Various - Behind the News - Voices from Goa's Press

WCT hit the newsstands in early-July 1978. We raced. In Margao, I concentrated on at least one off-beat, human-interest, interview-based or photo-story per day, carried usually boxed or in anchor position. Aware of our printing process strengths, I never lost an opportunity to get Manik shoot a good pic, including one that had to be clicked from a bubbling canoe in choppy waters off a rocky beach in Betul, South Goa. [This one was of a rotting human male corpse – sprawling, shocking and white on the dark rocks – which the cops had neglected to recover despite the local Sarpanch's days-long complaints. P.R. Menon splashed the pic in the lead-story position. I had to take Papa's reprimand the following morning – it seems the Lt. Governor was taken so aback picking the morning's WCT that his P.A. personally called Papa to complain about bad taste. But I still considered the two-and-half Rupees paid to the canoe man for the ride a fine expense!]

Consciously, though, we shunned sensationalizing and Kaka firmly shot the idea of carrying the day's matka figures. We refrained from gimmicks like carrying dummy advertisements, especially in the Classified columns, barometer to a newspaper's popularity.

Instead, we went for innovative editorial content. [Including, at my instance, a SundayMag column on Sleight of Hand by the Salcete magician, Marco. When Marco didn't show up for a couple of weeks, leading to howls from eager readers of his column, Y.M. Hegde was so furious that I had to fill in with a piece on how Marco had performed the Vanishing Trick and restore YM's trademark smile!]

To further notch up circulation, I almost coerced Madkaikar into breaking the back of monopoly newspaper distributors in South Goa – by selling retail bundles to any willing vendor on an initial sell-or-return basis.

Results were evident. By month 6, we sold around 4,500 copies in and around Margao alone, compared to less than half that number by NT. Circulation problems, however, persisted in North Goa, including delayed deliveries to news stalls in the northern talukas. But then, we had just two vehicles to cover the entire territory. ("Penny wise, Pound foolish," P.R. Menon forever rued, he never carried much of an impression about the managerial abilities of Goan mineowners – all his life, after all, Menon had worked in a establishment owned by the Karnanis, Marwaris to the core!) Even then, overall, WCT's print order would be just about 2,000 copies short of the NT. And at the rate we were going, the gap would fast be closed and surpassed?

My heroes, of course, were Shivram Borkar and Babal Borkar, ace drivers who by day ferried the shift editorial staff to and from quarters in Margao to office in Davorlim . By night, the duo snoozed whatever time available, on heaps of 'raddi' in the press. And zipped their way with newspaper bundles to either end of Goa before the crack of dawn – in terribly overloaded, ramshackle, dieselized Ambassador cars that should have been a delight to Mario Miranda and Alexyz (we used a syndicated pocket cartoon, incidentally, since Mario was with the ToI group in Mumbai and Alexyz hadn't yet surfaced as a cartoonist.) Babal and Shivram, true heroes who virtually were at call, round the clock, round the year. [They of course made out-of-pocket money, ferrying passengers on the return. When this reached Papa's ears, he tailed one of the drivers one fine morning. When the unsuspecting fellow stopped to take in passengers, Papa is reported to have pulled alongside and advised the driver, "Bhara, bhara, taxi ti!" The man was often magnanimous. The driver did not lose his job.]

By the first year of publication, despite impressive circulation figures, there were no signs of advertising revenue picking up to reach the financial break-even point. To the sheer dismay of our well-knit editorial team, there were also no signs of implementation of the pan-Konkan Plan. The management, instead, began fighting shy to inject fresh investment in the enterprise. Corners started getting cut. Virgin plates came to used only for jacket pages, inside pages were processed on recycled plates. Papa's dream began to show signs of fatigue?

By the third month into the second year of publication, amid this uncertain scenario, arrived Nicholas ("Nicky") Rebello, a lino-typesetter and leader of the NT worker's union. I will not hedge a bet if Nicky was 'inspired' by his employers, but having been in touch with him much after his retirement from NT at his home in Betim, I can vouchsafe Nicky didn't travel to Davorlim by any 'political' inspiration. My best guess is that some restive workers of the WCT press, aware of wages being paid at NT, must have approached and invited Nicky to Davorlim. The workers of WCT press got unionized and Nicky soon served a Charter of Demands. The management stood its ground, often unreasonably in the opinion of the editorial team – which of course had no locus standi in the imbroglio. As the strike showed signs of protraction, P.R. Menon, known for leftist leanings from his fiery days at the FPJ, tried to intervene with the management. To no avail.

(P.R. Menon was forever of the conviction that managerial skills of Goan mine-owners were limited to blasting, transportation and shipping – and after the importer's cheque arrived, to distributing the proceeds to those who had blasted, transported and shipped. And, of course, to profits!) Papa, strangely, sometimes used queer management methods. There was this Chief Accountant, hired for the PTI group, on a then princely salary of Rs.4,000 a month. To get a feedback on the Chief Accountant, Papa assigned a peon drawing no more than Rs.250 a month. After office hours, the peon would report to Papa on the activities of the C.A. from which, inferences on the Chief Accountant were drawn!

But a man of immense experience and intuition he was. From the streets of native Assolna in Salcete, where as a child he hawked textiles, a wooden yard measure slung across his shoulder and a coolie with a headload of wares in tow, Papa must have surely post-graduated from the University of Experience. On occasions when I was seated in his chamber, his P.A., Sambari would buzz to announce a visitor. In a flash Papa knew why the man had come, what he would say, and had the replies even before the visitor entered! I personally saw flaming creditors leave his chamber smiling, even though not a paisa had yielded! He had that rare ability to disarm even the most irate visitor. But when it came to the WCT strike, I have always held the belief that a man of such calibre who could have easily placated the agitated workers and even broken their Union, was somehow carried away with the opinion of one trusted man, who was obviously misleading him – and since I've named names, I will exclude Madkaikar and Kurwar.]

With no end to the strike in sight, Bailur, Hegde, Kaka and me next met and virtually pleaded with Papa to concede some sops to the striking workmen and get the publication going. I think the establishment (may not have been Papa) thereafter regarded as being pro-Union!

The editorial team, bulk of which was from outstation, met frequently during those bekaar days and finally, the painful decision emerged that we tell the management to either settle the dispute with the Union or we quit en masse. The management was unmoved. We quit, but Papa's dispenser of bad advice insisted on serving 'dismissal' letters!

And thus a lofty dream to publish from Goa, the land of Banna Halli, an English daily serving the entire of Lord Parashuram's Konkan on the West Coast of India, went phut. A modern press and process, an excellent editorial team – path-breaking infrastructure in Goa's history of newspaper production – lay in waste.

The venerable Bailur returned to retirement, as did P.R. Menon. Y.M. Hegde joined Mumbai's Shipping Times as Editor. The Chief Subs and Subs returned to their original publications or to new jobs. A Goan Sub, Vincent Rangel, from Tivim-Bardez, went into business, as the Mumbai-end partner of Manvin Couriers. I joined the FPJ Group (Free Press Journal, its tabloid-eveninger Bulletin and fortnightly, Onlooker) as Goa Correspondent; moved in like capacity to IE when FPJ's Chief Editor, S. Krishnamurty joined IE's Mumbai edition as Resident Editor; played a role in J.D. Fernandes' decision to start an English avatar of the near defunct Portuguese O Heraldo (including the hiring of its first editor) – and almost joined, but didn't quite – as that newspaper's Chief Reporter, for reasons that Rajan Narayan should know. And finally got into business. Without regrets.