MEDIA, AUCTIONS AND AAM ADMI

Who was on auction yesterday and is even today? Yes, everyone knows that cricket players are being bid for and bought by owners of various IPL teams. Exciting? Sure, to some. Glamorous? You bet. Do the proceedings spread over two days merit being screened live? Arguably yes, on sports channels. On national news channels? Are you crazy?

You and I may not be crazy, but some owners of India’s 'free' media think we are. That’s why they have decided that a nation of 1.2 billion people grappling with innumerable problems, wants to see nothing but the entire proceedings, live on, yes, news channels and regional channels too.

Is there any such precedent anywhere else in the world other than in a failed banana republic, even there? I cannot imagine. Why, then, is India being subjected to this blitz by media barons?

On Jan 07, Rajdeep Sardesai, part-owner and part-editor-in-chief of CNN IBN, tweeted: “while aam admi worries about price of onions, franchisees will worry about the price of players. yeh hai india.” Touching sentiments. The same gentleman had, however, a minute earlier tweeted: "tomorrow morning, IPL 4 auction. dont miss our coverage 10 am onwards with harsha bhogle and sanjay manjrekar, should be fun.” Many on Twitter spotted the emotional disconnect, the hypocrisy, and there was a barrage of tweets highlighting the same. On Jan 08, he replied to one: “@alok10823 everyone loves a good auction, esp when cricketers are on sale, including the aam admi.” If Sardesai is to be believed, he is loving it today too.

The aam admi, as you can easily infer, has become some kind of a joke. Earlier only politicians used to claim to speak on his behalf even as they lining their pockets with money meant for him. Now the media is doing the same. Politicians have to speak of and for him because they need his vote once in a few years. Media needs no votes but cannot do without him too primarily because it has unilaterally appropriated the right to question politicians and everyone else, on his behalf. For both he is the real sovereign. However, the media is completely unaccountable to him and, therefore, has no interest in him save the revenue he generates by watching himself being made the invisible star every evening in someone else’s voice and of someone else’s agenda.

Rajdeep Sardesai the businessman understands what a terrific tool this media-created aam admi is. Even a chameleon can’t do what he can be made to. That is why Sardesai can in one breath make him look worried about onion prices and in the next project him as someone who loves watching, for two full days, ‘news’ showing cricketers being sold. The real aam admi may forget his onions, media owners never forget theirs.

The question that is begging to be asked, but never will be on any TV channel, is: why are news channels run this tamasha, suspending everything else in time and space?

News channels are not entertainment channels for running shows that people love; nor are they sports channels, otherwise they would telecast revenue-jackpot 20:20 matches live. Then why? The entire IPL auction drams, as I understand, is nothing more than one big non-stop advertisement whose sole objective is to increase consumer awareness of the IPL brand so as to maximise spectator and viewer participation in the upcoming tournament. Since it is not a live cricket match, playing it live on the one authorised sports channel that will telecast the tournament, will not get its promoters and owners the number of eyeballs they want to attract. Viewers across India can, however, be carpet-bombed and mind-numbed into making IPL a bumper success if news and regional channels carry it live.

A two-day running advertisement for India’s most successful sports brand is a mouth-wateringly lucrative business proposition. An independent news editor concerned about core values and principles of journalism will, as per my understanding, not be a party such blatant prostitution of a news channel. An owner, possibly lubricated even more by additional ‘personal’ payments/inducements under the table, will, on the other hand, hasten to summon the non-existent aam aadmi, like Sardesai has done, to justify the decision, to hell with ethics, to hell with the real aam aadmi.

Now this is not an isolated aberration. This is one more recent example that I must briefly dwell upon to highlight the fact that media has become slave to pecuniary interests of owners in a tearing hurry to become billionaires, whatever it takes. Yes, Radia tapes also tell us much about the deep rot and the quid pro quos, but this is not the time to discuss them.

Post Radia, there’s been much debate about the alarming manner in which lobbyists have infiltrated and corrupted the media and the government. Sardesai, one of ‘Radias’ still not singed due to lack of 'clinching' evidence of quid pro quo, cleverly used his position as editor-in-chief to host a program on the channel he owns, to lobby for legalizing lobbying. An alert netizen caught him in the act. Sardesai -- difficult to swallow -- actually went to the extent of creating false Twitter accounts to deceive viewers – and policy makers too -- into believing that public opinion was in favour of lobbying. When caught, he and Sagarika Ghose, his wife, tried to get away by fibbing that the comments were genuine but were wrongly attributed to Twitter. To their bad luck and surprise, alert netizens dug deeper and discovered that lie too. The faking was wilful. Full details, available on dalalmedia posterous will shock you. CNN IBN was finally forced to tender an apology. And the furore subsided. It should not have.

The cleverly-worded apology was not a call of conscience; it was given out of sheer compulsion, to plug further damage. Sardesai had simply no choice, the documentary evidence, like in the Adarsh society case, was clear and damning; there was no escape route available. It was TINA that got Sardesai to cut his losses and pour ganga jal over the crime he had deliberately committed with all his faculties in fine fettle.

The question that was not asked loudly enough then was: what was Sardesai’s motivation to go to the extent of faking public opinion in favour of lobbying? That there had to be a strong personal stake in, firstly, asking such a question at such an inopportune moment and, secondly, taking the risk of falsifying tweets, was clear as day light. But, no one else, including in the media, probed any further. No one asked him why he instructed his staff to create false tweets; his staff was also not asked what exactly they were told by him. Who knows what else would have spilled out after the questioning had started? There is little doubt in my mind that an honest follow up would have opened the eyes of the whole country to the fact that the then President of the Editor’s Guild is a corrupt man who can go to any extent to push his personal business interests on the platform of his channel. The journalist in him, there is little doubt, has been all but killed by the businessman he has chosen to become.

You can close your eyes and bet that this was not the first such case. Before Radia, no one suspected the integrity of these guys and no one bothered to check. Now every little twitch is viewed with suspicion, and that is why Sardesai was caught. He will be much more careful in future, but remains otherwise unfazed. That is why on being questioned about telecasting the IPL auction live he has summarily informed us that 'his' aam aadmi, who is no one other than him, wants it. You and I can take a walk, and can keep walking.

