Seven columns, 15 questions, 11 interlocutors, two pull quotes, two photographs, and one caricature are what it took for Indian Express to tell its readers what its aviation correspondent, if it has one, or a journalist with couple of hours in the library could have done. A run-of-the-mill interview with Praful Patel was presented as “The Idea Exchange”, (Praful Patel at the Express, September 17, 2006); the result of a Friday lunch with the paper’s editors where he “spoke at length on the challenges he faced while pushing for reforms particularly bureaucratic red tape.” One ought to overlook the syntactical issues with that sentence since the paper is, after all, a reporter’s paper and the desk presumably was not invited for lunch.
But let us see what we can make of this exchange. With all the violence that lack of context often does to the story, here are the 15 questions ad seriatim.
Fifteen years back there used to be four flights between Delhi and Mumbai, and they were all full. Today there are 60 flights, and they are all full. Is it a sign of the change of times?
We are growing at 8 per cent but the world is growing very rapidly. After having grown so far, 8 per cent is not good enough for India because it will create a huge aspirational gap.
What stops you from changing these processes, since you are the man at the top?
Do you think the proposed amendment in the RTI Act will make the decision-making process worse?
How do we bring accountability then?
There is major congestion in metro airports. Is there talk about telling new airlines that they can’t operate exclusively from these airports?
As a politician, how do you deal with problems like slums coming in the way of expansion of the Mumbai airport?
What are the problems in modernisation of Mumbai and Delhi airports?
Doesn’t Kolkata need a second airport?
What about regional connectivity?
We hear so much about airlines running into losses but still offering cheap tickets. Is this to stay?
How much has IA lost from reducing fares in the wake of competition?
How is that your dynamism has revolutionised the civil aviation industry but not the national carrier?
What do you see as the way forward?
How does the NCP second-rung leadership see the arrival of Supriya Sule?
These are not questions that smack of ignorance. Some are admittedly a little jejune. But there is scarcely one here that would require the combined editorial prowess of the purveyors of the journalism of courage and Friday victuals for its utterance. So what should the reader make of this feature, which is reinforced with a photograph of Mr Patel with the roll-up banner in the background reading, “Idea Exchange, The power of an idea expressed.”
If the questions are commonplace, may be the interlocutors are not. So the intriguing presence of 11 names is what sets this apart from an ordinary interview. From the editor-in-chief Shekhar Gupta, past Chikermane, Chatterjee, Samanta, Philipose, Mazumdar, Rajan, Jain, Kapoor, Ranjan, we finally end with Shanker. Thanks for letting the reader know the laundry list of editors that the paper has. An old fashioned masthead (in the American sense and hence not to be confused with the nameplate or masthead in the British sense) would have sufficed, and truth be told it would not have made some of these people, fine men and women for all the reader knows or cares, look silly with the questions they asked.
So may be what is important about this feature is the fact that the minister “joined the Indian Express team for lunch.” Ministers do not join just all and sundry for lunch. One needs to have the requisite social capital, if not intellectual, for ministers to come over and break bread. The reader has little doubt that in the world of give and take that attends source and journalist relationship, it does not take a lot for them to be supping together; though how slippery it is from the lunch table to the bed is something worth worrying about. But may be, just may be, this joining in lets us know the esteem in which this paper is held. This preening on the pages should be bracketed as an exercise in hubris that is not uncommon among those who have claims of proximity to the powerful.
May be what is important here are the two photographs. One that shows Mr Patel sitting, while some people, all Indian Express staff one assumes, hang around him. And the other that shows Mr Gupta with a plate in hand and Mr Patel with his plate engaged in conversation while a bunch of minions stand in attention and seem to be listening attentively. Newspaper journalists despite their egos always had a disdain for exhibitionism and of putting their pictures in their own paper. But when they start walking and talking for the tube, then any hesitation towards self-promotion and exhibition is likely to decrease. One wonders whether such a use of photographs in even such self-serving a feature would have been possible if Mr Gupta had not chosen to become something of a television interviewer himself.
 Or may be one is being deeply uncharitable and all these are not reasons for such a sorry lunch conversation and series. It is just an idea gone horribly wrong. The Idea Exchange was perhaps meant to be a conversation where senior editors could engage in something that would be deemed worthy of our attention. But what we got was rajma-chaval and a vapid after-lunch burp. That it makes the editorial team look trite suffices the “sufficient but not necessary” condition that may be their part in the making of this series.
