Word: expression
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...weather in New Delhi was seasonably mild last week, with temperatures mostly in the 70s. If Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had had her way, however, it would have been a lot hotter in the pressroom of the Indian Express (circ. 400,000), the flagship of India's largest newspaper chain. Reason: government officials tried a few weeks ago to rip out the paper's air-conditioning system and auction it off to satisfy a disputed tax bill. Only a last-minute court injunction saved Express workers from a daily steam bath...
...seem to have given up the battle. Their pages are now filled with fawning accounts of national events, flattering pictures of Gandhi and her ambitious son Sanjay-and, not coincidentally, lucrative government advertising. But two tough, prominent publishers of English-language dailies-Ramnath Goenka of the 44-year-old Express and C.R. Irani of the 100-year-old Statesman-are fighting on with a stubbornness befitting Gandhi's father, Jawaharlal Nehru...
Foiled Again. Unlike antigovernment publishers in some other countries, Goenka, 73, and Irani, 46, cannot employ their most strategic weapons, their newspapers. The Express and the States man (circ. 198,000) are far less servile than most Indian dailies, but Gandhi's press restrictions forbid the printing of anything openly critical of her regime. As a result, Goenka and Irani have turned to India's still largely independent judiciary for help. So far, they have at least thwarted the government's apparent objective: to gain control of the papers or put them out of business...
...longtime political foe of Gandhi's, Goenka is a wily industrialist who owns 17 other Indian dailies besides the Express; they have a combined circulation of about 1 million. Since he opposed Gandhi's adoption of sweeping emergency powers in 1975, her government has seized his jute mill in Calcutta, deprived the Express group of government advertising and ordered India's nationalized banks to deny him credit...
...money. Irani believes his paper can continue publishing for another year or so. Says he: "The Statesman has not been around for a hundred years to sell out now to a Delhi Mafia." Goenka, however, is trying to sell off some of his other business properties to keep the Express group alive, and the papers could fold at any time. "We are carrying on, how long we don't know," says a Goenka associate. "They can't take us over unless they pass a law. They can make a man a woman, they can do anything...