The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Looking back for the real Mrs Gandhi
One personality, two images
by Pran Chopra

The quarter centenary of the proclamation of the Emergency will soon be upon us, on June 26, and will probably occasion much retrospection, reminiscences, analyses, accusations about who did what to bring about that trauma. But in the light of all that is known so far, it is clear that a definitive judgement of the role of Mrs Indira Gandhi has yet to be made, and will not be easy to make. Opinions about her will continue to oscillate between two contradictory images.

On the one hand, is Mrs Indira Gandhi’s all-conquering Durga image, which destroyed the "old guard" of the Congress to re-make the party in her own youthful image, cut Pakistan in two, put India on the path of becoming a nuclear-weapon power, saved India from the anarchy. India was then being threatened by a lawless opposition which was calling upon the army and the police to revolt. She restored the foundations of law and order so that the country may rebuild itself in peace. On the other hand, is her image of a woman driven by such lust for power. In order to keep herself on the throne, she defied good sense, good advice and the highest courts of justice. For all this she paid the ultimate price which headstrong but thoughtless monarchs pay when, after throwing out all sincere and wise supporters, they become the prisoners of wily viziers and bold barons.

One says that a definite judgement about Mrs Gandhi will be difficult to make, at least for some time as yet, because both the contradictory images emerge even from the best book which has been written as yet on, to quote its title, "Indira Gandhi, the 'Emergency', and Indian Democracy." It has been written by the man, P.N. Dhar, who was the closest to her through much of the tumultuous decade of the 1970s, as her Secretary and "one of her closest advisors" as the blurb rightly describes him. To these, he added two further qualifications because, he was, by his own description, both an observer of and a participant in the events he deals with, which is the best position for a man to occupy if he is to write a chronicle which is both well informed and detached. Yet the book leaves you wondering where indeed does the truth lie, how far his own value systems may have coloured his vision, and how best you may detach yourself from his vision to discover your own.

The problem begins at the very start of the story, with Mrs Gandhi becoming the victim of a bad law and worse judgement. I was abroad when the news came that the Allahabad High Court had declared her unseated from the Lok Sabha because of some minor offences under an electoral law. Even in the eyes of a layman like myself the punishment was grossly disproportionate to the offence, but within an hour a brilliant lawyer friend told me that a law which failed to grade punishment according to the seriousness of the offence was "bad in law," and a judgement which failed to take that into account could be struck down by a higher court on appeal. I am delighted to read in the book that the same assessment was given her by the eminent lawyer, Fali Nariman, who as the Additional Solicitor-General at the time.

Therefore the sanest and safest course for her would have been to go in appeal to the Supreme Court, curb the hysteria which her supporters were fanning in the street already, and not to impede the course of the law. This was also the advice for her Secretary, but, as he tells it in the book, she chose to look the other way, and as subsequent events tell it, her mind was already getting set that way. Worse followed when she did go to the Supreme Court within the period allowed her in the Allahabad Verdict. The apex court gave her a finely balanced and discriminating judgement: while pursuing her appeal on merits, it allowed her to remain Prime Minister for six months, as even a non-member of Parliament may under our Constitution, and to remain an MP for the same period, but refrain from voting in the House.

But she rejected the Supreme Court's conditional stay on the Allahabad verdict because, to quote the author, "Feeling diminished in her authority by Justice Iyer's verdict to cope with the threatened disorder that was looming large - the opposition parties announced their plans of countrywide satyagraha - she pressed the panic button...." and proclaimed the Emergency. And thus a stain began to grow on her place in history. The deeper she went on that route the more she became enmeshed in some of the most unsavoury plots the Delhi durbar has witnessed and at the hands of such crooked politicians that compared with them some of our contemporary villains look forgiveable. But the question left for posterity is whether she chose this road in panic or as a clearly visible highway to absolute power. And was "the threatened disorder" the "major reason" for the proclamation of the Emergency, as the author calls it on page 306, or an excuse for proclaiming it?

Each reader must decide that according to his reading of the severity of the "threatened disorder," and his own reading of the author's general view in this and other parts of the book that the whole system called "Indian democracy" had broken down to a point at which it could not be repaired by means available within the democratic system (though this is only the reviewer's rough summary of the author's description of the times). Only a few years before the Emergency, in 1971, and only a few years after, in 1977, the democratic system had worked as well as anywhere else in the world, if not better. On each occasion the voters participated massively, issues came to the fore, and decisive verdicts resulted. Then on what basis should it have been assumed that the system had collapsed in the few years between?

