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Of leaks, lobbyists and reforms by A K Bhattacharya

This is a real story. In the early 1980s, a senior editor of a national newspaper met a state Congress leader and made a report out of that frank conversation, which made sensational disclosures about the dictatorial way Indira Gandhi was running the Congress at that time. The Congress leader, however, had argued that the entire conversation was off-the-record and, therefore, not meant for publication. The newspaper was in agreement with that view, but the senior editor was not convinced and he offered it to a weekly news magazine, which promptly published the interview.

Cut to July 2001. President Musharraf of Pakistan had a breakfast meeting with senior Indian editors on the last day of his India visit in Agra. Many editors present at the meeting thought that it was a closed-door session and were surprised to find soon after their meeting that an Indian television channel was telecasting their interaction with the Pakistan President. A few of them wondered if their host behaved improperly by not informing them that the breakfast meeting was not off-the-record.

In the current season of leaks, both the incidents, though separated by decades, serve a useful purpose. The leaks of telephonic conversation between a corporate lobbyist and several journalists have brought under the scanner the question of how media professionals should conduct themselves in dealing with people they report or comment on. Can a journalist seek recourse to the argument that she should enjoy the comfort of off-the-record conversations with her sources of information?

The state Congress leader did not want his interaction with that senior editor published because he believed that his conversation took place with the understanding that it was private and off-the-record. Nevertheless, the media published that interview and the people did not object to the violation of a contract that the Congress leader was talking about. Similarly, nobody paid heed to the discomfort of a few editors over some of their comments, which they might have made at the breakfast meeting with the Pakistani leader in the mistaken belief that it was an off-the-record meeting.

Lesson number one, therefore, is that media professionals should understand that there is nothing called off-the-record about what they say while dealing with different sources of information. You may still debate over whether a journalist should honour the commitment of maintaining confidentiality of information shared with him on that understanding, but a journalist should stop feeling secure under the notion that she can say whatever she feels like or share whatever information with her sources of information. If she stops doing that, it is likely that she will also stop suffering from those delusions of grandeur or power with her access to information.

This is necessary because just like all institutions in our democracy, the media is also under watch. Its conduct is under surveillance and its credibility has been questioned. Media professionals, therefore, must realise that whatever they do, their conduct must pass the standard tests of correctness, fairness and independent thinking or assessment, irrespective of whether their conversations were private or off-the-record. If media professionals drew this lesson from the leaked tapes of conversation between a corporate lobbyist and journalists, the current controversy would have served a useful purpose.

The second and an equally important lesson is that the Indian corporate sector should review the use of lobbyists. The rise of corporate lobbyists in the post-reforms India has been phenomenal and has coincided with the virtual demise of the chambers of commerce and industry associations as effective lobby groups.

The framework in which corporate lobbyists operate is a little different from the one for industry chambers. A lobbyist’s only concern is her client, whereas an industry chamber’s operations come under the overall supervision of a group of industry members. A lobbyist can go to any extent to safeguard or promote the interests of her client in return for financial considerations. Companies are happy with corporate lobbyists because they are not part of their corporate structure. It is a relationship between a client and a service provider.

Whenever things go wrong or become too difficult to handle, the client can dispense with the services. That flexibility also encourages companies to allow a lobbyist to engage in questionable activities.

In sharp contrast, an industry chamber has to confine its lobbying to the broad goals of meeting the stated industry objectives. Any deviation from that can draw the ire of other members, as has often happened in the past with many industry chambers. India Inc, therefore, has two options. One, it should reconsider using the services of independent corporate lobbyists and instead create its own, effective public relations departments within the company to do similar jobs, but within the norms of the company’s professional code of conduct. Two, if it has to use independent corporate lobbyists, then it must make full disclosure of the terms of engaging them for their services.

The third lesson from the current controversy pertains to the government and the need for reforms. If you take a closer look at the reasons for which companies felt the need to use lobbyists, ministers and journalists, you will find that it is because the system allowed discretionary and non-transparent changes in policies by those in government. If the regulators in the key infrastructure sectors like oil, telecommunications and civil aviation had been made truly independent and effective, backed by transparent policies, the need for lobbying would have been that much less.