Forces Of Calumny

Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. (Hamlet, 3.1.129) – Shakespeare.

NDTV and CNN-IBN simply couldn’t have expected events that unfolded. When a carefully cultivated line of thinking and campaign goes terribly wrong it leaves one wondering which way to jump. Throughout August 17 as the Anna Hazare stalemate continued NDTV could only think of calling it a ‘circus’. Barkha Dutt kept tweeting about Alice In Wonderland and how this is all mad. Her late evening programme sported the tag line ‘protest or blackmail’ and an hour prior, Nidhi Razdan started her Left, Right, Centre by once again calling the event a ‘circus’. I couldn’t help laughing at the irony. When Barkha Dutt rushed to Egypt and Libya she didn’t find those events to be circus or the world of Lewis Caroll.  To Rajdeep Sardesai’s CNN-IBN, of course, must go the credit of inaugurating mud-slinging season. When a prominent news channel like CNN-IBN undertakes brazen mud-slinging it starts emboldening the forces and faces of calumny. The three stooges that were the faces of Congress in the entire Anna Hazare episode pretty much reflect the combined faces of calumny spurred by some in the TV news media. Rajdeep and Yogendra Yadav would be delighted to know how their recent opinion polls confirm everything they are seeing on the ground now. Oh yeah, if elections were held today the UPA would be voted back to power! That's what they would have you believe. And, of course, their poll suggested that only 28% believe UPA is corrupt. Will the truth ever set these media dealers free?

Faces of Calumny

Things didn’t go wrong on August 16. They went wrong on the night of June 4 when a peaceful crowd was lathi-charged in the middle of the night. I had then written that ‘Chidambaram, Sibal and Soni were the ones to have hatched the Anna arrest. But the people already knew that by now. What is worse is having a PM who has more or less abdicated his responsibilities and received a severe pasting from opposition leader Arun Jaitley.

The Congress and many in the media have tried desperately to spin these events as ‘parliament v street legislators’. Even that has failed. If the intellectuals in the media haven’t realised yet that no matter what Anna or Baba or Bedi do, they simply cannot make a law, the ordinary people are under no illusion. The best they can do is fast, agitate and protest. After the murder of journalist J. Dey did the media not demand special protection laws? Did they not demand that crimes against journalists be made ‘non-bailable’ offences? Is that not demanding laws that they want? The laws that Anna Hazare demands may be different but it’s not different in principle. He just seems to have more determination and the will to die for it. Fact is, journalists were demanding special privileges whereas Anna is not demanding any special privileges. But, that’s OK, people demand all sorts of things.

The most striking feature of the debates on TV is that people like Mahesh Bhatt, Nandita Rao, Rahul Kanwal question the wisdom or intelligence of ordinary people. I’m not kidding, here’s a tweet from Rahul Kanwal:

Rahul Kanwal:

Quite certain protesters don't understand finer nuances of Anna's bill. Doesn't matter to them. They're livid with Govt over corruption.

Finer nuances? Alright, I can laugh but the media morons wouldn’t understand nuance if it kissed them in broad daylight. What they hide is that the crowds are just as angry with the media as they are with the politicians. I can safely vouch for the fact that there is not a single lawyer or constitutional expert who knows everything that they talk about. What they talk about is a common-sense stand that they take. These opinionated egos of media might be under the impression that every MP even reads every bill that is passed. Ordinary people just have a boiling point. They keep watching the crimes of those in power and when it reaches a crescendo they will come out and fight. They don’t need to read law books before coming out on the streets as some of our stupid media dealers seem to desire. And a man like Mahesh Bhatt believes without cameras the Anna Hazares would disappear. Without a camera it is the Barkha Dutts, Rajdeep Sardesais, Sagarika Ghoses, Rahul Kanwals, Arnab Goswamis who would have had to choose a different career and would be consigned to the bin of the thousands of unknown journalists. Bhatt’s statement is like an idiot cursing the very gift by which he earns his livelihood. Same goes for the media dealers who claim protests would die without the camera. This is the same belief that leads them to believe that they are indirectly the most powerful law-makers in the land. An offence they accuse the street protesters of.

