How 1985-95 still stands out as the most consequential decade in India

You'd think the decade of 1985-95 is long over. Not really. The issues that erupted in that decade are still shaping Indian conversations

The news magazine India Today just turned 50. It asked me to write on the decade of 1985-95, across which I worked there. The result is this fresh episode in my occasional series First Person Second Draft. 

In a republic still young and evolving, decades would naturally compete to be called the “most consequential”. Put to that test, 1985-1995 would have the most stories that dominate our democracy and debates today. 

At home and around, think terminal decline of the Congress after peaking, the first coalitions, the Bofors scandal, Mandal versus Mandir contestation, insurgencies in Punjab and Kashmir, two Indian military interventions overseas (Sri Lanka and the Maldives), two war-like situations with Pakistan (Brasstacks, 1987; Pakistan’s first nuclear blackmail, 1990), a fraught Sumdorong Chu standoff with China (1986-87) and then a thaw with Deng Xiaoping, assassinations of Zia-ul-Haq and Rajiv Gandhi, the globalisation of Islamist (as distinct from Islamic) jihad and its spread to Kashmir, and the freeing of India’s economy. Although it started with rock-like stability with the Congress at 414 in the Lok Sabha, the 10 years saw four Prime Ministers. Isn’t that enough for a mere decade? 

There’s more. Because of economic reform, as a globalising India’s stake and stature in the world rose, India Today’s pioneering spirit took its readers to the world — from the Afghan war and Tiananmen Square to the collapse of the Soviet Bloc and the first Gulf War. The Cold War ended, as did apartheid, India and Israel became friends. 

For good news or bad, for generational shifts and eternal debates, the other decades can’t compete. That all the fears India nursed since Independence — political instability, communal and caste divides, decline of a stabilising dynasty, nuclear and terrorist threats, loss of the most trusted ally (Soviet Union) — came true in this decade is one side of the coin. How India responded, learned to trust coalitions, reformed its economy, repositioned strategically and leveraged its human resources is the other. India emerged much stronger, with a rising global presence.

 

Through these years, India Today was at the heart of this transformation and often at the front. The first enduring reform for this era was Rajiv Gandhi’s push for computers. The first computers for an Indian newsroom, a pair of boxy Apple desktops, arrived in 1985. These were given an exclusive cabin, even in a newsroom so constrained for space.

 

There was a crush for keyboard time as we discovered the freedom from finger-wrecking typewriters, and the assurance of the floppy disc. Soon enough, Dilip Bobb, who did the most editing and rewriting, staked one out for himself — or at least pretended to — by having Shirley Joshua, the incredible pivot of the process-driven back end, create a little placard reading, “This is the Apple of my Eye”, and plonking it on one desktop. That line of control was violated as often as the one up north by the bad guys. Since we remember the turning points in our lives by association, the first story I wrote on one of these was the initial controversy over the Mandal Commission in 1985. It endures four decades on.

 

L K Advani’s Rath Yatra and, ultimately, the Babri Masjid demolition in December 1992 unleashed communal riots across states. In its wake came the serial blasts, targeting key commercial buildings and neighbourhoods. This wasn’t India’s first trial with a serial bombing. But not at this scale, and not one so clearly traced back to Pakistan. That awful three-letter acronym, ISI, made its appearance and has haunted us since. Gangster Dawood Ibrahim rose from a somewhat comical presence at the Sharjah cricket stadium to India’s villain number one. He continues to be so.

 

Rajiv Gandhi’s instinctive disapproval of the Mandal report in 1985 sparked a backward caste awakening. Then a series of errors with communal implications — reversal of the Shah Bano judgment, the ban on Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, the unlocking of the temple site in Ayodhya. Thereafter, our politics has been a contest between two contrasting ideas. Can you use caste to divide what religion united, or employ religion to reunite what caste divided? Whoever wins, rules India. The Mandal (caste) side had its 25-year epoch from 1989 to 2014 — until Narendra Modi reversed it in 2014. Now is the era of mandir (Hindutva) and it won’t have a half-life any less than 25 years. The issue is still Mandir versus Mandal. It just played out in Bihar, as it will in Uttar Pradesh in 2027. This decade’s redefinition of national politics has been the most durable in our history. The same applies to political economy. Thirty-five years after the reform-led boom, fears and doubts over opening up continue, even as we celebrate our successes.

 

The strength of India Today, the institution, comes from having become a fair, opportunity-laden meritocracy. Unforgiving always, brutal sometimes. But if you had the hunger, diligence, talent, and also a thick skin, nothing — and nobody — could thwart you. When I came into the magazine in 1983 after covering the Northeast, I was warned it was a “five-star” newsroom where unsophisticated Hindi Medium Types (HMTs) would be severely judged and discarded. But India Today evolved. My first cover story for the magazine, by the way, was on Sunil Gavaskar after he scored his 29th hundred to equal Donald Bradman. I had never done any long-form sports writing. It is just that Aroon Purie and Suman Dubey (managing editor then) thought I was the keenest. T N Ninan says that India Today newsroom (he led it till July, 1988) was the dream team of Indian journalism. Proof of the pudding lies in Google. Check the masthead of that decade and see how far we reached.

 

While a clinical meritocracy was key, there was also a concept India Today pioneered: The reporter-editor. It wasn’t limited to a reporter rising to be an editor. It also meant that even after becoming an editor, you continued reporting, whatever your multiple editorial responsibilities.

 

Here’s an example of how we were taught to multi-task. This decade India Today launched its five language editions (Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Gujarati), which I was asked to helm from 1991 onwards, in addition to all my other responsibilities and writing. Sometimes, we were exhausted and wished Aroon would acknowledge that. But he wouldn’t. After anchoring an 18-page cover story on the 1989 fatwa against Salman Rushdie with a football-team byline from across the world over two unslept nights, I sat on the news desk swinging my legs, sort of smug in satisfaction, as Aroon passed by. “Tell him not to work so hard, Aroon, he will die,” said then news-coordinator Sandhya Mulchandani, hoping Aroon would sympathise. He just said, “Hard work never killed anybody,” and walked on.

 

At this point, finally, I  list the three most important lessons that stay with me:

 

*  There is always the other side to a story. Unless you have checked with that “other” side, no story is publishable. This is non-negotiable. And if somebody complains about a story being unfair to them, as editor, your default position is on their side. Until your facts check out.

 

*  Anything that comes free or easy, is loaded with evil. Just say no.

 

*  And third, be unselfconscious of identity in the workplace. No discrimination, victimisation, exploitation or favouritism based on gender, ethnicity, caste, religion, anything. In this manner, too, India Today was institutionally prescient. It was ahead of the new middle-class consciousness for competitive equality that reform and growth brought in subsequently.

 

Having joined in 1983, I left in 1995, just as the decade concluded. If, out of the dozen-plus history-defining stories I listed at the outset, I got a piece of all but one — economic reform — I’d say it was a decade well lived, especially in an Aristotelian sense.

 

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