Harivansh: Anti-establishment editor to ‘outstanding umpire’

On a cold January morning in 2006, a kurta pyjama-clad senior journalist was hurriedly jotting down notes at a political rally in remote Khambra, located in Jharkhand's Giridih district, to mark the first death anniversary of CPI (ML) veteran Mahendra Singh. The sight was not unusual except that the man in question was not just another journalist. He was the chief editor of the Ranchi-based Hindi daily, Prabhat Khabar, which he had turned into a household name in undivided Bihar.

Less than 10-years later, 'Harivansh'—nobody in the trade knew him by the other two appendages to his first name, ‘Narayan’ and ‘Singh’—had been just elected to the Rajya Sabha as a Janata Dal (United) candidate. At a meeting with him over a cup of tea at his Delhi residence, he seemed to retain the same passion for journalism glimpsed earlier.

The 64-year-old moved on to another phase of his life with his election as Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman earlier this week. To be accurate, this is his second innings in a role that entails the day-to-day running of the House. He was first elected to the post in 2018. None other than Prime Minister Modi vouched for him, saying he will “belong to all”. This is a trait, coupled with simplicity, that many others who are close to him also vouch for.

“Even after he became a Rajya Sabha member and that too from the ruling JD(U) in Bihar, I have seen Harivansh ji standing in the general queue at the airport or moving about the city with his trademark brown bag sans any paraphernalia,” a Patna-based journalist, who has known the feisty Prabhat Khabar editor since his days in Ranchi, recalled.

Harivansh was born into a moderately well-off farming family in the Sitabdiara village on the border of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh—the region from where the socialist leader and revolutionary Jai Prakash Narayan (JP) hailed. He had to often walk a full 10 kilometres to attend school because of the frequent flooding in his village, situated at the confluence of Ganga and Ghaghra rivers.

He grew up to be a socialist too, hosting a meeting attended by JP in the Banaras Hindu University campus months before the veteran leader launched his movement from Patna in Bihar.

His journalism innings began at the Times of India where he joined as a trainee journalist in 1977. He then went on to work at Dharmyug in Mumbai and Ravivar in Kolkata before the call of rural reporting finally took him to Ranchi in 1989. Under his editorship, Prabhat Khabar, published under the tagline ‘Akhbar Nahin Aandolan' (not a newspaper but a movement), rose to great heights and broke many stories on the fodder scam involving the then Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad.

His move from journalism to politics in 2014 was foreshadowed by a six-month stint he put in as additional information advisor to former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar in 1990-1991. When he first became Rajya Sabha member, it left some of his journalist peers aghast that the fiery anti-establishment editor had become the face of the establishment.

But the soft-spoken, suave leader has made his way up in the world of politics, retaining something of his ability for being a fair observer as well. PM Modi remarked that “he has been an outstanding umpire” after he became the RS Deputy Chair once again.