Washington, DC – In his gripping account of suspense, journalism ethics and being caught in a whirlpool of power grabbing with corrupt practices, Rajesh Sundaram, a senior broadcast journalist from India shares his experience of quitting his job in a public spat, while his life is threatened, his health deteriorates and the confusing fog – over the path forward – slowly lifts.
Indentured: Behind the Scenes at Gupta TV is Rajesh Sundaram’s story of how he led a small team of Indian broadcast professionals and South African interns to launch the television news channel ANN7 under extremely tight deadlines and the power-grabbing and money-hungry mogul Atul Gupta and his cronies breathing down their necks.
To launch the latest privately owned 24-hour television news channel in South Africa, Sundaram is lured with promises of a unique professional challenge where he will have the chance to empower young black reporters to tell the stories of ordinary South Africans; train technicians in using the world’s best news gathering technology and state-of-the-art broadcast systems; and create a world-class product across the African continent.
But soon he will learn how the influential family who had hired him and the highest office in the country are inextricably linked in a bid to create a propaganda tool that will not only advance a clear political agenda, but also position itself to loot state coffers of millions of rand. This, and the flagrant disregard for the law by flouting work visa regulations and exploiting young black South Africans and migrant Indian workers are but a few of the issues that made him realise that he was caught in a web of lies, deceit and political thuggery.
Since its publication, the communication lines never fell silent and Sundaram’s fearless account of an honest disclosure has taken the political and social equations in South Africa and beyond in a journalistic frenzy. (IAT)
Tejinder Singh, Editor, India America Today & White House Correspondent