Media mogul Ramoji Rao, who passed away on June 8 after battling illness, was often referred to as the Rupert Murdoch of India. He was the founder of the Telugu newspaper Eenadu, one of the widely circulated newspapers in the Telugu states, estimated to sell up to 1.6 million copies per day. Rao had also made his foray into television, launching nearly 12 channels under the Eenadu umbrella in different languages. His family said his funeral will be held on Sunday, June 9, after his grandson returns from the USA. His mortal remains have been kept at his residence in the Ramoji Film City near Hyderabad.
The Telangana government has already declared that Rao’s last rites will be conducted with state honours. It is said that Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister designate N Chandrababu Naidu has deferred the swearing-in ceremony due to Rao’s death.
Director SS Rajamouli of Baahubali and RRR fame, expressing sadness over Rao’s death, demanded that the Indian government confer him with the Bharat Ratna, which is the country’s highest civilian Award. While alive, Rao had been a recipient of the Padma Vibushan – the second highest civilian award.
Besides investing in the media, Rao also had an interest in producing films and television shows. His production company produced popular films such as Kanchana Ganga (1984), Mayuri (1985), Prathighatana (1985), Mouna Poratam (1989), and Nuvve Kavali (2000) among others. He built a huge film studio on the outskirts of Hyderabad – Ramoji Film City which is named after himself – a common destination for film shootings in India. He also owned other business establishments such as Margadarsi Chit Funds, Priya Foods, and Ushakiron Movies.
Rao’s rise as a media mogul
Ramoji Rao started his career as an artist in Delhi for an advertising firm. After his marriage to Tatineni Rama Devi, he moved back to Hyderabad and started the Margadarsi Chit Funds. This was his first investment.
Over the years Rao invested in several businesses, but it was the formation of Eenadu which propelled him to fame, as a result of his proximity to the power corridor. Eenadu, launched in 1974, began with printing a minimal 4,000 newspapers. From there, the paper under Rao’s chairmanship rose to prominence and is still regarded as the most representative Telugu daily.
Rao is widely credited with helping actor-politician NT Rama Rao, popularly known as NTR, to come to power in Andhra Pradesh. Both NTR and Rao belong to the same Kamma community – a dominant non-Brahmin caste group. With the support of Eenadu, NTR became the first Kamma Chief Minister of the then united Andhra Pradesh.
The newspaper is also thought to have aided in Chandrababu Naidu’s subsequent coup against NTR and his second wife Lakshmi Parvathi, by lampooning Lakshmi as a conniving, Machiavellian figure.
As civil liberties activist K Balagopal wrote in his 1995 essay ‘Politics as Property’ on the political economy underpinning the toppling of NTR by Chandrababu Naidu, “In Andhra Pradesh, (the Indian society’s) strongest and most self-conscious representative has been the daily newspaper Eenadu, which silently prided itself on having brought NT Rama Rao to power in the first instance for this very end, and which is now no longer even very silent in claiming credit for having forced his replacement by his son-in-law, again to the same end.”
Boda Janardhan, a former Telugu Desam Party (TDP) MLA who belonged to the Naidu faction, was quoted as saying by The Caravan, “Eenadu played an important role in shoring up backing for Naidu. The paper kept increasing the number, and after a couple of days they published that there were more than 150 MLAs inside. Many fence sitters panicked, and those who didn’t want to be left behind came to join us.”
At one point Rao was also contemplating launching his own political party, but the idea never took off.
Speaking to TNM, journalist and founder of People's Archive of Rural India (PARI) P Sainath said, “What Ramoji Rao did had not been done in that manner before. There was no social media back then and subscriptions were how newspapers earned their income. Rao had people who were already subscribers, who were paid to go out and enrol other subscribers. Many homemakers participated in looking for subscribers and getting them on board. All this was done via a personal connection, and was emulated by other modern Indian newspapers which followed. While Eenadu eventually became indistinguishable from a spokesperson for Chandrababu Naidu, Rao did have a political perspective.”
