URVASHI SARKAR
BY THE LATE 1980s, Dhirubhai Ambani wanted a newspaper. In 1986, the Indian Express had published a series of articles alleging that Reliance Industries had, among much else, manipulated its own share price, evaded duties and violated the limits of its licence for producing polyester feedstock—all while government officials looked the other way or made decisions that seemed customised to the corporation’s needs. The government responded with scrutiny and action that subtracted from Reliance’s bottom line, and Dhirubhai scrambled to limit his losses. A shift in the political tide and some deft manoeuvring soon brought him close to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, and turned the might of the government against the Indian Express instead. But, by then, other outlets had also started publishing uncomfortable facts about Reliance’s doings.
In The Polyester Prince, his biography of Dhirubhai, the journalist Hamish McDonald writes that the Reliance chairman had “an urge to counter the Indian Express in print,” and “had talked for some years of getting into the media business.” Dhirubhai “had looked at several newspapers that came on the market,” and had earlier secured a controlling stake in The Patriot, “which had made vitriolic attacks on Nusli Wadia”—Dhirubhai’s main business rival, and a close friend of the publisher of the Indian Express—“in response to the Express campaigns.” In late 1988, Dhirubhai’s son-in-law bought Commerce, a Bombay-based weekly that was in financial trouble “but had a useful business and economic research bureau.” The hope was to turn it into a mainstream daily.
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