It is with great sadness that I write in memory of Prabhash Joshi,a steadfast friend and valued colleague of many years. I had been trying to reach him for some days but he was away. And then just yesterday he called to say he was back from his wanderings and that we must meet soon as there was much to discuss. For the past many months,indeed years,he had been travelling incessantly,lecturing,speaking,and participating in a variety of media and other activities even while keeping up his heavy writing schedule. He remarked that he was tired after all this hectic journeying and needed a few days rest after which he would be in touch and we should meet.
That day was not to come. He has departed and left the country’s journalistic fraternity the poorer. He reported from the field,mixing with high and low,and wrote a regular column in Jansatta and occasionally elsewhere,telling it as it is,focussing on values,principles and the lives and wellbeing of ordinary people.
Over the past many months he had been greatly exercised over the grievous fall in ethical standards,even among some of the best known brands in the Indian media. He was particularly concerned about the graded “packages” being sold by media houses for electoral coverage with different price tags to favour a candidate or damn his or her opponent. He took me with him to Indore,his home town,some time back to attend and address a seminar and public meeting called to discuss this matter by the Madhya Pradesh Union of Journalists. He had done his homework and was armed with clippings and other hard evidence of such malpractice. Returning to Delhi,he got me to join him in filing a complaint with the Press Council of India,which is currently seized of the matter. One of his last public assignments in Delhi was a seminar to discuss and denounce this most undemocratic practice.
I first met Prabhash in Delhi at the time of the JP movement. He was with the Gandhi Peace Foundation and edited the Hindi version of Everyman’s,a journal devoted to advocating Jayaprakash’s views and sponsored by Ramnath Goenka. This journal campaigned for JP’s movement for purity in public life. RNG,a man of strong likes and dislikes,took to Prabhash and brought him to The Indian Express,charging him with the task of conceptualising and launching Jansatta,the Hindi paper he had long wished to establish in Delhi. Jansatta gained a devoted readership and considerable prestige under Joshi’s editorship.
Prior to that we had been colleagues in The Express and Prabhash served in Chandigarh and Ahmedabad as also in Delhi and remained a confidante of RNG. He was passionate about cricket and wrote about it with panache. Sadly,He was taken ill at home after watching the India-Australia match last night and was rushed to hospital.
Though he gave up editorship of Jansatta after some years,he continued to write for it and was something of a guru,not merely among his devoted colleagues but for the larger media fraternity. Immaculately dressed in a starched dhoti and kurta,he had a wide and varied circle of friends and professional contacts with whom he kept in touch,often inviting them home for a splendid vegetarian meal cooked by his wife,Usha,with his children around. It was a happy and close knit family.
Prabhash Joshi will be missed — and remembered — for his friendship,his values and his perseverance in ploughing a furrow that not too many have followed.
The writer was editor of ‘The Indian Express’
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