Paranjoy Guha Thakurta | |
|---|---|
 Paranjoy Guha Thakurta - June 2016 | |
| Born | 5 October 1955 |
| Alma mater | University of Delhi |
| Occupation(s) | Journalist, writer |
| Notable work | Gas Wars |
| Relatives | Tapati Guha-Thakurta (sister)[1] |
| Website | paranjoy |
Paranjoy Guha Thakurta (born 5 October 1955) is an Indian journalist, writer, publisher, documentary film maker and teacher.[2] He has been a guest faculty member at IIM Ahmedabad for 18 consecutive years, and also taught at the IIMs at Calcutta and Shillong, the University of Delhi, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Asian College of Journalism and Jamia Millia Islamia among other educational institutions.[3] He is the only Indian journalist referred to in the infamous Hindenburg Report on Adani.
Guha Thakurta was educated at La Martiniere Calcutta, pursued his undergraduate degree in Economics from St. Stephen's College and completed his masters from Delhi School of Economics in 1977. With the Emergency of 1975-77, he decided to be a journalist over being a lecturer. In June 1977, he joined a Kolkata-based magazine as assistant editor. Through his career spanning over 45 years, he has been associated with major media houses like Business India, Businessworld, The Telegraph, India Today and The Pioneer. He also hosted the chat show India Talks on CNBC-India which ran over 1400 episodes.[3]
In 2013, he directed a short documentary film Coal Curse which highlighted the wrongs in the Indian coal mining industry.[4] The 45-minute film, supported by Greenpeace, delved into the political economy of coal in contemporary India with the Singrauli example serving as a case study. This was Guha Thakurta's second film on coal, the earlier one being 'Hot as hell: Why Jharia is burning', that was produced in 2006 by the Public Service Broadcasting Trust.
His 2014 book Gas Wars: Crony Capitalism and the Ambanis, co-authored with Subir Ghosh and Jyotirmoy Chaudhuri, dealt with alleged irregularities of the prices of natural gas in the Indian market. Reliance Industries Limited, one of India's major conglomerates which is also involved in oil and gas exploration and production, sent a legal notice to Guha Thakurta and others for defamation through this book.[5]
In 2016, he joined EPW (Economic and Political Weekly) as Editor. Following his article on how Adani Group was benefited by the government policies, a defamation notice was sent to the Sameeksha Trust and the authors of the article. Soon after that, Guha Thakurta resigned as the Editor of EPW.[6] The article brought to light how the Government tweaked the rules which favoured a certain company within the Adani Group to the tune of Rs 500 Crores.[7] EPW tried to reach out to Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Industry and Commerce, but no explanation was given for this policy decision. The Adani Group is headed by Gautam Adani who is understood to be close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Guha Thakurta was appointed Editor of the Economic and Political Weekly (EPW) in January 2016 replacing C Rammanohar Reddy, who steered the prestigious journal since 2004. Guha Thakurta resigned as editor of EPW on July 18, 2017 over alleged differences with the board of the Sameeksha Trust that runs the journal.[8][9]
Guha Thakurta co-authored an article [10][11] about the Adani Group's tax evasion following which Adani Power sent a legal notice to the Economic and Political Weekly. Fearing an expensive lawsuit by one of India’s biggest corporate houses EPW then decided to take down the article,[12] prompting Paranjoy Guha Thakurta's resignation.[13]
The Hindenburg Research report on Adani published in January 24, 2023, alleged that Adani had engaged in a number of questionable practices, including opaque accounting, environmental violations, and bribery. The report caused a significant drop in Adani's share price and led to calls for investigations into the company's activities. Paranjoy Guha Thakurta is the only Indian journalist who was referred to in the report.
Guha Thakurta was a member of the sub-committee set up by the Press Council of India to look into the malaise of paid news. Initially, the report titled '‘Paid News: How Corruption in the Indian Media Undermines Democracy" was to be released on 26 April 2010, but it was deferred after many members of the Council raised objections.[14] A diluted version of the report, which was released on 30 July 2010, raised a storm. A number of newspaper establishments were named as having indulged in editorial malpractices. These included Bennett, Coleman and Co (owners of The Times of India), HT Media (owners of Hindustan Times, Hindustan and Mint), Dainik Jagaran, Dainik Bhaskar, Punjab Kesari, Lokmat, Eenadu, and Sakshi group, among others.[15]
In September 2010, the Central Information Commission (CIC) of India directed the Council to make public the report as part of suo motu disclosure mandated under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.[16]
Guha Thakurta has since written extensively on the issue of "paid news". In a December 2013 article for First Post, he explained why the malaise of "paid news" is a threat to democracy:
The independence of the media and its ability to bring about transparency in society by playing an adversarial role against the establishment get compromised because of corruption within the folds of the media itself. Paid news is one particularly egregious manifestation of the ills of the corporatized media that puts out information that poses as if it has been independently and objectively produced but has actually been paid for.[17]
Guha Thakurta was one of many well-known people who joined a public interest litigation in the 2G spectrum case, originally filed by the Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL) led by lawyer Prashant Bhushan.[18] He has written extensively on the scam, with the first article on the subject appearing in The Economic Times in November 2007. Soon after its publication, a legal notice was served on him by Reliance Communications.[19]