Know and never forget that rich Radia media owners are in the game only for the bucks. And they won’t let you, even India, stop them. That's why they are not at all concerned that they and the journalists they employ have been exposed as a class and that trust has been lost. It does not trouble them that the quid pro quo is now visible even to the blind, that though the evidence may or may not stand scrutiny in a court of law, in the court of public opinion it is more than enough.

So the next time you switch on a news channel and hear an anchor passionately asking a question on behalf of the aam admi, be very wary. Always try to imagine what might have gone on behind the scenes, and what the unspoken agenda is, personal, political, pecuniary. Someone, something is being 'auctioned' behind the scenes all the time. Radia may have not have been the TINA that India had hoped it would be. But if you and I are alert, and the few men and women of unimpeachable integrity in the bordello can muster enough courage, it is only a question of time before the sticky garbage is shoveled out.
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FOR THE TODAY OF A FEW, THE TOMORROW OF INDIA

After weeks of anti-India protests by stone pelters seeking secession from India, Pakistan's flag was hoisted at Lal Chowk in Srinagar by followers of the so-called 'moderate separatist' leader, Umer Farooq, the Mirwaiz -- chief preacher -- of ethnic Kashmiri Sunni Muslims, on Eid in full view of the Indian media. During the same period, a solitary pastor in the United States threatened that he would burn the Holy Quran on the same day which also happened to be America's 9/11. He was, however, persuaded from doing so and publicly made an announcement to the effect too a couple of days in advance.

How did the entire Indian visual media and almost the whole national print media cover both these developments?

The 'spontaneous' protests that broke out in a few towns in the Valley in May were marked by organised stone throwing on the police and burning of government property. The Indian media however, led unsuspecting Indians to believe that this was a secular outburst of a tormented generation fed up of the excesses of security forces and that they had to be assuaged by generating better job opportunities and by measures that would improve the quality of their life. Barring a few informed and educated analysts and professionals whose voices were quickly drowned out, no one was willing to accept that the intifada was being masterminded and executed with precision by Pakistan's ISI and its agents in the Valley.

In fact some almost seditious TV starlets crossed many red lines in justifying, propagating and inciting anti-India hatred and were quick to dishonestly and deviously bury suggestions that behind the histrionics and the fake facades, this was a new and far more internationally palatable show of strength by Pakistan that demonstrated its unshakeable resolve to sever Kashmir from India. No one was prepared to accept that having closely watched how India's weak, aversive-to use-of-force and strategy-blind leaders had been rattled after Kargil and, more recently, 26/11, Pakistan's real leaders had concluded that if more pressure was applied, it was only a question of time before they would capitulate, enabling Pakistan to take the war to another level, just short of the very high Indian threshold for full-scale hostilities.

The hoisting of Pakistan's flag was India's moment to show to the whole world that Pakistan was the mischief-maker and also substantiate earlier reports that the leaders of the stone throwers were being controlled from Pakistan, that many were being paid to throw stones, that small children were being deliberately brought into the line of fire, in some cases even carried on shoulders, to fulfill daily 'martyr' targets laid down by Pakistani handlers orchestrating the sordid drama. In one visual stroke, the lie of those who were made/paid to say that their 'struggle' was not communal and that they wanted Kashmiri Pandits whom they had thrown out two decades back to return to the Valley would have also been nailed. Any other country would have milked such a event to death to its advantage. But not India.

The threat of the pastor in faraway America was, however, not subjected to any censorship or governmental guidance. It was liberally aired and written about by the media almost every day. The pastor was rightly criticised but his threat was skillfully juxtaposed with the mounting opposition to the Ground Zero mosque with visuals that provided enough material needed by extremist leaders to incite angry and misguided Muslims to kill, and the less extreme to unleash arson and violence. The lack of restraint showed that either no lessons had been learnt from the Taslima Nasreen and the Danish cartoon cases or that it was being covered to give a subtle but clear political message to Indian Muslims.

And what has been the result? Even though the pastor changed his mind a few days back, Muslims in the Valley have gone on rampage, burning Christian Missionary schools and public property today, two days after. We are being asked to believe that they have done so because they were led to believe that the pastor had actually burned the Quran. Do you buy that argument? Are you in any doubt about how the media will paper it over?

Why did India's media so cover the pastor, knowing fully well that the situation would get explosive, that violence would invariably break out had he carried out his threat? Why was the flag hoisting incident blacked out as if it did not occur at all?

The answer lies hidden in the reply given by Rajdeep Sardesai to a question about the latter on Twitter. Sardesai, not surprisingly, gave a very morally correct reply, but in the process unknowingly let the cat out of the bag: "is the aim of a channel to exercise restraint, or to inflame passions?"

What appears to be the government's fiat to the media is unambiguous and can be even said to be exemplary. But, if you dig a bit deeper and factor in the incidents and cases in which the media has thrown restraint to the dogs without a thought and wantonly fanned inflammation of passions, the last two words that Sardesai did not utter start will start ringing loudly.

The simple truth, as it appears to me, is that the principal ruling party is petrified of anything, just anything, that might rouse the dead passions of Hindus and bring them together. The fear is not that violence may follow, nor is there a worry that the society will get fractured along religious lines. The dread is that if the Hindu vote gets consolidated and a larger percentage of Hindus start voting as a block, the Congress party's one-basket strategy of relying on the 16% bank of Muslim votes to defeat the huge but hopelessly divided Hindu vote will come to naught and electoral defeat will clutch it, possibly for good.

If you ponder for a moment and reflect on how the media has sanitised, if not sweetened, every development, no matter how serious, that shows Muslims, Indian or Pakistani, in a negative, communal, intolerant, extremist light, this aim becomes clear. Now do the same for Hindus and recollect how similar incidents, no matter how insignificant, that show them and sometimes even their religion in terrible light are blown beyond all proportions negatively. What is the aim here? This is the flip side. This is to ensure that a sufficient number of Hindus continue to vote for the Congress not because it is going to do anything for them but by deviously convincing them that by voting against it they will encourage communalism, religious intolerance and hatred against peace-loving and secular non-Hindus.