The author's answer can be gleaned from the chapter "The Emergency: How it came about". This contains a recital of the various protests, agitations, mass movements that were afoot against Mrs Gandhi or were being planned or proclaimed. These included students' protests against rise in food prices and mess charges (in Gujarat first and later in Bihar), because of allegations of corruption against it, a complementary demand for fresh elections in the state, a fast by Morarji Desai, the Socialist party's call for "extra-constitutional action and popular initiative" against the limitations of the parliamentary system, Jaya-prakash Narayan's efforts "to bring into the movement farm workers, landless labourers and other poor sections of society and highlight their demands for land to the landless, as well as rationalisation of land revenue and fair wages to agricultural workers," his threats of "massive demonstration outside Parliament and similar demonstrations in the states."

But whether all this, without anarchic violence or incitement thereof, amounts to breakdown of the democratic system depends upon what one thinks democracy and mobilisation of public opinion are all about, and that, too, in a country and society in which discriminatory privilege and dehumanising deprivation are equally rampant. It is true "JP" did question Mrs Gandhi's claim on the loyalty of the Army and the police. But this was after the Allahabad High Court had directed her to step down and after she had declined, and no actions had resulted yet which were outside the powers of the law to deal with. However, from many references in the book it is obvious that what was worrying Mrs Gandhi was not the actions and statements of JP but the double-headed reality that his stock and credibility among the people were rising and her own were falling. It was the causes of this reality that needed her attention, not ways of taming democracy with the Emergency.

Of course there is a classic dichotomy between the rights of the state, however democratic, and the rights of the citizens, however law abiding; between the strong state and the civic society; between nationalism and minority rights. But one cannot go into that here, or into the author's views on these issues, without entering into the vast subject of the difference between the climate of opinion between two types of countries; on the one hand those, mostly western, which have been independent nations and nation-states for long and are now emerging into post-nationalist philosophies: and those on the other hand, mostly non-western, which have only just become independent nations after throwing off colonial masters (who were mostly western), and protect their independence and nationhood with zeal.

But in fairness to the author it is important to note that only a few pages further down he recognises, and deplores, that two kinds of snakes were prowling around Mrs Gandhi and she was either unwilling or unable to do much about them. One kind were those who in the name of defending Mrs Gandhi from the agitationists were trying to make her an unquestionable empress. The second kind, not unrelated to the first, were those whom I would call demented presidentialists who, in the name of disciplined and stable governments, were propagating a change from the democratic to the presidential system but, in fact, were also trying to weaken the nexus, indispensable in a democracy, between the powers of the government and the rights of the electorate. In the end both types of snakes got at the author as well while Mrs Gandhi's own ideas of democracy made it look more like a populist autocracy.

But alongside of this there is also the other image of Mrs Gandhi, both in the domain of domestic politics and foreign policy, in both of which she displayed innate wisdom as well as broadmindedness. She could have been a most powerful president if she had allowed the counties to carry on with their games, which included a new constituent assembly and a new constitution. But she overruled them, and the author's words, and her own, for her reasons are worth quoting in full (p337). "Mrs Gandhi was against the presidential system, which she feared would endanger the unity of the country. In August, 1975, a couple of months after the declaration of the Emergency, she said, 'I am not thinking in terms of a constituent assembly or a new constitution. We cannot but be a democracy, a secular democracy, and a democracy striving steadily to enlarge its socialist contents. But we can and we should have a look at the provisions and procedures. Many of these have in fact worked against the Constitution." We could profit from these words even today, a quarter century later, in the midst of our controversies over the appointment of the Constitution Review Commission.

Similarly in advance of her times were her views on relations with Pakistan and on resolution of the Kashmir issue. Nehru and Shastri had preceded her in holding this view, but she argued with some passion that good relations between the two countries were as essential for India's well-being as for Pakistan's. As Dhar narrates it, this was the main reason why she took the gamble at the Simla Conference, which unfortunately she lost, to give Bhutto the time and opportunity to persuade his people to accept the Simla conclusions instead of spelling them out in the Simla Agreement., which would have made the agreement look like an imposition by the victor.