Rahul Kanwal shouldn’t assume people on the streets are dumb. If he offered them a choice to listen to a moral sermon, between Anna Hazare and Barkha Dutt, I’m certain even Kanwal knows who they’d pick. And Hazare isn’t the cacofonix on TV screens every night. All said and done it is not Anna who has lost his sense of decency. The media should ask the PM if he has lost all sense of decency and let loose his ministers to take the actions they did. I doubt you need a constitution or law to tell you what common decency is. After all, the Ten Commandments didn't include rape or child-abuse. Common human decency helped us learn that.

In all this, conspicuous by their absence from the media are M/s. Hit and Run. Yeah, both Digvijay Singh and Rahul Gandhi must have run out of silly statements. The media must be dearly missing the crumbs that this duo is used to throwing at them. Tarnishing RSS doesn’t seem to be paying anymore. In Gujarat,  Gandhi is a name used to refer to the corner-shop grocer. That’s because Gandhis are traditionally grocers. There is a reason why Gandhi cared to understand ordinary people. The Gandhi-grocer is the one who interacts with ordinary people almost every minute of his working day. That someone like Rahul walks around with the name of Gandhi may not be his fault, but there is a reason why he has a severe disconnect with the people as does the media. And the most stunning comment on the man came not from his detractors but his ally in UPA-I. It was Brinda Karat of CPM, who for the first time sarcastically used the term ‘prince charming’ in parliament to describe the white-wash that the Congress attempted to make in the bungling of the Hazare incident. The Congress and media attempt to credit Rahul Gandhi with diffusing the crisis failed miserably. We had one great Gandhi who is now in heaven. We don’t need fake Gandhis in our parliament.

The PM who stupidly talked about ‘skeletons’ before the current parliament session is now warning Anna Hazare of consequences. His lack of decency and miserable failure as PM is embarrassing for the whole nation. When he indirectly condones the sacking of the nation and then lets loose his forces of calumny the nation looks for leadership. In the absence of a leader they found one in Anna Hazare. In less than 12 hours they have made him a national, and probably international, hero. This is a time to be humble. If the PM cannot find his own conscience then a Janlokpal bill will not be the only thing that the protesters will demand.

The Official Indecency Act

I would have liked to quote an Indian MP, but I couldn’t find a speech that is close. But here are excerpts from a famous speech to the US Senate in 1950, called the Declaration of Conscience speech (in blue),  by the late American senator Margaret Chase Smith

It is strange that we can verbally attack anyone else without restraint and with full protection and yet we hold ourselves above the same type of criticism here on the Senate Floor.  Surely the United States Senate is big enough to take self-criticism and self-appraisal.  Surely we should be able to take the same kind of character attacks that we “dish out” to outsiders.

I think that it is high time for the United States Senate and its members to do some soul-searching—for us to weigh our consciences….on the manner in which we are using or abusing our individual powers and privileges. I think that it is high time that we remembered that we have sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution.  I think that it is high time that we remembered that the Constitution, as amended, speaks not only of the freedom of speech but also of trial by jury instead of trial by accusation.

Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism:

            The right to criticize;

            The right to hold unpopular beliefs;

            The right to protest;

            The right of independent thought.

The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood nor should he be in danger of losing his reputation or livelihood… The American people are sick and tired of being afraid to speak their minds lest they be politically smeared as “Communists” or “Fascists” by their opponents.  Freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America.  It has been so abused by some that it is not exercised by others. The American people are sick and tired of seeing innocent people smeared and guilty people whitewashed.