That is why Pakistan's flag being hoisted in Srinagar cannot be shown.. That is why the media and elements in the government can go to the unimaginable extent of blaming and cutting the hands of the very Army whose sacrifices have brought terrorism under some control in the Valley for India as well as ordinary Kashmiri Muslims. India's soldiers can be faulted and condemned for a few transgressions but not the ones who have been trained to kill them, not the nation that has for 60 years planned and executed only death and destruction in the Valley and the rest of India. Policemen can keep getting injured and dying unsung saving the state whose rulers have sent them into that hot pit, but the tears of India's real anti-nationals are only for those who get killed by them, no matter that they are striking at the very idea, the very foundation of India, no matter that they are being employed as soldiers by Pakistan in the latest phase of a war that it has been waging against a secular India for decades.

A responsive, nation-first government would have gone to every length to ensure that the whole of India saw that Pakistani flag in Srinagar. It would have roused the passions of every Indian, to give an emphatic message to Pakistan and its lackeys in the Valley that Indians are one against its aggression and that it will be made to pay a price if it continues to wage war against them; it would have told communal separatist Muslim leaders of the Valley that Indians will not accept the crossing of unacceptable lines by them; it would have given confidence to the men fighting for India there that their nation is with and behind them.

But, no, this ruling dispensation is manifestly guided by the effect it thinks its actions will have on its chances to retain political power in Delhi and grab it in states where it does not have it now. With the help of Muslims alone. And it has made sure that the crawling, hungry-for-money-whatever-it-takes business houses who run India's media know it.

A political leadership that places its domestic electoral interest above national interest has no moral right to rule. A political leadership that knowingly or unknowingly indulges in activities that are against the interests of the nation, no matter what the objective, is unthinkable.

I am not sure in whose hands India's destiny is today. But I can't shake off the feeling that its tomorrow is being mortgaged by a few for their today. If as an Indian that thought comforts you, India has much to worry about. As do the few.
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Readers may also read:
1. Completing cleansing of Kashmir: Sikhs asked to leave
2. Kashmir: after the gale, back to square one
3. India stoned: the enemy is in our midst
4. No answer to Pakistan's formidable force multiplier
5. Dealing with Pakistan: lessons from history

KHAOISTS: PLUNDERING INDIA'S FUTURE

An admission: this is a rather torpid post, the spiritlessness, the tiredness induced not by any physical ailment but by a sapping despondency and a sense of hopelessness about the speed at which India seems to be hurtling towards some sort of disaster, social upheaval, coup, even revolution, whose outcome one cannot even begin to visualise at this moment in time.

I have written many posts on the cancer of corruption that is eating into the vitals of this country. But to an outsider like me, as more and more layers of the rotten onion become visible, the bottom of the pit seems to get that much farther. What I had once thought was the Nadir, appears now to be just the shallow end of the stinking pool in which members of almost every single organ of the state - politicians, babus, judiciary, police - are splashing merrily along with that so-called watchdog, the media, that now appears to be in the vanguard of The Great Indian Robbery.

I simply do not have the heart, the enthusiasm, to pen another article with the passion and detail that I have earlier. Those who have the time and inclination may go through some of the older ones, links provided at the end of this post. But the matter is so grave that I cannot shut what I am seeing out of my mind altogether and remain no more than a passive, mute spectator and, thereby, a party to this plunder of India.

As we sit in the comforts of homes and theoretically debate, unaffected and from a safe distance, whether India faces a grave threat from Maoists whose writ already runs in varying degrees in 160 districts across eight states, we forget to notice that the real darkness, the real danger is right where each one of us is, in every corner of the country, and that most of us are actually responsible for it, one way or another. Just saying that lifts a burden off my soul and makes me feel good about myself. But, it does nothing to lessen the increasing and already unbearable load that we have placed on the soul of India.

We are the Khaoists, the incorrigibly corrupt, the shameless plunderers, the reckless looters who are hollowing this country from within. With gay abandon, as though it is our birthright. Many of us will, naturally, not admit publicly to being Khaoists, but as even a fool knows, only eunuchs and men of extraordinary virtue and character can stay away from the pleasures of a harem if they live there. Both are hard to spot these days. Many of the rest of us are India's shame. We are pushing India into an abyss at a furious pace because we are in a tearing hurry to catapult to riches with the nation's wealth, the money that should have fed, clothed, educated and empowered more than half of India's population that is still mired in the grime of inhuman poverty because of our unbridled, unprincipled ambition and greed that does not think before snatching a morsel from a hungry mouth, that conveniently shuts its eyes when it sees another doing so out of fear that it may spoil our party, disrupt our good life. Not one of us is blameless here.

I am feeling enervated. So I will leave you to go through some words of a few of those who live in and/or are fully cognizant of what goes on in the Khaoist's core. Make sense of what they are trying to say - and hide - and then decide for yourself whether there is hope yet, whether anyone can pull India out of this vortex at all before it is too late.

• Barkha Dutt. As a political journalist, I have to confess, that I am almost shock-proof when it comes to the entrenched corruption of many of our netas and the deals they strike to keep the wheels churning.
• Rajdeep Sardesai. We live in the age of institutionalised corruption. From politicians to judges, from senior bureaucrats to policemen, from corporate tycoons to petty officials, everyone it seems has a price... ‘paid news’ is not an overnight phenomenon that began with election ‘packages’... A political candidate who pays for favourable media coverage is not guaranteed victory, a corporate house through a ‘private treaty’ is almost guaranteed lasting immunity against journalistic ‘objectivity’...has led to a near-total breakdown of rules and standards.
• Tavleen Singh. At some point around the end of the eighties...everyone seemed to suddenly want to be in politics...the lure was filthy lucre. Indian politics had become the quickest way to make a fast buck...jewels from Cartier and Bvlgari, watches from Piaget and Patek Phillipe and handbags and shoes that cost more than an MP earns in a year.. grand mansions and hugely expensive vehicles... some travel only in private aircraft. The real money disappears into various corporate efforts that on the surface can look very legitimate. In almost every political household these days, there is at least one ‘corporate prodigy’... who thrives in the cloistered boundaries of crony capitalism...The sums we are talking of are so huge that they are beyond calculation.
• Shekhar Gupta. Like conquerors of the past, India’s politicians love to rule, and plunder cities... In older times, cities attracted conquering hordes who wanted to sack them for their riches. Now, in democracies, the political class knows that while their votes lie in the countryside, the real money sits in the cities and their real estate...If the new Andhra can get over the loss of Hyderabad, use what it gets in compensation and its own enterprise to build a new capital city...its politicians will figure soon enough that the money-making opportunity a new city offers is much greater than an old metro nearing saturation, howsoever energetic.
• Sagarika Ghose. (on Twitter) sad truth is media is too tied to advertising. That's why when it cos to corporates our lips are mostly sealed. not a good business model. profession has become terribly degraded. am very disillusioned! i joined in early 90s when press still meaningful.
  