Regarding a Kashmir solution, though direct evidence is lacking, there are indications that Nehru was agreeable to a resolution resting on making an adjusted Line of Control, the international border between the two countries, and I know it for a fact that Shastri's Principal Secretary, L.K. Jha, was not only of the same view himself but had pressed it on the Prime Minister with some success. But it was Mrs Gandhi who made it the corner stone of her policy at the Simla Conference. To quote Dhar again, "The transformation of the ceasefire line into the line of control" (which was accomplished) "was the core of the Indian solution to the Kashmir problem. The de facto Line of Control was meant to be graduated to the level of the de facto border." This was also the solution urged upon her, in a most eloquent and persuasive letter, by Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, with whom she signed the Accord of 1975, which is the most promising of all documents signed between New Delhi and Srinagar, though this promise, too, was betrayed, like many others.

But why were they betrayed, and to what extent was she herself responsible for the betrayals? The answer can only emerge from whatever definitive conclusion might emerge about her in future and which, as I said earlier, has not emerged as yet. But one element of the cause and her share of the responsibility emerges from many things, and most of all from the book by P.N. Dhar. Psychologists tell us that the key to the whole character and career of a person, even a personage, sometimes lies in one single experience, as Mahatma Gandhi's lies in the minutes during which he was thrown out of a train in South Africa because he was not a white man. Perhaps Mrs Gandhi's lies in her more extended experience when the Old Guard of the Congress first hand-picked her for the post of Prime Minister in 1966, then claimed to share power with her, then tried to dominate her and then to make her the tool of their power. This steeled Mrs Gandhi, to an inhuman extent, never again to share power with anyone lest he should try to make her the tool of his power. She did this even to the Abdullah family though its adherence to the state's accession to India remains unshaken till today.

Thus it happened, perhaps, that in sheer suspicion and misjudgement she spurned the many overtures Dhar brought her, as he narrates at great length, from Jayaprakash Narayan to let him help her bridge the gap between her and the Opposition parties, as he certainly could have. If she had responded, perhaps the Emergency might never have occurred, or might not have lasted so long, or at least might not have had such disastrous consequences. And, thus, also it happened perhaps that she made the Congress the instrument of her own will instead of building it as the nexus between the power of the government and sanction of the people. And thus also it happened perhaps that she was overtaken by the classic nemesis of the suspicious and autocratic but inwardly insecure ruler when the open fields in which politics is publicly played and policies are fashioned in interactions with an informed and enlightened public opinion are poisoned by secret conclaves in which conspiracies are hatched and policies are sacrificed to private interests.

The writer, a well-known commentator, is a former Editor of The Statesman.

The politics of charisma no longer works
by Bharat Wariavwalla

VITHAL GADGIL is a decent politician, honest, disciplined and moderately ambitious. This separates him from the run of the mill venal and scheming Congress politicians. Therefore, Gadgil’s reading of the state of the Congress Party under Sonia Gandhi ought to be taken seriously.

In an interview to Jain TV on May 19 he said he and other senior party leaders “forced” her to assume the Congress leadership because “we expected that she would not only be a crowd puller but also a vote-catcher”. Gadgil quotes Sonia Gandhi as having said, “I don’t understand politics. I’ve no knowledge of it.”

His attack on the present Congress leader is not motivated by personal reasons, as was Vasant Sathe’s. Some days ago Sathe held Sonia responsible for the present Congress decline, but now says there is no alternative to her — typical of him as of other Congress politicians to change their stand. One day they may revile her and the next day they may worship her, depending on their immediate interests.

No doubt Sonia Gandhi since her sudden entry into politics at the end of Narasimha Rao’s term in 1996 has shown that she has no aptitude for politics. In politics time is a scarce commodity and she has squandered it in the four years that she has had as an uncontested Congress leader. When she stepped on the political stage in 1996 the party was in disarray and the party men in despair. The crowds Sonia and her daughter, Priyanka, drew probably convinced the party members that Nehru-Gandhi family charisma still had appeal and this could bring them in power.