There are those in our government and our media who follow an unwritten law. The Official Indecency Act. Chief among its practitioners are Congress spokesmen Manish Tiwari and Digvijay Singh. In the media you have the likes of Nandita Rao (CNN-IBN panelist) and again another Congressman V. Narayanaswamy. It does not take great intelligence to recognise these personalities as some of the most foul-mouthed people in the public domain. Yet the media delights again and again in putting them on your screens and in your drawing rooms. The filth that follows is unbelievable. The worst is character assassination, smearing and tarnishing of reputations and of course frequently calling others RSS agents and fascists, anarchists and Maoists.

Media doesn’t get to choose the spokespersons of the political parties. Yet they can choose who they invite on their panels. A Manish Tiwari maybe the Congress party’s choice. There is no need for the media to choose him on panels unless they deliberately enjoy the theatre of the foul-mouth. Same goes for those who invite the likes of Nandita Rao or Narayanaswamy.

In the current Anna Hazare stalemate, when asked if this was like the Emergency of 1975, Ram Jethmalani replied on CNN-IBN, that it is even worse. He explained that a court order had dethroned Indira Gandhi, there was a threat of her losing power, her government falling and therefore declared Emergency. But the current UPA is facing no such threat of any kind and yet chose to act in the most indecent and arrogant manner that any government in a democracy could. At the top of the pile is a Prime Minister who is simply lost and has proved to be the worst measure of lack of leadership.

So we had three stooges, P. Chidambaram, Kapil Sibal and Ambika Sonieloquently explaining how the government was not involved in the Delhi police decision to impose sec.144 and bar Anna Hazare from holding his hunger-strike and then making a preventive arrest. The arrogance and audacity with which they mislead the nation and attempt to whitewash their wrongs had to be seen to be believed. And then you previously had those that called Hazare an anarchist, a fascist and much earlier Ramdev was called a ‘thug’. What have these crooks taken the people for?

This was backed up by foul-mouthed media experts like Nandita Rao who has problems with Anna Hazare dictating terms on the Lokpal bill. There are also others like Tavleen Singh and some more. Now the issue at hand is first not the Lokpal bill itself. The issue has now turned into deliberately and illegally arresting individuals and denying them their right to protest. And the piety with which the three stooges defended the 22 obscene conditions imposed on Anna Hazare for the protest can only be described as a mockery of our constitution and mockery of our democracy. These people who cite our constitution, law and order are usually the ones who frequently abuse it. Many should remember that Ambika Soni herself has the Emergency to credit for her rise to prominence.

The Digvijays and Tiwaris have really gone a step too far in calling the agitators fascists and communal and being funded by invisible right-wingers. Fingers were pointed at pictures of Bharat mata or chants of Vande Mataram as proof of anti-nationals and right-wingers being involved in the protests earlier. Seriously, pictures of Bharat mata or chanting Vande Mataram are symbols of anti-national right-wingers and fascists? This time the scandalous crime that the Congress has tried to perpetrate has failed. Their propaganda stooges in the media have failed. No matter how much spin they tried, the NDTVs and CNN-IBNs failed.

The concept that parliament is the supreme law making body is certainly not misplaced. But the law makers need to be guided by ordinary people and not vested interests. The rulers in a democracy cannot rule without the consent of those being ruled. The one vote every five years is not a blanket sanction to pass any and all laws. It is particularly NOT a sanction to indulge in corruption and loot the nation. When that happens, parliament surrenders its supremacy and ordinary people must intervene. When that happens people power will definitely prevail over parliamentary authority. People power will definitely prevail when governments do what they have not been authorised to do by an electoral mandate. Corruption is one of those. What vote or what constitution has authorised our government and our MPs to indulge in such unprecedented corruption?