Are Barkha Dutt and others really "shock-proof" to corruption? Their silence and thereby complicity applies only to corruption at the highest levels where the sums involved "are beyond calculation." Where petty officials and petty amounts are involved, where a cop taking a Rs 100 bribe is concerned, these guys aggressively carry out sting operations and confidently con the nation into believing that they are sparing no efforts to expose corruption and clean up the rot. Why this Janus-faced approach? Can they even begin to claim that they have remained "temptation-proof", not just for big bucks but entry into the inner circle of India's most powerful - and corrupt - politicians, whose reflected power enables them to almost 'terrorise' those on the lower rungs of political ladder with an arrogance that you will not see anywhere else in the civilised world?

Is it surprising that Shashi Tharoor can stand in the Lok Sabha and say with a straight face that it is ideals that brought him back to India after over three decades abroad and a failed attempt to become UN Secretary General, and despite the stench of corruption and nepotism emanating from him in the IPL scandal? Is it surprising that politicians are saying that the media, babus and judges rank much higher than them when it comes to graft? As the hastily buried and till now not denied allegation about the manner in which Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi negotiated to get the current Raja of corruption the telecom portfolio indicates, and as is also evident from what you have read above, at the very top, corrupt politicians and journalists are like Siamese twins. Had it been otherwise, corruption would not have become the uncontrollable bush fire that it has.

I can say no more. I know this is a poor, illogical, abrupt way to end an article. Perhaps I should take a break and come back to finish it with a flourish. But why? Why should I pretend to be "shock-proof" to this pervasive rot and close this piece too with detached objectivity, when my mind is filled with a numbing mixture of revulsion, anger and helplessness at what Khaoists have done and are doing to my country, the way they are plundering its future to make their own? I think it will be best if your comments complete this unfinished story, if possible with hope.
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Previous related posts:
1. Shashi Tharoor: making a 'difference'
2. Politics and media: a new nadir
3. ND Tiwari: much more than a sex scandal
4. Covering up the mother of all corruption scandals
5. Conspicuous consumption and conspicuous poverty
6. Sink sting operations that stink
7. Capital punishment, not gain, for the corrupt
8. Corrupt, colonial India faces volcano
9. As long as there is aloo corrupt will be Laloo
10. Modi and Reddy: the choice is clear
11. Maytas: truth inverted, greed is king
12. 1000 times President's salary for India's babus
13. Tarun Tejpal: extra God and the Devil
14. Wake up (poem)
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ND TIWARI: MUCH MORE THAN A SEX SCANDAL

Narayan Dutt Tiwari, one of the old war horses of the Congress, has finally been sent to the stables, horseshoes removed. At the ripe old age of 86, he has revealed a streak that tells the world that the land of Kamasutra has not lost its vigour and more behind closed doors. But, more than that, he has reopened the debate on whether private lives of politicians should be open to scrutiny.

For decades there has been an unspoken understanding between the media and politicians that their private lives will not be hung out in the open for all to see. The standard argument is that what they do in their bedrooms is nobody's business. No one can fault this line about privacy. Indians are largely indifferent to this aspect of the demeanour of India's politicians since nothing really damaging about them has ever been revealed by mainstream media. But all that may change now, thanks to a Telugu TV channel, ABN Andhra Jyothi.

ND Tiwari's romps with prostitutes - a thrice a day routine, according to some - in the Raj Bhavan has graphically highlighted that the media has failed to perform an important national duty. A man who has been a cabinet minister in the Central government, Chief Minister thrice and now Governor, has been doing this and more for decades. Why did the media not expose him for so long? Why did his colleagues in the Congress, as well as politicians from other parties, overlook this streak in him?

Do our law makers not have an obligation to abide by the laws they frame and expect all Indians to follow or face punishment? If Raj Bhavans and other government bungalows are being openly used by politicians to entertain themselves and their friends with call girls and social birds, then why should the media carry out sting operations to round up the latter up only when they are plying the same trade with ordinary Indians elsewhere? How can the real breaking news remain no news and the insignificant news be routinely treated as breaking?

Let us take the case of Tiwari. Firstly, it is impossible that he would have paid for his daily 'exercises' from his own pocket. All expenses would have been 'adjusted' under some head or the other of the tax payer's money. Second, it is a given that as CM and Union Finance Minister, he must have been provided with - even demanded - top-quality call girls by business houses, contractors etc to get undue favours out of him. Third, it is very likely that on more than one occasion in life, he would even have been blackmailed into taking important decisions against his better judgment and the interest of the state. In short, probity was an immediate casualty. And remained so for many decades.

I am not willing to believe that the media is innocently unaware of these and even more far-reaching ramifications of private lives of political leaders. Yet, it chooses to look the other way. Why? Is it because they are all naked in the same hamam? Is it because the media wants to, in the case of politicians alone, go by a value system that some leading media stars personally live by? Why is it that, along this dimension, they do not blindly ape standards set by the US?

Permissive Americans are surprisingly moral when it comes to their leaders. The reason, as we all know, is straightforward. They expect those who lead their nation to possess the strength of character that they believe is required for the job. A man who breaks the trust of his wife cannot be trusted to not break that of America. It is not about sex. That is one reason why the brilliant Bill Clinton nearly got impeached. That is why so many Presidential candidates have withdrawn from the race in the past when a girl friend or mistress has been discovered. We are not even talking prostitutes.

ND Tiwari is not the only politician who has been breaking the trust of India's people. There are many others. The fact that India's media has continued to shield them while conning the nation with the fodder of stings in dance bars and other seedy places, is something that is equally, if not more, disturbing than than the acts of politicians.

