The Telugu Desam Party and its supremo Nara Chandrababu Naidu, owe much of the rise of the Telugu Desam party to the force multipler – Cherukuri Ramoji Rao, a media baron from south India with businesses spanning across news publications to pickles. In the passing of Ramoji Rao, on Saturday morning, TDP loses its founding friend and a force multiplier.
Owner of a leading Telugu newspaper Eenadu and television news channel ETV, Rao also founded the Ramoji Film City, Priya Foods and the Margadarsi Chit Fund. Way back in the early 1980s, Ramoji Rao took a stand in his newspaper in support of the TDP founder and veteran Telugu actor-turned-politician N T Rama Rao (popularly referred to as NTR) and the cause of “Telugu pride” that he fought for in his battle against the Congress party and won.
“The most distinguishing thing about Ramoji Rao was that he had a sense of the moment,” says Sanjaya Baru. Economist, author and the former media advisor to Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, Baru knew Ramoji Rao over the years and even worked with him for a brief while. “When N T Rama Rao decided to enter politics, Ramoji Rao had a sense of the moment and guided NTR into staging a major revolution in Andhra politics. Till then, nobody thought the Congress party could be challenged in the then erstwhile unified Andhra state,” says Sanjaya Baru.
Others who knew Ramoji Rao point to an uncanny ability to sense, early on, the attention and crowd-gathering that NTR’s campaigns were attracting in the districts in the early 1980s. Ramoji Rao could gather this from the district editions of his newspaper and got it to statewide attention creating a groundswell of support for NTR. After the NTR era, he backed Chandrababu Naidu with equal zest.
Redefining Objectivity
Those who knew Ramoji Rao and his style of functioning, saw him redefining objectivity in journalism. If the age-old guiding factor was about not taking sides, letting the weight of truth prevail while not creating an illusion of fairness, coloured as it were, with ‘a he-said/she-said’ both-sided reporting, Ramoji Rao was about playing it straight while also taking sides and giving expression to own views and preferences. In many ways, the dramatic rise of TDP and a fillip that gave to regional sentiment in national politics and eventually to regional parties, owes to the charisma of NTR riding on the support from Eenadu newspaper.
Those close to Ramoji Rao say, he was battling cancer and was hospitalised but apparently retained control on all his faculties almost till the very end. Raghu Cidambi, who worked closely with Ramoji Rao for almost two decades describes Rao as “a warrior till the very end.” His last battle was his stance against the Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy government. Ramoji Rao lived to see the victory of TDP and its return at the helm in Andhra with a crucial role at the Centre. A funeral with state honours is to be held on Sunday.