No doubt charisma works. Charismatic personality like Gandhi, Nasser, de Gaulle or Adenauer, with the charisma they held for their people had dominated the politics of their countries. But here what we have witnessed is the phenomenon of inherited charisma. Charisma is passed from father to daughter (Indira Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto, Sheikh Hasina), husband to wife (John iaz Bandrinaik to Srimavo, MGR to Jayalalitha) or father to son (Sheikh Abdullah to Farooq).

With inherited charisma you can come to power but you cannot stay in it for any length of time. Indira Gandhi was placed in power in 1966 by the apex decision-making body of the Congress Party because she was J.Nehru’s daughter that was not enough. It is her resounding victory in the 1970 election and her defeating Pakistan in 1971 that gave Indira Gandhi enormous power.

Inherited charisma carried her to the throne but it could not secure the throne for her for seventeen years. She secured it by her deeds. Some of them were spectacular but all of them ultimately destructive of democratic institutions.

Sonia has no major achievement to her credit in the four years that she has been in politics since Narasimha Rao was fell from power after losing the1996 election. She entered politics as a reluctant widow. Now she is the leader of the opposition, though she has yet to make a mark as one.

She read a prepared statement by way of reply as a leader of the opposition to the Prime Minister’s opening speech. Except for the points she had committed to the memory, she read out her reply in an accent grating on one’s ears. Millions who saw her performance on the television asked in despair: is she the alternative to A.B. Vajpayee?

She said, as Vithal Gadgil quotes her saying: “I don’t understand politics”. But then why is she in it? Greed for power is the obvious reason. What was it but this greed that drove her to meet Jayalalitha that afternoon in March 1999? Then the BJP led the coalition came tumbling down, but she got nothing from the wreckage except the blame for muffing the operation topple. It was the first major test of her political career and she failed disastrously.

Then she made another big blunder: issue the Panchamiri declaration last winter that her Congress would not make coalitions with any regional parties. It was a complete misreading of the power balance in Indian politics. The Congress has nowhere the strength to go on its own or even to lead a coalition. The Panchmiri call turned out to be an empty boast. No mature politician would have made it, certainly not Indira Gandhi, her role model.

But even if she were a good leader, she won’t be able to influence much of our politics today. It has been profoundly changed since the coming of the Mandal-Mandir divide in 1989, just about the time when Rajiv’s rule came to an end. It began well but ended in the ignominy of Bofors kickback and the Sri Lankan adventure.

Mandal and Mandir issues highly fragmented our politics along the caste divide and it has never been breached by any party. Now no leader, however charismatic, can appeal to voters across the caste divide. Slogans like “Garibi Hatao” and “Desh Bachao” could appeal to people of different castes and classes in the seventies because politics then had not as strongly congealed along class-caste lines as it has today. Today such slogans have no appeal for voters. The result of the recent assembly election in Bihar clearly shows that the caste is a decisive factor in the politics of that state and indeed of the arya vartha states. Laloo still rules Patna. This is why the Congress has no presence in these states because their politics is very largely determined by the Mandal and Mandir issues.

The days when politics revolved around grand personalities and grand causes are over. Today there is no person taller than A.B. Vajpayee. His personal appeal to people transcends their caste and religious preferences and yet when it comes to voting his personal popularity means little. The BJP has not gained in terms of voting. In 1998 and 1999 parliamentary elections the BJP got 180 and 182 seats and about 26 per cent of the aggregate votes in both elections. Vajpayee was the Prime Minister and it is his government that carried out the Pokhran-II nuclear weapons tests. Neither Pokhran nor Vajpayee’s oratory swayed the voter, who only asked whether these things would bring his village drinking water, jobs and schools. He has become too sophisticated to fall for the promises of politicians. At one time he did believe in the promises of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. He won’t now of Sonia Gandhi’s, even if she makes them in tolerable Hindi.

The writer is a noted political analyst.

Profile
by Harihar Swarup
Kotnis’ widow still in love with India

EIGHT years before Independence, young Dr Kotnis, a medical doctor from Maharashtra, gave up a bright career in India and joined a medical team of five Indian doctors who had volunteered to go to war-torn China on a humanitarian mission. Inspired by the nationalism of his time, Dr Kotnis worked almost 20 hours a day in the war-ravaged countryside treating the wounded whose numbers rose rapidly day after day. One day a young boy, a fugitive of the war made a rather surprise appearance and wanted to join the Indian doctors’ team. It was a case of mistaken identity; the boy in disguise was, in fact, a qualified nurse and, possibly, a deserter. Dr Kotnis needed a nurse as he operated upon wounded almost round the clock. The nurse, Guo Qinglan, also proved to be as dedicated as the young doctor from Maharashtra.