The speed with which Tiwari has resigned and the manner in which the Congress has quickly taken the high moral ground, after a half-century of being in his bed, should leave no one in any doubt about the kind of behaviour that is expected by India from its leaders. Had it been otherwise, everyone would have claimed that Tiwari's sleeping with three girls is not India's business!

But, despite Tiwari quitting swiftly, is anything likely to change? Barkha Dutt sees ND Tiwari only as 'a sick sexual deviant'. Rajdeep Sardesai is actually thrilled that Tiwari has proved that 'life begins at 85!' More importantly, Dutt continues to see this as only a sex scandal, questioning still whether mainstream media should cover it. Sardesai admits that Tiwari's predilections were known for long but claims that 'so long as it didn't affect his public duties, it wasn't an issue'!

Who are we kidding? Is it ever possible to so surgically separate the public from the private? Is history not replete with instances of sex being used as an extremely powerful strategic, political and business weapon, often to settle near-intractable issues coercively? Given how corrupt India's political leaders are - Shekhar Gupta calls them plunderers - are we to swallow the manifestly dishonest line that they have kept their sexual escapades away from their public duties and decision-making? Are we to shut ourselves to the clear and present danger of such behaviour carrying within it the seed of disaster along any number of dimensions?

God knows what price India has already paid because of this indulgent looking away. There will undoubtedly be much more to pay if things continue this way. It is time for the media to wake up, shed its blinkers and start looking at the private lives of netas from, among other things, a national interest and security perspective. This is not something that can be frivolously dismissed as just a sex scandal or a personal matter. The private faces of politicians need to be scrutinised in great detail and compared with their public ones. Unless that is done, it will not be possible to ensure that a mismatch between the two does not lead to serious consequences for the nation.

THE VARUN STING: WHO IS NOT PLAYING THE COMMUNAL CARD?

Rajdeep Sardesai, the CNN-IBN father of the Varun Gandhi sting, has written a column, "The other great-grandson", in the Hindustan Times today, saying that "we must not allow Varun to get away". Seemingly stung by the fact that the grandson of Indira Gandhi has joined the opposite political and ideological camp, Sardesai appears to be one of those many "liberals" who want to ensure that this potent family challenge to Rahul Gandhi is crushed at the very first step. That is why, the points raised by Varun Gandhi in his defence about the communal situation in Pilibhit have been summarily dismissed by him in one line: "With a substantial Muslim population, Pilibhit has a history of communal trouble". That is it.

So, what Rajdeep Sardesai is telling the nation is that wherever there is a substantial Muslim population, communal trouble should be accepted as a reality by the nation and nothing can be done about it. Speaking about it is communal; keeping quiet and letting things deteriorate is proof that you are secular.

Varun Gandhi has given out some details of the "provocative and communal" incidents that have taken place in his parliamentary constituency and the environment that prevails there:

• Slaughtered remains of cows have been found in various homes
• Thousands and thousands of people from the Hindu community have been placed under arrest under the NSA
• Three temples have been vandalised in the block where he is supposed to have given that speech
• Village pradhans have been threatened daily
• Quota shop owners have had their quotas cancelled
• There is widespread fear that arms are being smuggled into ghettos in this sensitive border area to be used against India
• The Hindu community is in a siege in its own country

No one can deny that, if true, these are pretty serious developments. If false, then Varun Gandhi should be exposed for being a liar too, in addition to being a hate-mongerer. But, no one in the media has spoken about them at all. Rajdeep Sardesai, in fact, touches upon only one issue in his column: "If Varun today seeks to revive the cow slaughter issue, it should be seen in a specific historic context". He, in fact goes on to obliquely justify cow slaughter saying that in 1930, before the country was partitioned, "resolutions moved in the Central Legislative Assembly to ban cow slaughter had sparked off violence in the region". So, as per Sardesai, the intense Hindu sensitivity to cow slaughter must be slaughtered so that Muslims do not resort to violence. Perhaps the beef-eating Sardesai does not know or does not care that Hindus have been protesting against the killing of cows for centuries.

Not surprisingly, Sardesai and his channel CNN-IBN are totally silent on all the other points raised by Varun Gandhi, giving rise to the belief that there is truth in what he is saying. Their one-point agenda is clear: ensure that that Varun Gandhi poses no challenge politically to Rahul Gandhi, India's Crown Prince, as Rajdeep Sardesai always calls him on his channel and in his columns. That is why Tom Vadakkan dismisses Varun's claim of being a real Gandhi by saying that there are millions of Indians with that surname, while Abhishek Manu Singhvi calls Varun's, not Rahul's, Gandhi tag a mere "accident of birth"!

Vir Sanghvi is widely known to be close to the Gandhi family and the Congress party as a result. I wonder what he will have to say about this controversy. But, he is perhaps the only mainstream media personality who has so far spoken out against what is is increasingly beginning to look like the raj of fanatic Mullahs in the guise of secularism. In a column titled "Stand up to the mullahs" in the Hindustan Times of February 21, 2009, he says bluntly but truthfully "The real reason we give in to Islamic fanatics is...cowardice." Is it any surprise that former ISI chief Hamid Gul also feels the same way about India's response to the proxy war that his country has unleashed on this country?

Sanghvi believes that the fanatics "have identified the cowardice at the heart of our liberalism". What Sanghvi does not say but a lot of people know is that in addition to cowardice, they have also identified the utter dishonesty at the heart of our secular politics. It is a combination of both that gets TV channels like CNN-IBN to become part of political conspiracies to promote politicians and political parties in such a blatantly one-sided manner.

Is this selective pillorying of anyone who speaks for Hindus secularism? Is this relentless baying for the blood of Varun Gandhi really the voice of a truly liberal and impartial media and polity?

There is no doubt that Varun Gandhi went over the top in uttering a couple of words for which he must apologise and be admonished by his party. But, is Varun alone in playing the communal card as his vociferous critics are alleging? Are those who are willfully completely silent about the aggressive communalism of fanatics that provoked him into making those speeches not guilty of playing an even more dangerous communal card?


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ELECTIONS 2009: SANGH PARIVAR OR CONG FAMILY?

