Of fixers and retainers

A couple of weeks back, a friend of 30 years called up. I was a trifle intrigued because he rarely bothers calling though we live and work in the same town. The friend, who is now the vice president of a leading Indian corporate with interests in the lucrative mining sector in Orissa, started by asking about a prominent RTI activist of the state and my relationship with him. I said I had the best of relations with this activist.
It was only after this that the purpose of his call became clear. [I now wonder if corporate types ever make a courtesy call to anybody, including friends from the student days.] The said activist was apparently proving to be a thorn in his company’s designs to mine iron ore without being shackled by irritants like mining and forest laws by filing RTI application after RTI application on the company’s illegal operations. The friend bragged that he had managed to hold up an answer to the RTI query so far by pulling the right strings, but was then quick to concede that he could not postpone the inevitable for eternity. Coming to the ‘business’ end of the talk, he asked if I could have a ‘chat’ with this activist to make him desist from going after the company: in short, if I could ‘fix’ him.
I tried to reason with him saying this activist friend comes from a very rich family and hence is not amenable to monetary inducements; that he is in it for the love of it and not to cut deals with corporates. But the friend was skeptical and persisted with his proposal for a meeting. For good measure, he added that we could meet before the meeting with the activist and work out some ‘arrangement’ – not just for this particular case but a ‘long term’ one.
I was struck by the sheer audacity of the proposal. Here was a friend, who knows me for three decades, actually offering me a bribe to ‘fix’ a troublesome activist. I could understand his firm belief that the activist is up for sale since he does not know him personally. But how could he even think of proposing to buy me off to do his bidding? I felt like giving him a mouthful and banging the phone on him. But I could do nothing of the sort and told him, sheepishly and vaguely, that we would meet ‘one of these days’.
Despite my timidity in telling him on his face what I thought of his ‘business proposal’, I guess this friend of mine got enough hints about my discomfiture with the whole idea and I doubt if he would really go ahead and arrange a meeting. But you never know. In the shameless world that corporate India has become, every senior execuitve is convinced that everybody and everything has a price tag.
If the proposed meeting does come about, I have little doubt that it would be at one of the many swanky hotels of the town, where the booze and food bill for two could be upwards of Rs. 2, 000. I also know for sure that my good friend will not be paying this amount from his pocket. All corporates have a specific ‘head’ to account for such ‘miscellaneous’ expenses.
That the amount in question is small change for a leading corporate house goes without saying. But two years ago, I learnt the hard way that there are no ‘heads’ in the company’s books to account for even this measly sum if it is for a cause less 'worthier' than giving a treat to a journalist. The occasion was a film festival organized by a film society, of which I am one of the founding members, in the town. I had gone to this very friend asking for a small sponsorship. Starting with Rs. 5, 000, I had scaled down my request to just Rs. 2, 000 in the end. But dozens of calls and several visits to his office later, I drew a blank.
I lost considerable face in the bargain as the other core members found it hard to believe that a journalist of my seniority and standing could not manage a sponsorship of a few thousand rupees, especially considering the fact that this vice president was a friend of mine. Some of them perhaps thought I did not try. Others doubted my standing in the pecking order.
Though I was mighty angry at the time when the friend made the indecent proposal to me, the anger has now dissipated and given way to a painful realisation that he could hardly be blamed for doing what he did. After all, aren’t there are many in my tribe - not just in Niira Radia’s Delhi, but in our very own Bhubaneswar - who do not have any compunction about putting themselves up for sale in the corporate or political bourse? There is this senior journalist of a major Odia newspaper, who is known to have ‘fixed’ mining leases for at least five companies and has now been rewarded with a palatial building in a posh area of the town for his ‘help’. Then there is this Young Turk, who has consistently and unabashedly batted for Vedanta, the company now in the docks, for the last couple of years. Indeed, it would not be a travesty of truth to say that the corporate and political fixers and retainers now outnumber those who play by the book.
In this dismal scenario, is there a hope in hell for the honest journalist? I believe there is because nobody – just nobody, no matter how powerful or rich s/he is - can force you to trade your integrity. All that one has to do is to resist the temptations for the good things in life, live within one’s means and occasionally endure the taunts of friends, family or well wishers for being a ‘good for nothing’. Is that such a big price to pay?