Months rolled by as the young Indian doctor and the Chinese nurse came closer and closer, fell in love and entered into wedlock. The Chinese could no longer take heavy casualties and retreated. Dr Kotnis and his team-mates took shelter in the mountains and, to add to the misery of the retreating Chinese, a mysterious and infectious illness started afflicting the patients. The young Indian doctor did find a cure for the deadly disease but he too was inflicted by the germs which in the course of years proved fatal. By that time Guo Qinglan had given birth to a son.

The noted film Director, Shanta Ram, had produced a film, which turned out to be a hit on the life of Dr Kotnis — “Dr Kotnis ki amar kahani” (the immortal story of Dr Kotnis’ life) in the late forties. Madame Guo Quinglan was born in Fenyang county of Shanxi province in North China. She studied nursing in the county township and later joined the Sino-American Peking Medical College hospital. She left for the frontline after the Sino-Japanese war broke out to contribute her skills as a nurse to the war effort, joining the Eight Route Army at that time.

In 1939 Dr Kotnis and members of the Indian medical mission arrived in China. Subsequently, Dr Kotnis was made Director of the hospital of the area. Working together Guo and Dr Kotnis were married and within a year the son arrived .The colleagues in the Chinese army name him “Yinhua” with the two character of his name representing India and China.

Overworked, exhausted and afflicted by disease, Dr Kotnis died in December, 1942. The Chinese held him in such high esteem that his death was mourned by the senior leaders of the Communist Party of China, including Mao Zedong, who later became Chairman of the Peoples Republic of China, and General Zhu De, who even wrote eulogies for the doctor from Maharashtra.

Guo Qinglan was heartbroken after Dr Kotnis’ death as she was ordered to move to a safer area. She moved to Yenan, the headquarters of the Communist Party. She was virtually commanded by the party bosses to remarry which she did so in 1944. In the years to come she gave berth to a daughter and a son.

Even though she was married, she could not forget the fond memories of Dr Kotnis and, accompanied by her first son, Yinhua, she visited the family of her late husband in Sholapur as late as 1958. Yinhua was sent to study medicine in Xian Medical University. To the horror of Guo Qinglan, Yinhua died in 1967 when the cultural revolution was sweeping through China disrupting normal life. A report later said that Dr Kotnis’ son died because of a medical error in treatment. Now 85, Guo Qinglan loves India and had visited this country in 1985, 1992 and 1999. She now lives in Dalian city with her children from the second marriage.

Delhi durbar
The reverse swing from Panskura

FOR all the political pundits who were quick to write the epitaph for Mamata Banerjee’s “Mahajot” plan after the municipal elections went the Left Front and Congress way, are now looking for excuses.

Soon after the Trinamool Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party failed to perform well in the municipal corporation elections, many in the Congress went out of the way to praise the judicious decision of their chief, Mrs Sonia Gandhi. The people, they claimed, had rejected the ‘communal’ forces and opted for the Congress. There was even talk of how veteran Barkatda (WBPCC chief A.B.A. Ghani Khan Choudhary) had miscalculated.

Yet, even before the dust had settled the Congress party received a rude “mahajolt” in the Panskura Lok Sabha bypoll. The Trinamool candidate, Biman Sarkar, breached the Red bastion by defeating veteran CPI leader Gurudas Dasgupta and the Congress candidate Subhankar Sarkar could manage to get some 20,000 odd votes and had to face the ignominy of forfeiting his deposit.

First it was "mahajot” which was turned into a mahajoke and now it has become mahajolt.

Yashwant and the Mauritius bug

Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha is perhaps getting more attention these days and in a manner he may not prefer.

First, it was the controversy regarding the move to provide tax breaks to foreign institutional investors who pay tax in Mauritius and exempting them in India under the treaty of double avoidance of taxation. The issue came alive after some reports alleged that the move was aimed to help a company where the daughter-in-law of the Finance Minister was working. While Mr Sinha denied the allegations and threatened to sue those who carried such reports, his party MP is still continuing to haunt him on the FIIs issue.