Elections are around the corner. The largest democracy in the world is soon going to enable Indians to elect whoever they want to send to the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament. Hopefully it will be their vote and not political machinations that will decide the next lot of politicians who will rule India.

On the face of it, Indians are spoilt for choice. There are any number of regional and national political parties to choose from besides a whole lot of 'independents' who contest elections on their own. Most of the latter fight elections in the hope that the mathematics will fall just right and their support will be vital for forming the government. If that happens, then they not only recover their election expenses but also take care of future expenses for a couple of decades, if not generations, within days of getting elected. KBC in real life, umeed se kai guna!

Notwithstanding the muddle, the real fight, despite Mayawati, is between the Sangh Parivar and the 'Cong'ress Family. Can't call the latter 'Parivar' because Hindi is to be used only for uneducated desis - remember how panties became chaddis for Muthalik? - and not for the 'pucca sahibs' who control the Congress; they don’t like to call even Bombay by its official name!

In 2004, most opinion polls had predicted that the Sangh Parivar led NDA would be voted back to power. In the event, the unexpected and total rout of Jayalalitha in Tamil Nadu and and an unforseen below-par performance of the NDA primarily in UP saw the Congress cobble up a post-poll alliance called UPA and claim 'victory'. Which one of the two groups is going to make it in May 2009?

CNN-IBN has kicked off the prediction game with an extensive nation wide poll. The first part of the program based on the poll was telecast on February 16, 2009 and the remaining parts will be aired through the week. Watch them all if you want to, but know that you are going to be no wiser than you are now about what the voters really have in mind. After going through all the data and discussions in the first program hosted by Rajdeep Sardesai and Yogendra Yadav, the only thing that is clear is that nothing is clear.

It is worth mentioning here that, as per the poll, of the issues that will matter most in deciding whom to vote for, economy and inflation tops the list for 32% of the people. Significantly, national security and terrorism is next for 21% of them. There is something here for sure. During the discussion, both N Ram and Vinod Mehta gave the UPA almost full marks on both theses issues. But that was expected.

Does the aam admi share their opinion? Will he be influenced by it or any such opinions aired on English channels?

The most stunning piece of information that has emerged from the poll is that almost one in three Indians (28%) have not heard of Mumbai 26/11. And these are not people living in, say, Walong in Arunachal Pradesh, leading to the deduction that the actual percentage will be higher. The high level of unawareness of such a huge incident that has been in the headlines for so long tells us something about how many people would be aware of other 'hot' issues that agitate some of us in the cities.

This not only gives an indication of the reach of the complete media but also shows that the reach of the English media is really very small. That is why it neither reflects real pubic opinion nor influences it in any significant manner, notwithstanding the fact that it sometimes tries to swamp the nation with an issue or an opinion, and makes it appear as if it is the real voice of India.

That is why those politicians who co-habit with this section of the media or use it to promote themselves and discredit their opponents remain disconnected from the masses, and repeatedly keep missing the bus they desperately want to catch. All of them perhaps forget that they are not in the UK or the US where the English media is the media of the whole country, not of a microscopic few who mostly don't even vote.

In fact even for a vast majority of Indians who know English, it is the Hindi and regional language media that really matters. Those really few who belong solely to the 'English speaking world', as Barkha Dutt had once described those like her, are electorally and statistically completely insignificant, except in less than half a dozen constituencies.

In 2004, 48% of those who took part in a similar poll wanted to give the NDA government another chance. Now, 45% want the UPA to continue. The picture now is almost identically in favour of the ruling combination as it was then. Does that mean the the UPA will romp back to power like the NDA was expected to, barring an unforeseen hiccup? Or is the voter hiding something to surprise us all when he actually casts his vote?

"The mood of the nation is something of a mystery. No body knows what people are thinking at the moment. No body knows how they are going to vote." This is how Vinod Mehta summed up the results thrown up in the survey after making valiant efforts to beat the Cong Family drum during the debate.

Everyone has been chastened by what the voters in Kashmir Valley showed a few months back dramatically and what voters in other states have been demonstrating in varying degrees over the past few years. No one knows which issue will catch their imagination and which will repel them, as the Hurriat found to its horror after having led the fiery agitation on the Amarnath land issue.

The bottom line, I think, is that voters can now discern between a politically motivated agenda where they are the fodder rather than the focus, and a sincere one which is truly meant for them. Is that not why the NREGA and the loan waver schemes have yielded no returns for Rahul Gandhi? Is that not why Narendra Modi's decision to not grant waiver of electricity dues to lakhs of farmers worked in his favour and did not prove politically suicidal as all seasoned analysts had predicted?

Do either the Sangh Parivar or the Cong Family have a defining program that sincerely tells the aam admi that it is for him and not for his vote? You know the answer. That is why nobody knows the answer about the program that the aam admi has in mind for either of them on Election Day!
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LOOKING FOR INDIA'S OBAMA IN HARVARD!

Barrack Hussein Obama’s vertical rise from nowhere to within striking distance of the White House has mesmerised the whole world and changed many unfavourable opinions about the US almost overnight across the globe.

It was a little more than three years back that Obama became only the third African American in a hundred years to get into the US Senate, and the only one at that time. Even then, this unknown man from nowhere was being spoken about as a possible candidate to run for President in 2012 or 2016. But here we are in 2008, awaiting his ascendancy to the most powerful office in the world already! His vision of an America not “pockmarked by racism and fear or led by politicians born into privilege and coached into automaton”, and his embodiment of the “authenticity” in politics that he believes people are “hungry for”, have most unexpectedly got him where, in the beginning of the campaign, no one gave him even an outside chance of getting. Not against Hillary Clinton.

Obama’s dream run has predictably got the imaginations of Indians going in all directions.

Rajdeep Sardesai, in an excellent post in his blog at ibnlive.com has correctly analysed as to why the Indian political system is not amenable to even the idea of an Obama suddenly emerging from some dark, even lit, corner of the country to claim the top job. The oldest and biggest political party, Congress, as he has rightly observed, has become the property of one family which alone is entitled to that slot. The other major national party, the BJP has thrown up only two big leaders in Vajpayee and Advani. That, I believe, has a lot to do with the almost ‘family-like’ stranglehold that the RSS has over the party.

