Learning & Unlearning: A journalist’s years with Naidu govt privatisation project

BELIEVE IT OR NOT: One has a good chance of running into efficient CEO-like-officials in government service as I discovered much to my pleasant surprise when working with the Government of Andhra Pradesh on and with its highly controversial privatisation programme in the early 2000s

By Lakshmana Venkat Kuchi/Consulting Editor
From Bengaluru

It seems like only yesterday when we were handling a highly controversial and criticised Andhra Pradesh government’s Public Sector Enterprises Reforms Programme (APERP) – the privatisation of state-run loss-making units – as part of a crack professional team of outside experts engaged by the Naidu government.

For me, a private sector media professional until then and associated with the best of media brands – Press Trust of India, The Hindu, Sunday Observer, and Hindustan Times – exposure to and interaction with the government sector babus – from lower rung officials to the men and women who ran the administration, from the inside – was quite an education.

Reporting to a senior IAS official, Principal Secretary to the Government of Andhra Pradesh, seemed like a dreadful proposition to me until I walked in nervously into an ageing government building, climbing up the stairs to the ‘peshi’ of DK Panwar and informing his personal staff of my arrival to join work – as a media consultant to the APERP.

Luckily for me, the wait was not too long, and I was ushered into his presence. It was that first meeting with the Boss – two months after he had led an interview panel that made me go through a Spanish Inquisition of sorts and tested my Telugu reading and speaking abilities as well – was unexpectedly pleasant, one which gave me the confidence that maybe I would last a tad longer than I thought I could.

For a hardcore private sector worker like me, an association with the government from the inside was not even in the realms of thinking, but for a chance prediction of an astrologer who had said that I was going to get the benefit of a neecha bhanga raja yoga and would get paid by the government.

I had wanted to be geographically closer to my parents than living in our native village, where my father had settled after retiring from a lengthy central government service in Lutyens Delhi. I even took a break from my journalistic career to be on the other side of the profession. Those were the times when the media industry was going through a rough patch, and top news organisations were going through cost-cutting (mass sackings) exercises, and colleagues were getting pink slips left, right and centre.

It was during such a time that I was given flight tickets – to and fro, hotel accommodation and a cab for the local commute – to face a written test and interview for a position with the Global Consultant that was advising the GoAP on its Privatisation Programme (APERP). Interestingly, this prompted my colleagues to ask me how I had managed to ‘reverse swing’ in terms of landing an opportunity. Well, it was one of those advertisements in the Economic Times, a newspaper I had been purchasing for many years, though not reading it fully, calling for a media person in Hyderabad, and somehow the ad seemed to be written for me!

But it was only after beginning to work on the assignment that I realised what I was in for – to be defending a highly controversial privatisation programme of the Chandrababu Naidu government and to create a narrative that it was the most appropriate economic step to be taken in the overall interests of the state and its economy. Of course, it does make economic sense in theory – but in practice, especially if you are on the receiving end of the exercise and losing jobs and livelihood, it can be the most difficult of the things to do and explain it to the people suffering its implications.

Having been a journalist for over two decades then, that sudden change of profession was anything but easy to accomplish but thanks to my background, experience and networking, the transition was somewhat smoother than I had anticipated. I must thank all my ex-colleagues during my formative years in journalism in Delhi, some of whom ended up in Hyderabad as key decision-makers in different print media organisations in the business and economic spheres of the profession.

Which is why, I was able to settle into my assignment with greater ease than I had anticipated and my journalistic abilities kind of helped me in the writing routine that the job chart entailed. Was I lucky in that my teacher in college, PK Mohanty, another senior IAS official at that time who eventually ended up as the Chief Secretary of GoAP, also guided me now and then, whenever I needed it?

One thing led to another on the work front and the first Newsletter I produced became an instant hit, first with media colleagues, some of whom featured a few human-interest stories in their respective publications. The feedback one received on the Newsletters was ‘shocking’ – in a pleasant way with the top leaders in the country, say a Montek Singh Ahluwalia then in the Planning Commission or AK Bhattacharya, then Editor of the Business Standard, or a host of Finance and Industry secretaries of different governments in the country and governors taking a keen interest in the quarterly publication.

But the most ‘shocking’ of all the reactions was a phone call to me from the then Finance Secretary of the Gujarat government – then headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the Chief Minister – seeking an appointment with me to learn more about Andhra Pradesh government’s privatisation programme and how we did what we did. I immediately connected him with my boss – Mr. Panwar and eventually a team from Gujarat visited and spent time with us at the Hyderabad office. Similarly, a few other state governments also used to interact with us from time to time.

It was during that time that we came up with an idea to document our journey in the form of a booklet, or a brochure – AP Privatisation, A Success Story. Overall, it was somewhat of a challenge to coax colleagues from the government to part with information. One had to the best of one’s ability, managed to complete the brochure a few months before then Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu gave his approval for printing the document for distribution.

Incidentally, today he is the CM of Andhra Pradesh, albeit truncated, again, and he faces an even bigger challenge today than ever before. The state coffers are empty, and Andhra Pradesh of today is an economic failure, so he has his task cut out for turning around the state and overcoming its peculiarities. And it is upon him to build one or two or three cities that can compete with the new Hyderabad he had created and put it firmly on the global IT map.

That one-and-a-half-year stint with the GoAP came to an end after a successful outing for me as an image builder of the government programme that included crisis management from time to time, enriching my professional journey with skillsets that I would otherwise have been oblivious of. And I dare say, many of them continue to help me navigate different challenges in a multitude of things I do – from various forms of writing to handling turn-key media projects for media, government and private organisations, and teaching and mentoring younger media colleagues formally and informally.

The views/version of the events are the author’s own. The NewsPorter bears no responsibility for the same.