In the passing away of KR Srivats, journalism has lost a professional whose scholarship and value system held a mirror to countless others in these times when knowledge is a WhatsApp forward and ethics are for losers. Srivats, who wrote on all matters related to finance, economy and banking in The Hindu businessline for 28 years, passed away in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, leaving a staggering body of work that can be as instructive for an economist as a journalism student.
Srivats left too abruptly and too soon. He was just 53 years old and possessed a youthfulness that put reporters half his age to shame. Nothing was too insignificant or obscure for this quintessential old-world journalist who read Budget documents and company balance sheets with as much enthusiasm as he figured out the nuances of the Brazilian football team’s strategy in the World Cup or the hidden meanings in Donald Trump’s executive orders. He was prolific and profound but without the heaviness that some others with his depth of knowledge are prone to exhibit.
When Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman read out her Budget speech this year, Srivats waited with bated breath, even as he took copious notes to dish out the first draft of the proposals for an instant web copy that he used to write year after year. It was to him that the editors turned to flesh out the nuances of the Budget in record time, much before the others and in absolutely lucid language. In the midst of this flurry of proposals, there was a sudden jubilant squeal – FM announced 100 per cent FDI in insurance. Srivats had been proven right, once again. This was a story that he had broken a few days ahead of the Budget. He smiled as he used to, lighting up the room, promising a samosa treat for all of us.
Capacity for learning
Such joy that he consistently and spontaneously brought to routine work was infectious. No one could remain immune to his boundless capacity for learning. There was purity in his persistent quest for answers; the countless messages of grief and genuine regard that we have received from colleagues in other newspapers are testimony to Srivats’ brand of journalism that traced its rigour to a more pristine and ethical age in the profession.
He had this quality that was simply above the commonplace ambitions of monetary gains. He, who understood the markets better than the experts, could not be bothered to invest in it. He, who interacted with the top industrialists and policy-makers, had the least interest in benefiting from these connections. He understood materialism and would discuss the dialectics of it in some memorable late-night parleys that we would have, but in an entirely academic fashion. For himself, he lived frugally in a rented flat and travelled by public transport. His was an ethical framework so strong and so incorruptible that ordinary material aspirations simply escaped him. And yet, there was not the slightest trace of martyrdom or egotism in the lightness of Srivats’ being. He was truly an exemplary journalist and scholar without ever seeming to be one.
Encyclopaedic knowledge
You could turn to him for deciphering the minutest nuances in macro-economic indicators or cross-check whether the government was cutting on social sector spends and get an answer in a few minutes. The depth of his understanding was almost encyclopaedic. And he was generous to a fault; you could ask him the most banal question and he would probe it with the zealousness of a sleuth. One only has to peruse the countless thanksgiving notes by colleagues in other newspapers to get an idea about how free he was with his inputs to whoever needed them.
On Monday night, just hours before Srivats left us, he came bounding up to my room with information about the latest from Donald Trump. It was 20 per cent ‘secondary tariffs’ on Venezuela oil buyers that Srivats had dug deep into. We discussed the length and breadth of how we could follow it up with an India angle. That was to be the last discussion we had before we were woken up with shock of his untimely demise. We are as proud and privileged to have worked with this brilliant journalist as we are devastated by his loss.