Tryst With Strong Leader Populism

P. Raman belongs to a generation of journalists that continues to uphold the virtues of the old era ethos like fact-checked content and objective presentation. He began with V.K. Krishna Menon’s The Century weekly as sub-editor, and has worked with over a dozen English dailies and weeklies, including the once puissant Patriot daily and Link weekly. During the Emergency, he was sent to Ahmedabad as the Gujarat correspondent. Raman began covering politics for English dailies from 1978, has been the main political correspondent at The Indian Express in the 1980s and the political editor of The Economic Times and Business Standard in the 1990s. Both the economic dailies regularly carried his weekly political column Realpolitik. After retirement,Realpolitik was syndicated to a dozen dailies, including The Tribune, Amar Ujala, Navhind Times(Goa),Free Press Journal, Lokmat, the Enadugroup, Deshabhimani and India Press Agency. He wrote frequently for The Hindu Business Lineand the Vinod Mehta-era Outlook. He now writes doing occasional pieces for The Indian Express, The Wire and The Newsclick. An octogenarian, his book Post-Truth Media Survival Sutra was published in 2018. He has just completed another manuscript The Fallen Messiahs. It is a per diem account of the political dynamics that worked behind five prime ministers from Narasimha Rao to Manmohan Singh during 23 years from 1991. He was a member of the Press Council of India for two terms.