Those who call Anna Hazare’s demands for the Janlokpal as street laws are simply foolish. In a democracy every individual or group has the right to demand a law or demand the removal of a law. It is for the government of the day to discuss, negotiate and arrive at sensible solutions. The behaviour of the current PM is all the more reason why he should be under the Lokpal, but that is an altogether different issue. He should have stepped up and said “I am the Boss, and I will talk to you”. He did not. The people will then need to show the government who the boss is. Why only PM, I want even the media brought under Lokpal. One can prove any day that our media is not only corrupt that it is also a frequent law-breaker. Anna Hazare and company have not held railways, roads, buses and airlines to ransom or held up normal life to ransom unlike many other agitations have. To deny them the right to protest with absurd conditions and then arresting them is the last resort of a frightened, fascist government. And the government must and always should fear the people and not the other way around.

To back up their indecent and foul-mouthed statements, the Congress has now backed it up with indecent and unconstitutional action. If peaceful protests are drowned then violent ones are likely to follow. This UPA is quite clearly the most corrupt and dangerous government this nation has ever had. The media should also learn a lesson now that all their propaganda will not help when people power takes over. They need to really play the role of the watch dog. Foul mouthed politicians and activists should not be allowed an excessive platform in the media. The official indecency Act must die.

Ad Nauseam

Stop Illegal Advertising!

 In my post ‘TV Pop-Up Ads: Fraudulent Invasion of Privacy’ on January 4, this is what I wrote:

“...TV channels must be free to make money during their commercial breaks. No one would grudge that. However, they should not be allowed to make money on your time. That’s the time you are paying for. Viewers should start sending complaints to the Ministry of I&B to ban this fraudulent and invasive practice. I have doubts if Ambika Soni is ignorant of these malpractices. In the US the increasing of sound volume during commercial breaks by TV channels is banned. Scrolling commercial ads, pop-up ads or button-banner ads that invade you during programs you paid to watch should also be banned”

It appears the illegal practice is far worse than it appears. A watchful reader (Georges) wrote to me about the legal time limit specified for advertising on TV channels. According to reports the maximum time allowed for commercial advertisements is 12 minutes for one hour of programming. There can be hardly any channel that is not violating this norm gleefully. This is particularly alarming in case of news channels which are supposedly the watchdogs. Greed and absolute greed is the only driving force behind our media. TDSAT (Telecom Disputes and Settlement Appellate Tribunal) had sent a notice to the I&B Ministry in January 2011 seeking an explanation on this violation of Cable Television Rules.

The Tribunal's direction came over the plea of an NGO 'Utsarg', alleging violation by all leading broadcasting houses and channels by exceeding the limits of the commercial timing in their TV programmes.  (Business Standard). Much of the issues raised in my post on January 4 have also been covered in the petition by this NGO. And rightly so. It is time to protect the rights of the viewers.

The I&B ministry recently finalised new rules and guidelines that will become laws for the print media and are framing more laws for the digital media as well. Laws apart the ministry doesn’t really seem interested in enforcing any of these laws. Don’t be surprised if the next scam comes out from the very ministry that is supposed to regulate the media. Some ministries like Home, Finance, Telecom, Aviation are flamboyant by nature. The I&B ministry may not be that flamboyant but it certainly holds the same potential to generate as many scams as the others. Don’t wish for it!

TVS Wego - Mental Imbalance!

The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) is a toothless organisation governed by corporate advertisers and agencies themselves. Thus, bad advertisements will continue to spam your TV channels endlessly. The new TVS Wego campaign is one such exercise. Some young females dancing or doing aerobics on two wheelers without helmets is not exactly a great model for your kids. All this is supposed to indicate ‘body balance’ of the vehicle. Sure, body balance supported by ‘mental imbalance’! Of course, don’t forget our advertisers simply love criminals. Salman Khan was dropped by CocaCola after the court conviction for killing protected animals and for the drunken hit and run incident. He should be in jail but he is happily in your face everyday doing dangerous stunts for a Pepsi brand. Far from expecting any ethical practices from advertisers and TV channels the least we can expect the regulators to do is to enforce basic laws and rules. The 12 minute commercial ad limit per hour must be enforced. The entertainment channels can pass off these ads. Why should news channels support such advertising?

Whether its body balance or mental imbalance, it sure is Ad nauseam!