such times, that I met a source for dinner at Pind Baluchi in Connaught Place in Delhi. As we got chatting, my source told me he was frustrated because his organisation, a PSU, was getting several letters from powerful MPs/ministers, seeking funds for random NGOs, unknown magazines and events. My source further said that his organisation is forced to release lakhs of rupees on request of different MPs.

I thought this would make a fascinating story. I asked my source whether it is possible for him to leak the documents to me. My source was not sure and instead suggested I file an RTI application.

Without telling my editors, I filed a few RTIs and received initial replies from big PSUs like NTPC that confirmed what my source had told me.

I pitched the idea to my editors at HT. However, the story just didn’t interest them.

In September 2015, after just a few months and without any job offer, I left HT out of sheer frustration. Soon after, I joined the Special Investigative Team (SIT) of Zee-owned newspaper DNA, in Delhi. I began working on my RTI story again with great encouragement from my editor there. I used the old documents and extended my RTI net and filed appeals with at least 25 PSUs from January 2016 onwards. While I filed at least half of them, I got my activist friends from All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF) to file the rest of the RTIs. This was because they knew well how power PSUs function and were more effective at extracting information from them.

Meanwhile, I made very good friends with people working in different PSUs. They told me they were frustrated with politicians who are shamelessly writing letters to seek tax payers’ money for their personal gains.

After months of collating RTIs and reading them, the story was good to go in both DNA and ZEE News by April 2016. Despite this and my editor’s best intentions, it got stalled.

In the meantime, I got a scholarship to study at a prestigious university in Europe. I was so frustrated with the state of journalism in India that leaving Zee was an easy decision. I resigned in May and hoped that these stories would be published before my last day (June 30). When the stories remained buried for over two months, I approached Manisha, who was then senior editor at Newslaundry. It was just two days before my last day at DNA. She had been my colleague and I trusted her. The rest is there for you to read on the Newslaundry website. ☺