Sainath recounted an instance in 1982, when then Congress general secretary Rajiv Gandhi insulted Andhra Pradesh's Chief Minister Tangaturi Anjaiah. Anjaiah, also a Congressman, had welcomed Gandhi with drums and his fellow partymen at the tarmac of the Begumpet airport, which caused Gandhi to dub the CM a ‘buffoon.’
“Anjaiah was in tears. I remember asking people in Andhra how they felt about it. ‘Don't you say the same thing?’ I asked. But they were enraged that someone else outside the Telugu landscape could humiliate him in such a way. ‘Who is he to say such things?’ they asked,” Sainath recalled.
That incident kickstarted the Telugu aatmagowravam (self respect movement) spearheaded by NTR, which was supported by Ramoji Rao's Eenadu, Sainath added. “Other Telugu publications backed it as well. It is an enormous success to build a paper like that and for that reason alone, he cannot be written off.”
In his 1995 essay, Balagopal wrote that the rise of NTR and his party TDP is generally seen as the long overdue assertion of this class (usually further vulgarised as the rise of the Kamma caste).
“It is true that NTR and his most vociferous followers belong to this class … it is further true that the one man who almost single handedly led his campaign — Ramoji Rao, editor of the largest circulated Telugu daily Eenadu which functioned as a pamphlet for NTR both at the time of his election and during the recent crisis (the 1994 crisis when NTR was removed as the CM) — is a very typical representative of the pushing commercial enterprise of this class,” he wrote.
In 1994, Ramoji Rao decided to shift base from lending support to NTR to outright aiding Chandrababu Naidu. Rao's decision to do so was allegedly premised on NTR's biographer, second wife, and current YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) leader Lakshmi Parvathi’s involvement in politics.
NTR won the Assembly elections in 1994 against Congress' Marri Chenna Reddy and with his backing, Parvathi was accused of promoting certain leaders by telling NTR which MLAs to give tickets to. Slowly, rumours started to circulate that she alone had NTR’s ear and that he was considering making her the Deputy Chief Minister.
In response, with the help and support of Ramoji Rao, Chandrababu Naidu worked against Parvathi. Eenadu lampooned Parvathi as the most ambitious, conniving politician the state had ever seen, despite the fact that several men had hankered for power in equal or excessive measure.
One of the cartoons published by the Eenadu showcases NTR seated in a kitchen, sharpening an axe while Parvathi prepares a list of NTR's dissidents for him to "chop" off. The ‘role reversal’ attempted to portray Parvathi as a scheming figure who has abandoned her wifely duties, while depicting NTR as an emasculated weakling.
In 1995, Naidu received the support of several TDP MLAs and successfully orchestrated a coup to take over TDP and dethrone NTR. The optics of it were managed by Eenadu, which cashed in on Parvathi's supposed villany and Naidu's image of a saviour.
In keeping with his support for the TDP, Ramoji Rao was critical of Congress on several occasions. While Rao was not in favour of the separation of Telangana from Andhra Pradesh, he promoted the Telangana statehood agitation to corner the then Chief Minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy, popularly known as YSR. He also extended his support to the farmers who were protesting against land grabbing in Mahabubnagar district’s Polepally Special Economic Zone (SEZ), by writing an op-ed in the Eenadu in 2008 against the Congress government.
“He wrote about how farmers were duped of their lands under the assurance that the land would be developed for agriculture. At that point, the SEZ protests were considered the second biggest land struggle after the Telangana agitation. The op-ed triggered the attention of people across the state,” said Sujata Surepally, an academic and Dalit activist in Telangana. She added that without Eenadu’s support at that point, the issue would have drowned.
Challenges to Ramoji Rao
Ramoji Rao also had political ambitions, and wanted to project himself as an important personality. Through his newspaper he wielded significant influence on the people of the Telugu states. In 1992, Eenadu started an anti-arrack campaign (Saara pai samaram). The campaign was so effective that Chief Minister NTR had introduced a prohibition of alcohol in the state in 1994 after coming to power.
