As a BBC intern, Sachin Pilot, now in the race for Rajasthan CM’s post, had scripted and edited a radio package for BBC and earned £20-30.
New Delhi: Rajasthan Pradesh Congress Committee president Sachin Pilot, the man who is in the race to be the next chief minister of the state, may possibly not even remember this: In 1996, then a young man, Sachin earned his first salary as a journalist.
The BBC, where I worked and where Sachin was an intern after having graduated in Arts from Delhi’s St Stephens College, paid him a handsome amount of around £20-30 for working on a report.
I still remember the day Sachin walked into the Rafi Marg-located BBC India office to start as an intern in the Hindi service.
His father, late Congress politician Rajesh Pilot, then minister for surface transport in the government of P.V. Narasimha Rao, had requested Satish Jacob of the BBC to allow Sachin to intern and learn the tricks of radio journalism.
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Sachin’s first story, first salary
A BBC team was working on a story on prohibition in Haryana. The state, then ruled by Bansi Lal, was debating prohibition as a policy. Sachin went with the BBC team and was given the task of collecting views and recording opinion. He came back and with our help scripted and edited a radio package which was also aired on the BBC.
And for this Sachin was paid £20-30.
Sachin was extremely happy to receive what was possibly his first salary cheque, so much so that he announced that he would “never encash it”. More importantly, apart from the salary, he also made his debut as a radio journalist. To show his gratitude, Sachin sent sweets to the BBC office around New Year.
Thereafter, he went to pursue his MBA degree at the University of Pennsylvania.
I remember engaging him and asking him if he also intended to follow his father into electoral politics.
He said, in jest, that he would join the BJP so that his family could cover the whole ground. However, he soon explained that he was not interested in politics and was hoping to build a career elsewhere.
‘No VIP treatment’
A former BBC colleague, Ram Subramanium, remembers that when he came to the BBC office, the first thing Sachin was told that he should forget that he was a big politician’s son. “Forget you are Rajesh Pilot’s son. You will not be treated like a VIP’s son.”
And, here’s how Sachin responded: “I also want this. I do not want to be under my father’s shadow. I want to become something on my own.”
I remember he used to have security guards with him and this created problems when he went out for stories. So, later he was asked to work from office. The reason for the security cover — we could see that Sachin was uncomfortable with the securitymen around him — was that his father Rajesh, who was earlier the minister of state for internal security, a job which made him in-charge of militancy-hit Jammu and Kashmir, was under threat.
A few years later, Sachin’s life changed drastically when he lost his father in a road accident. First his mother Rama and then Sachin himself took charge of carrying forward his father’s legacy.
And he hasn’t done a bad job.
PS: The next time I meet him, I will certainly ask him if he ever encashed the cheque.
Also read: This is why Rahul Gandhi can’t make up his mind about who will be Rajasthan CM
One of the most promising young politicians in the country today. Should Ashok Gehlot’s selfishness and avarice deprive him of what he has earned over the last four years, he should not take it to heart. A few months from now, he would get something much better in Delhi.