Team Anna - Goodwill Blunting

From the time you learned to read you were probably brought up in the belief that journalism is a noble profession. You were taught about ethical journalism through which facts are brought to you and journalists are obliged to speak the truth. As you acquire wisdom you would have also learned that all that is just as much a myth as the Aryan invasion. Journalism and news media are as much a business as Shoe-making and selling or running a Barber shop. All of it is meant to ‘serve your interests’ as you’d often hear. To put it differently ‘viewer or reader interest’. Believe it or not, ethics and journalism go together as much politics and ethics go together in current times.

Celebs like Rajdeep Sardesai, Barkha Dutt, Arnab Goswami or Sagarika Ghose, Vinod Mehta, Vinod Sharma, Shekhar Gupta and many more are not journalists. They are ‘editorialists’ whose job is to swing public opinion one way or another, which they attempt diligently. Subramanian Swamy even stated that Shekhar Gupta has properties worth over 20 times of his known income and so has to ‘behave’ for Sonia Gandhi. Would any man with any ethics tolerate such a comment? You decide! NDTV even had a prominent tagline: “Experience Truth First”. I haven’t seen that tagline in a long time. Wonder if it went into the garbage can. CNN-IBN tagline says “Whatever it takes”! IBN didn’t stop to think that in normal parlance that can also mean by ‘hook or crook’. Effectively, news media business is only as ethical as a shoe business or a barber shop. Frankly, they don’t give a damn about the viewer or public but only about their paymasters. This is what Team Anna managed well in the first phase and later fell prey to the evil designs of the media.

So what exactly is the media agenda? BRING DOWN any person or group that goes against their paymasters, as simple as that. I am surprised Team Anna doesn’t know this.

During the two-week fast by Anna Hazare in August 2011 there was a ground swell of support for his movement all across India. Crowds waited outside Tihar jail where Anna was held for a few days. Team Anna, as his assistants have come to be known had become symbols of the crusade against corruption. By the time the fast ended they were all more or less heroes in a scam-tired nation. Among the more prominent ones were Arvind Kejriwal, Kiran Bedi, Prashant Bhushan, Medha Patkar and Shazia Ilmi. The media didn’t ‘make’ them (to use a mafia term) but were forced to pay attention due to the overwhelming support of people. It was truly their peak and ever since, it has been downhill.

Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start! When you seethe you begin with Ag-Ni-Vesh! Hmmm! During the first round of fasts at Jantar Mantar in April this is what I wrote on April 10: “First, corruption is a sore wound that hurts all citizens. Anna got it right. Then, it was important to get some honest and credible people into his campaign. So there was Anil Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi (I am not sure I want to put Swami Agnivesh in that league)”. Later events proved beyond any doubt that Agnivesh, a morally corrupt moron, didn’t deserve to be anywhere near the anti-corruption movement. Did Team Anna learn any lessons? Doesn’t look like it. That’s where the problem starts.

A few days ago I watched an interview of Arvind Kejriwal (AK) with Barkha Dutt on NDTV. The chat was so warm I could even call it love and affection. Well, on hindsight I can now say that AK was informed that he was NDTV’s ‘Indian of the year’ award winner. He must have already known and so the interview. Two days later AK does receive that award. That’s the icing on the cake of silly acts by Team Anna. If you are campaigning for a public cause, the last thing you should be doing is accepting an award from a dubious media shop. But that is not where it began.

Kiran Bedi did an impromptu ‘ghoongat’ dance about politicians with a mask during the fast in August. MPs even wanted to prosecute her. People supported her and she was lucky to get away with that silly act. Now, if the entire movement is against corruption and cleanliness in public life why do these people go about giving sound bites about unrelated issues? Starting with Prashant Bhushan’s comments on Kashmir which earned him a thrashing to comments about Sanjiv Bhatt Team Anna simply failed to understand that being in the media spotlight beyond a point can be damaging.

Last month Rajdeep, Barkha  and Rahul Kanwal went on a picnic to Ralegan Siddhi, hometown of Anna Hazare and each did an ‘exclusive’ interview with almost similar questions. Each tried to somehow trap Anna into the questions of RSS, Digvijay comments and so on. Anna bites! The objective of media celebs to support the Congress theory that RSS is evil and any association with it has to be demonised is an agenda set by their paymasters. Anna fell into that trap.