Controversy cropped up only after young Mumbai MP Kirit Sommaiya raised the issue through a letter and kept going against FIIs and incentives to them. So annoyed was Mr Sinha that he sought the help of senior leader and Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani to sort the matter out internally. While firefighting may have worked in this case, now it seems another one is smouldering — disagreement with his Cabinet colleague Ram Vilas Paswan’s populist move to distribute free telephones.

All ears to old Congressmen

These are the days when old Congress leaders are doing a bit of talking. Unhappy as they are over the manner in which the party chief, Sonia Gandhi, has treated them, they are waiting to strike at the right moment.

But apparently Mrs Gandhi is not unduly worried over these developments and is credited with the view that much of the exercise as reflected in the media is being orchestrated by the BJP in order to divert the attention from the party’s failure, especially of the NDA government.

Meanwhile, many disgruntled party leaders are eagerly awaiting as to when former President Sitaram Kesri would come out against the present leadership. Mr Kesri who was unceremoniously removed by the CWC in March, 1998, has still not forgotten the insult of removing an elected chief and adding to the list of woes was the denial of Rajya Sabha renomination, a price he feels he paid despite being quite. Maybe, sometimes, it pays to sing.

Dilemma in Bihar

With a Bihar court framing formal charges against the first couple, Chief Minister Rabri Devi and her husband, Laloo Prasad Yadav in a case of disproportionate assets, the Congress cannot publicly ask for her resignation especially after the CWC had termed the chargesheet as politically motivated. Moreover, with all its party MLAs now being Ministers in the Rabri Devi Council of Ministers, the Congress high command can ill-afford to say something that might make the party MLAs change sides.

On the other hand, the Congress has always maintained that it is the only party which has directed its leaders to step down from office whenever such charges in such cases are framed. By choosing not to comment, the leadership may also open itself to a fresh round of criticism that the fight against corruption has now been give a quite burial

(Contributed by K.V. Prasad and P. N. Andley)

Cable war hotting up in Mumbai
From Shiv Kumar in Mumbai

SMALL operators who form the backbone of the cable television industry in Mumbai, India’s entertainment capital, are struggling to cope with the technological revolution.

Most operators, who have already been reduced to being franchisees of either the Hindujas’ In Network or Zee television’s Siticable network, are wondering if they will have any place at all in the era of convergence technology.

“Each independent operator will have to invest nearly Rs 2 million in equipment and fibre optic connections to provide Internet services,” says Jeetendra Chitroda, an operator from the Kings Circle area in central Mumbai. With very few operators in a position to afford this kind of money, they may be forced to become franchisees of bigger players.

“Most independent operators who started ten years ago have now become franchisees of either In Network or Siticable,” says a big operator in north Mumbai.

The cable business has become hotter with the entry of WIN Cable comprising the original promoters of the In Mumbai network. The new entrant has already established a presence in south Mumbai. It has become one of the first players to lay fibre optic cables offering Internet services. The other two players are promising similar services as soon their infrastructure is in place.

“We are still trying to get used to the technology,” says a Siticable franchisee.

Cable Internet services, available in some parts of Mumbai, don’t come cheap. Users need to invest more than Rs 25,000 in a cable modem to receive the services. In addition, monthly charges amount to Rs 1,500. Thus, only confirmed Internet addicts who spend a small fortune on telephone charges for Internet access are opting for Internet via cable.

The situation is made worse by operators having to illegally string cables from telephone poles and tree tops to reach the subscriber’s doorstep. “They will never be able to offer uninterrupted access as the cables could snap any time,” says an official of the state-owned Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd., which offers Net access.

Meanwhile utility companies are moving into the Net business. BSES Ltd., which supplies electricity to North Mumbai, has already announced its decision to invest in fibre optics cable to provide Internet services. It will use its current infrastructure and right of way under Mumbai’s roads to lay infrastructure for the purpose. The company is being targeted for a takeover by Reliance Industries Ltd., which aims to be a big player in convergence technology.

The underworld’s entry in the cable business has also affected small players. “The big companies employ goons to intimidate small operators if they defect to a rival corporate player,” a police official said.

The nexus between the mafia and the cable companies came to light last week when a gangster was arrested from a cable network office. The gangster who had once been hired by the company to intimidate small operators had apparently begun to extort money from his former employer. — IANS