Until a few months ago M.J. Akbar, simultaneously editor-in-chief of the Hyderabad-based Deccan Chronicle (estb. 1938) and the multi-edition (five cities) Asian Age (estb. 1994), seemed to be the most secure and impregnable editor in India. With Akbar’s hand on their tillers both the dailies made excellent progress with the Deccan Chronicle, which was languishing in Hyderabad, raising its daily circulation to 400,000 and launching in Chennai, where it is giving the solidly entrenched The Hindu a run for its money. Together with the Asian Age (which also had a London edition), the publisher, Hyderabad-based newspaper tycoon T. Venkattrami Reddy claimed a combined circulation of 800,000 copies per day which brings him within shouting distance of heavyweight English language multi-edition dailies Times of India and Hindustan Times, which have gross circulations of 1 million plus every day.
Given this history of the two newspapers which Akbar transformed into nationally respected dailies with strong liberal values and internationalist outlook, and made the publisher politically powerful as well as rich, it should have come as a shock to the usually voluble members of the fourth estate that on March 1, Akbar was unceremoniously dismissed from all positions in the two newspapers, as he learned from an sms message from a sub-editor while on the way to his office in Delhi. Since then the Asian Age has been peremptorily discontinued and replaced in all metros by the Deccan Chronicle, a provincial daily, edited by an unknown editor listed as A.T. Jayanti.
By any yardstick Akbar, a brilliant political analyst and commentator who during his long career set new standards in Indian journalism by inter alia launching the (now defunct) weekly Sunday and the Kolkata-based Telegraph, apart from the Asian Age, has made a huge contribution to the development of Indian media, including the television medium, with his pioneering Newsline weekly report on national television. That he has been summarily sacked without a squeak of protest or indignation from timorous editors of national dailies and periodicals, is evidence of the growing clout of neo-literate business tycoons with favour-currying political ambitions (Akbar’s dismissal is reportedly the price demanded by the Congress party to nominate Venkattrami Reddy to the Rajya Sabha), who are rapidly reducing India’s last estate of democracy with some pretensions, to the lowest common denominator.