Regional parties have been throwing up Obamas at the state level every once in a while. But, in most cases, all such political outfits have morphed into family owned enterprises like the Congress. I must hasten to add that the term ‘Obama’ is being used only in the context of the speed of rise of these individuals from obscurity. The beliefs and the level of integrity that Obama epitomises are not even in the frame.

Shashi Tharoor, who writes in the Sunday edition of the Times of India, has a totally different take on the rise of Obama. In his column of June 22, 2008, Tharoor takes great pains to emphasise the ‘continuity’ element in Obama’s rise by stressing the fact that out of 12 nominees for President of both the Republicans and Democrats in the last 20 years, 10 have graduated from either Harvard or Yale. Obama has graduated from Harvard Law School.

Tharoor skilfully cites these outstanding educational attainments of US Presidents to support his unstated belief that these have a direct co-relation with the equally outstanding leadership skills required for leading the nation. Then he laments that we in India are “saddled with politicians of, to put it mildly, considerably lower educational attainment”, and that products from India’s better colleges and universities do not go into politics. Of Indian colleges, he can recall only the one to which he went, St Stephen’s, and the two career diplomats and one lawyer from that college who are now politicians. He then goes on to say that India needs more politicians from such institutions “as India seeks to carve out a place for itself in the 21st century world.”

A Delhiite who was even earlier disconnected from real India, Tharoor is apparently mentally still living in the US where he spent long years. That is why he sounds like an American who wants to summarily transplant the American experience in India, arrogantly believing that he knows all there is to know about India.

Harvard, Yale, Stanford and the other Ivy League institutions of excellence do not disconnect Americans from America. They are American institutions built from a scratch by Americans for America. Their alumni talk in the language of ordinary Americans and can therefore connect with them seamlessly. But that still does not guarantee excellence of leadership and clarity of vision. President Bush has degrees from both Harvard and Yale. Look at the double barrelled mess he has made in eight years of Presidency!

India’s elite colleges and schools are exactly the opposite. They are meant for English speaking Indians living in their own almost-in-the-US islands in the metros, far removed from real ordinary Indians who make up more than 90 percent of the population. Most of those who graduate from these colleges cannot speak local languages properly and cannot relate to or understand the fears, motivations and complex societal dynamics of ordinary Indians.

The few who do join politics at some stage, hesitate to get their hands dirty in the heat and dust of real India, except as political gimmicks which even the dumb can see through. Since they can neither understand ordinary people properly, nor do they arrogantly care to, they do not like to enter politics except at a comfortable hierarchical level far removed from the grind of real grass root politics, the kind that real leaders revel in. And to get that magical entry, some will descend to the lowest depths of sycophancy and grovel more unashamedly than even an illiterate native ever will. They are not real leaders at all, nor can they ever be. This is something they understand pretty well even if they don’t admit it.

In any case, when far better overseas options are available from these Ivy League feeder institutions, where is the incentive to get into politics at the entry level and confront an almost alien countryside full of ‘natives’? These days even the English media is a better bet. Better even than the Left: heady power, no responsibility to the people, plenty of money; all permanently available, no matter who is in power!

Obama is what he is not because he is from Harvard. He is the Obama we know and admire because he and his wife Michelle have lived through the traumas and difficulties of being ordinary blacks in white America, and still risen through it all with positive energy, hope and an inclusive vision that has caught the imagination of the whole of America, indeed the world. Shades of Mahatma Gandhi?

Notwithstanding Obama’s scorching rise, let us not forget that he is the first ever black nominee of a major political party for President. He is only the third black in the senate in 100 years. And he is where he is not because he is black but despite being one, mainly because of the charisma that his starkly honest people-connect generates, dissolving his colour and the Hussein in his name almost completely. Another Obama may well not happen to the US for another 100 years, Harvard/Yale notwithstanding.

India may not have yet produced any Obama at the Prime Minister’s level. But we can be justifiably proud that at state and even senior national levels, India has a far better record than the US in democratically picking up leaders from many disadvantaged sections of the society. Even women have risen to all top political posts, without facing the kind of discrimination that they possibly still do in the US, notwithstanding their Ivy League resumes.

A Prime Ministerial Obama cannot emerge in India out of established political parties, given their rigid power structures and hierarchies, as long as the present multi-party system of parliamentary democracy exists. Freak political scenarios may catapult political lightweights into the PM’s chair. Charismatic leaders elected primarily on their own steam will, however, have to move gradually up the ladder and then just hope that circumstances conspire at just the right time to give them that critical final push into the final chair. Otherwise they will have to remain content in the shadows.

Sardesai is somewhat right when he says that Mayawati is the one Indian politician who comes closest to embracing the Obama principle. But, like Tharoor, he betrays some ignorance of India’s politico-social dynamics when he says that had she been “fortunate enough” to go to Harvard, she could have created “a new counter culture that is truly Indian(unlike the Left) and truly revolutionary(unlike the Congress)." To create a truly Indian counter culture you need to go to Harvard? That is something that will surprise even that great institution!

How would Mayawati have gone to Harvard in the first place? Before anything else, she would have had to have a very good command over English. To do that she, a dalit, would have had to go to a fine English medium school, where she would have been probably in a minority of one among upper castes. And then she would have to get into a very good English medium college too, again probably in a minority of one. In all these years of education, she would have got increasingly disconnected from the real dalits who live in the villages of India, and would in all likelihood, have lost all appetite to work for her Bahujan Samaj.

In any case after Harvard, she would hardly have wanted to come back to India to re-live her dalit past among dalits. Finally, even if she did want to become the dalit leader of the unprecedented power and mass following that she already commands, the Bahujan Samaj, which would have felt completely disconnected from her acquired mannerisms and language, would not have accepted her unquestioningly as its leader, like it has done now. Net result? She would have joined the Congress, in keeping with the culture of that party, and gradually dissolved into oblivion.

No one knows yet who will be India’s Obama. It could be Mayawati. It could even be Modi who some believe will beat anyone today in a straight US type fight for India’s top job. May be it will be someone no one has yet heard about.