The ‘Saara pai samaram’ campaign helped Eenadu earn goodwill among women and paved the way for ‘progressive’ politics. It also nullified any power the Congress could wield at that point of time.
While several Congress leaders tried to challenge Rao, it was only the late Chief Minister YSR who could cut him down. After Rao’s Eenadu published an article ‘Peddalu Gaddalu’ (Powerful Cronied Eagles), strongly critical of the YSR government’s plan to develop an Outer Ring Road, YSR went after Margadarsi Chit funds which was in turn financing Eenadu.
In 2006, the YSR government complained to the then Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram that Margadarsi, in violation of the RBI norms, was collecting deposits from 250,000 small investors, amounting to at least Rs 2,200 crore. This led to the RBI investigating the alleged wrongdoings. The RBI prevented Margadarsi Financiers from accepting any more deposits, and directed it to pay depositors back as and when their deposits matured over the next three years. The crisis forced Ramoji Rao to sell out his media organisations to the Reliance Industries.
While most of the ETV (Eenadu Television) channels are now owned by the Network 18 owned by Mukesh Ambani, the Ramoji Group still owns and operates its Telugu-language channels.
Despite the crisis, Rao was relentless in his attack against YSR. Realising the importance of propaganda, YSR’s son Jagan Mohan Reddy launched his own media organisation – Sakshi newspaper and Sakshi Television. Eenadu’s campaign against Jagan about alleged corruption led to his arrest. After becoming the Chief Minister, Jagan renewed his attack against Rao in 2022.
In August 2023, the Andhra Pradesh Crime Investigation Department (CID) under former CM Jagan Mohan Reddy registered 10 First Information Reports (FIRs) against Margadarsi Chit Fund Private Limited (MCFPL) under varied sections of the Indian Penal Code. The charges included cheating, breach of trust, and fraud. Rao as well as C Sailaja Kiron, his daughter-in-law and the managing director of MCFPL, were named in the FIRs among others. While Margadarsi has maintained that there had been no financial irregularities and that all its profits had been earned without “touching” the money of its subscribers, the case is still ongoing.
The case is seen as part of a storied clash between the Kammas and the Reddys. Jagan frequently disparages a selection of media organisations, in particular Eenadu, as being “yellow media” – an allusion to the propaganda he believes they spread against his party.
After Jagan lost power in the recently-held Assembly elections, ETV did not maintain any semblance of neutrality and proudly declared that the people have put an end to his vindictive politics of Jagan and “shooed him away.”
But on June 8, responding to Rao’s death, Jagan said in a statement, “Ramoji Rao's death was shocking. He has rendered immeasurable services to the Telugu press for decades. I pray to God that his soul rests in peace. My deepest condolences to Ramoji Rao's family.”
Ramoji and KCR
During the Telangana agitation for statehood, Ramoji Rao, along with several Andhra leaders like Chandrababu Naidu, was among those who opposed the bifurcation of the Telugu states.
Launching an attack against Ramoji Rao in 2014, Bharat Rashtra Samithi (then Telangana Rashtra Samithi) chief K Chandrashekar Rao, commonly known as KCR, promised to plough and redistribute the lands occupied by Ramoji Rao for his film city and other Andhra real estate barons.
However, Eenadu and KCR softened their respective stands and an unsaid ceasefire emerged. In January 2015, KCR supported Ramoji Rao's plan to construct the Om City Project, a spiritual city near Ramoji Film City. "By visiting this spiritual city, the pilgrims will have an opportunity to see and offer prayers at all the holy places and several temples at one location, without having to go around the country to visit each holy place,” Ramoji Rao had told KCR, who assured full support for the construction.
Following Ramoji Rao’s announcement about Om City, there has been no subsequent update on the project. Perhaps one of the few ideas that the media baron did not see to completion.