Charming Politician or Elusive Leader? A Journalist’s Journey with Sitaram Yechury

1994.  One of my first assignments was in the Bengaluru Press Club as a cub reporter for the Times of India, at that point, the number 4 English newspaper in the city. Sitaram Yechury held a press conference and I don’t remember the topic. I took down notes dutifully and asked a question that he had avoided answering till then. His eyes twinkled and he responded.

After the PC ended, he paused and asked me which paper I belonged to. And then asked, “How is the TOI doing here in Bengaluru?”

“Like the CPM,” I said. He was delighted. “Number 4,” I clarified and we both grinned.

My next interaction with Yechury was nearly 15 years later. I was assigned Left Parties in UPA II as my beat in New Delhi for Mail Today. I had a couple of colleagues sneer and say hah, they’ve given you a deadbeat, no stories from there.

It was a difficult beat to generate stories from, but it was fun because of the challenge. The plus side was, that every speech I had to listen to was wonderfully articulated and entertaining. The Left was and still is chock-full of fascinating speakers. I had the luck of listening to AB Baradhan who could give AB Vajpayee a run for his money in Hindi articulation, language, poetic inferences and deep philosophy.

I also got to interact quite a lot with Yechury, Prakash Karat and A Raja (CPI) among others.

This was the height of the Karat-Yechury rivalry. They were comrades too, no doubt, and backed each other. But to a political reporter, it’s the factions and divisions that fascinate. In formal interactions, neither would indicate or give an inch of their opinion of the other. Informally, sometimes, things would slip out — that couldn’t be reported, but always gave context for other stories.

Yechury’s charm was his biggest plus, his ability to laugh to deflect. Similar to JH Patel in some ways. It also meant that he was hard to pin down, hard to contradict and hard to hold accountable. He never did say anything that he would have to take back, but pinning him to answers or getting “news” from him  (not humourous or dogmatic statements) was a big challenge.

One story that I did was based on an RTI reply that Subhash Agarwalji got, that identified all the ‘crorepati’ politicians. Imagine our absolute shock and greedy “news” glee when we found that Yechury was listed. We happily published the story (in those days, any politicians were the enemy that journos had to show up. It was a different era of journalism and this story and glee was in keeping with those times).

Yechury called us the next day, very unhappy. “I hold a 1/16th share of an inherited bungalow from my great grandfather and that property is notionally worth more than a crore. How can you people put me on the list of crorepatis?” he asked.  We of course brushed it off, but I now think we were very unfair to the man, who did indeed live the simple life of the communist leader to the extent possible.

But he was not the typical communist leader. He battled that “taint” of being “elite” all through. He was liked and disliked, inspiring both awe and jealousy both inside his party and outside.

He didn’t like me much after that story and yeah, I don’t think I can blame him, though all I did was what we thought was good journalism, those days.

I will say that the comrade lived his life well and sincerely wanted the best for all people. I respected him and been lucky enough to meet that kind of politician. I wish that the next generations of journalists could get a chance to meet politicians like Sitaram Yechury.