Whoever it may be, one thing is certain: India’s Obama will not, should not, be found in the hallowed precincts of Harvard/Yale or the like. He/she will emerge from the soil of India, quite like the IITians who are erupting from small, unheard of places and even more unheard of schools and colleges. With the experience and understanding of all the disadvantages and struggles which many of us only hear or write about. And with the brains which many of us think are to be found only in a few places. And, hopefully, with the profound wisdom of this ancient land that many of us in the cities have totally forgotten about.
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DR ALL-OF-US & MR HYDE

Gujarat was one ‘Tehelka’ too many.

In March 2001, a Tehelka sting operation had shown a few top BJP and NDA leaders accepting bribes from journalists posing to be defence suppliers. As a result, though everyone knows how congenitally corrupt most of our politicians are, the BJP’s claim of being ‘a party with a difference’ took a deadly body blow. The media went virtually berserk in hounding the ruling combine for being corrupt and pulled out all stops to successfully ensure its defeat in the next elections.

The recent Tehelka sting operation on the Gujarat riots was even more dramatic and damning, so thought the bright team which had conceived it. When it was aired, the expected media cacophony began in right earnest. They all thought that, finally, they had got Narendra Modi, who was described in words that made great listening and reading.

The creators of the latest ‘soap’ completely forgot that the ordinary man had not forgotten the 1984 anti Sikh carnage which was led and encouraged by the Prime Minister himself. He already knew what the tapes had shown. This was not a simple, moral case of politicians taking money under the table for personal gain. The effect of the sting was, therefore, exactly the opposite of what had been anticipated by a hyper-creative think tank living in its own world.

On November 01, 2007, CNN-IBN for the first time connected the Gujarat and Delhi riots, and asked whether the Congress was as guilty over the 1984 riots as the BJP in Gujarat. In the SMS poll conducted by the channel, an astounding 93 percent said ‘Yes’. By a strange coincidence, a new book on the riots, ‘When a Tree Shook Delhi’, has also been published. This book exposes the role of top leadership of the Congress party and “indicts the guilty in chilling detail”, as Sagarika Ghose put it in the program ‘Face the Nation’ on CNN-IBN. and

The fallout of the public opinion revealed in the SMS poll has been dramatic. Many media luminaries and analysts, who were all ready to tear Modi and the BJP apart for the Guajrat riots in the name of their pet term ‘secularism’, seem to have lost their pens and their voices. They cannot hide the Congress party this time. The Tehelka of Gujarat has suddenly become a major liability, even an embarrassment, which now needs to be discarded and completely ignored, lest the BJP benefits from it even more.

What is even more disturbing than the dumping of Tehelka by the media is the manner in which it has chosen to ignore the shocking revelations made in the new book on the 1984 riots. Does it need any intelligence to know as to what they would have done by now had Congress leaders not been involved?

Rajdeep Sardesai is perhaps the only leading media personality who has questioned the difference in ‘our’ (media’s?) sense of outrage with respect to the 1984 and 1992 riots, even when the culpability of Rajiv Gandhi is a recorded fact while that of Modi is yet to be proved.

Writing in the Hindustan Times of November 9, 2007, Sardesai believes that the Congress escaped public censure while Modi has not, because the television media was virtually non-existent in 1984. Sardesai, like others within and in proximity to the media, tends to mix the real ‘public’ with these few.

The stark fact is that the real public never blamed Rajiv Gandhi for the reactive mania that overtook sanity in 1984. It was quite to the contrary. The same goes for Modi. The more the statement attributed to Modi, “Hum badla lengey”, is telecast, the more he will strike a deep-rooted historical chord somewhere, much like Rajiv Gandhi did in 1984. It is this much delayed realization that has led to the discarding of Tehelka as a weapon to beat Modi with.

That is why no one is talking of the 1984 riots. They have become hyphenated with those of Gujarat.

Deep, centuries old faultlines and prejudices haunt Hindus and Muslims, as Sardesai has mentioned. These need to be tackled and healed with understanding and a sense of responsibility. Unfortunately, our politicians think of little beyond vote banks. Mainstream English media does not seem to understand societal dynamics beyond the metros, a weakness which is mainly due to the cultural and educational background of those who gravitate towards it.

That is why there is almost an obsession with a weird type of ‘secularism’ which, paradoxically, instead of acting as a unifying social agent is creating newer faultines while deepening and widening old ones. Tragically, those who are propagating this are not even aware of the damage they are causing, comfortably ensconced as they are far, far away from the society they are harming with their influence.

Dr Modi is not the only one who is a Mr. Hyde, as Sardesai suggests. Mr. Hyde lurks in all of us, to surface when circumstances so demand. It is worth recalling that there was a certain Mr. Jinnah who led the bloodiest division of a country in the history of mankind. What did this very Jinnah, who had said that Hindus and Muslims cannot live together, have to say after he got his Pakistan?

This is what he told Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947, even as mass slaughters were going on outside “…in course of time all these angularities of the majority and minority communities, the Hindu community and the Muslim community, because even as regards Muslims you have Pathans, Punjabis, Shias, Sunnis and so on, and among the Hindus you have Brahmins, Vaishnavas, Khatris, also Bengalis, Madrasis and so on, will vanish. Indeed if you ask me, this has been the biggest hindrance in the way of India to attain the freedom and independence and but for this we would have been free people long, long ago. No power can hold another nation and specially a nation of 400 million souls in subjection; nobody could have conquered you, and even if it had happened, nobody could have continued his hold on you for any length of time, but for this. Therefore, we must learn a lesson from this.”

Is it not strange that in the ‘secular’ India that Jinnah left, but envisioned in Pakistan, we have not learnt the lesson Jinnah spoke of, and are collectively reinforcing the very angularities that led to our subjugation? Who is responsible for this? Multi-party democracy copied unthinkingly? Petty politicians blinded by lust for power? Rootless Indians dividing the society even more in the name of un-understood ‘secularism’?

In Pakistan, Dr Jinnah lost and Mr. Hyde prevailed. In India too, the same will continue to happen periodically, like it did in 1984 and 1992, unless we look to build an India like the Pakistan of Dr Jinnah’s dreams.

For that to happen, we have to first learn to rise above our petty, and often destructive “tu-tu, maen-maens”, and begin to unite rather divide Indians. Only then can we hope that the good Dr All-of-Us in us all will continuously prevail over Mr. Hyde.

My previous posts on the riots can be found here.