Given the rendition of democracy’s darkness and murkiness that the book exposes; how difficult was it to get the bureaucrats and other highly placed officials to talk?

I have found that people want to talk, even if they are guilty. They want to ensure that the perception they want projected of themselves is made public. Whether they accomplish that with a seasoned journalist is another matter. That is the reason that people will happily give interviews and then are upset when they see it in print.

How difficult was it to compile the fragments of information (video tapes and interviews) and the interviews conducted by you into the present form of a book?

I wouldn’t call it difficult but I would say it was a lot of tedious, hard , solid work. It was time consuming, which is why it took me six long years of working often 18-20 hours a day. It was the sheer bulk of material. The Operation West End edited scripts and tapes. There were over 100 unedited tapes and transcripts. There were the Commission of Inquiry transcripts as well as covering it in progress in person. There were the Army Court of Inquiry tapes. Then there were over 40 interviews which I conducted and then transcribed. There were also thousands of documents filed in court which had to be studied. Also, related research to army procurements and the background of many of the players.

According to you what is the dividing line between the media’s role in information dissemination and their share of “publicity pie” in such journalistic endeavours?

It is an extremely difficult question to answer as to who is exploiting whom. The subject wants his or her story told. So he or she is using the journalist to get his version of the story out. The journalist then wants the story as it is processed told to the world as it is of no use to simply carry the knowledge within one’s self. As long as the subject is aware and agrees to the journalist’s interview with full knowledge, then it is the duty of the journalist to make the result as public as possible.

Being an investigative journalist yourself, what do you think of the legal authencity of sting operations?

I think sting operations are valid when there is no other way to prove that such activities are taking place with the usual caveat that it is for the public good. When it is used to expose personal sexual shenanigans and such, it is completely unacceptable. That is not journalism. That is pornography.

Does the media have any accountability of the reaction consequent in the common man’s mind upon its ‘triumphant show of corruption’ after an exposé ?

Sadly, in our country corruption is no surprise and only proves what we know exists without proof. Whether the public benefited from the exposure? I don’t think so. Nobody did, not even the journalists. The end result was that the investors of Tehelka were successfully destroyed by the then government, using instruments of democracy and leaving no footprints. This is given in detail in my book. One reviewer wrote that that chapter was like a visit to a German concentration camp. Did it change anything in the procurement of equipment in the armed services and defence ministry? I think they became more cautious to the point that few were willing to take any decisions at all.

Being an ace investigative scribe yourself, we would like to ask you about the change in the investigative journalism scenario in India from the time when you had started and now?

I think in programmes like Newstrack we spent more time on stories, did stories that few journalists dared to do and gave a deeper insight into the impact of events. Today we are living with a bite culture syndrome where anyone who even attempts to complete a point, he or she is cut off for a commercial break. And the most frightening aspect of seeing journalists who conduct interviews without a note pad or tape recorder and recall only what suits them.

An allied question: How different is the treatment journalists gave their investigative stories in the late 1980s and 1990s from now?

Many differences. We were irreverent and did not care to align ourselves with those in power. Today too many journalists are known and sometimes hired for their alignment and closeness to power. We turned down invitations for ‘Breakfast with the Prime Minister.’ We worked longer and harder on stories. We worked to get the other side of the story, which is taken care of by a careless faux apology the next week in today’s journalism. We respected ‘off the record.’ We were more daring. Alpana Kishore went in a three-wheeler with terrorists to interview a kidnap victim still in the custody of terrorists while the armed forces were looking for him. We interviewed dreaded terrorists often reporting stories not favourable to them. We lived with their threats. We exposed those in power and lived with their threats. I remember HD Shourie once telling me that he was in tears when he saw our story on the children of Punjab during the militancy. It is not as if good journalism is not happening now. The Indian Express has done its share of exposés against those in power. But, more often than not you will see the obsequious, elegant interview given to a chosen journalist who is well aware what he must not ask.

Idealistically journalism is an objective art, how did you deal with the subjective narrative voice that a book format would necessarily entail?

This is a long debated question about whether we can ever really be objective. The way we ask a question more than what we ask will get a particular answer. Is there any way to view a raped four year old dispassionately? I believe good journalists are passionate about their stories. There is the obligatory ‘other side’ to include but sometimes there really isn’t any other side, such as a child’s rape. In my book, I always included what any person said to me but that did not mean I had to agree with their view, their facts or their perspective. I did my journalist’s duty by presenting their perceptions truthfully but my take on it would naturally be my own. The reader is then left to decide which direction he wants to take.

In the book you have talked about the 3 stages that corruption in India has passed through, what is the feasible first step that the common man can take in cleansing up his surrounds?

It really is unfair to expect the common man to turn corruption around. If he has to get his child into a school, he will do anything to accomplish that. It has to be tackled on a larger scale on a national level. Increase the number of schools so the schools are looking for students instead of parents begging schools to take their child. Raise the salaries of the police, legal officers, bureaucrats to private industry levels and then demand absolute honesty with harsh punishments. Also, children today learn about corruption very early in school through threats from teachers. We must inculcate in our children, and even more so in the teachers, that it is their character that will build the future of India.

The book stirs up the raw fact of corruption and its effect on the social system. Do you have a target readership in mind?

Absolutely. I took the decision to not write the book for an international reader. I wrote it for young Indians to show them that it is important to fight for honesty and integrity. I wanted to show our youth that they do have choices in how they function in whatever field they choose. One example: the price a young employee may have to pay for refusing to do something dishonest may get him fired from a job but there are so many companies and organizations looking for honest people, he would actually have a better future.

In March 2001, the website Tehelka broke Operation West End, the biggest undercover news story in Indian journalism. Using spycams and masquerading as arms dealers, Tehelka’s reporters infiltrated the Indian government, bribed army officers, gave money to the president of the ruling party and the defence minister’s close colleague right in the defence minister’s residence. This eventually forced both the ministers’ resignations. In a rigorously researched and searing authentic account of the Tehelka exposé and its aftermath, Madhu Trehan does a forensic study of the imperatives at the root of it, the characters and heroes and villians of the story, and of how the system got back: by obfuscating, by attempting to destroy Tehelka and its investors. Trehan shows how the government used instruments of democracy to destroy the investors without leaving any footprints. In the style of Rashomon, the story is related by numerous participants of the same incidents and, of course, none of the stories tally. With exhaustive personal interviews, this is a must-read for anybody who wants to understand modern India – or even better, modern international journalism.

Tehelka as Metaphor by Madhu Trehan Our Price Rs. 535.50 *USD 11.16

Madhu Trehan studied journalistic photography at Harrow Technical College & School of Arts in 1968. She received her master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University, New York, in 1972. Trehan worked in the Press Section in the United Nations in New York and then as editor in India Abroad, New York. In 1975 she returned to India to start India’s leading news magazine India Today with her father V.V. Purie. Trehan became known for creating the first news magazine in India. She returned to New York to start her family and her brother Aroon Purie took over India Today to make it the success it became. When she returned to India in 1986, Trehan produced and anchored a path-breaking, controversial television news magazine programme Newstrack for TV Today, when the Indian government had complete control of the air waves.

Newstrack became famous for incredible journalistic scoops. Trehan became known as a pioneer in investigative journalism. In 2000, Trehan left TV Today to launch wahindia.com, a website and print magazine. Trehan’s hopes for a sabbatical were dashed when, in 2002, Roli Books commissioned Trehan to write a book on Tehelka’s Operation West End. What she thought would be a three-month bang-off book turned out to be six years of heavy research and over forty interviews.

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Interviewed by Swagata Pal & Kushal Sinha Designed by Subhadip Mukherjee