Hmmm! A few days later Sanjiv Bhatt is arrested in Gujarat for some offence and instantly Anna Hazare condemns the arrest of the so called ‘whistle-blower’. So does Kiran Bedi. Who the hell asked you people? Without touching upon the merits of the case to simply support Sanjiv Bhatt because it is anti-Modi is another trap Team Anna has fallen into. Kiran Bedi was so foolish that she failed to grasp the kind of support Modi has. After tweeting and condemning Modi all day long she had to tone down her nonsense on the same day and speak glowingly of Gujarat and her Gujarati friends and so on. Did her tweets delight the media? You bet! And if that wasn’t enough there is always gutter-mouth Digvijay Singh to throw more fuel at Anna. Pretty soon Digvijay V Anna was a street fight that became a joy for the media. Somewhere else AK’s statement of people and Anna being above parliament was widely publicised as “Anna is above parliament”. AK doesn’t seem to have learnt how the media likes to twist mild statements. Each time Anna or his team members opened their mouths the public couldn’t believe these people had become such a dysfunctional group like the govt.

If corruption was the main issue for the group where was the need to talk about Kashmir, Sanjiv Bhatt and more? Did the people give Team Anna a blanket license to talk crap on every issue like politicians? They did not! But that is how some fame in the media leads people to believe they have that license. Each time a member opened his or her mouth the team was eroding the support they worked so hard to earn. Two of the team members who aren’t so prominent have withdrawn because of the manner of AK’s working. Prashant Bhushan’s continuance with the team will bring more damage so he is more or less out. And Kiran Bedi and Kejriwal don't know when to shut up. That’s the problem being in the media. The media simply loves to destroy reputations and groups. Like scavengers they would love to feast on the disintegration of Team Anna. This is something Anna, Kejriwal and Bedi do not understand. The media works for its paymasters who happen to be the target for Team Anna. As on date Kiran Bedi’s flight details, her usage of her gallantry award for discounts is being splashed around by Shekhar Gupta’s Indian Express and NDTV. Maybe she will now understand that the media will do a hit job on her to please their paymasters.

Arvind Kejriwal increasingly comes across as an arrogant, bashful kid. This is what NDTV needed to play on. If the fight against corruption was an award winning effort then an award should have been given to Team Anna. Instead, NDTV picks the gullible AK and bestows him the sham award of ‘Indian of the year’ (jointly with Anna Hazare, of course). Even the Roman spy in Asterix comics couldn’t have done better than NDTV. Job well done! And Kejriwal gleefully falls into that trap. To top it all AK goes all out to campaign against the Congress in the Hisar by-poll. That is another act uncalled for. The three most vocal persons in Team Anna have slowly managed to erode all the goodwill that they have earned. Media is full of reports of cracks within Team Anna. Next time Anna and his team are on the streets they will find how much support has vanished.

Currently, people are sick of the excessive promotion that SRK has undertaken for his movie Ra-One. Seeing his face on every channel 24X7 is a repulsive experience for many viewers. Even SRK’s die-hard fans will admit the excess. Team Anna needs to learn from that. Being in the media too much is self-destructive by itself. And helping the media with controversies that help the adversary is a blunder that novices make. It will take some introspection for Team Anna to analyse what they have lost. It’s called goodwill blunting!

Shekhar Gupta - Doctoring & Nursing The Congress

The title might seem a bit harsh on Shekhar Gupta. Well, there are many sporting events and matches which are inspiring. There are individual and team performances that simply stun and overawe us as a miracle. Above all, there is nothing more enjoyable than an underdog turning the tables on a favourite. That is how Shekhar Gupta analyses UPA-2in his article ‘Decide on the Doctor’in IE, October 1. It sounds like Gupta wants to nurse the UPA back to health. Hmmm, playing nurse, eh?

Okay, so he starts with an analogy and theory of Test Cricket with a team following-on and facing defeat. Miraculously the team following-on wins, and that’s the probability that Gupta applies to UPA2 to put it back together. So here’s his honest theory (Quotes in blue):

“A recovery is not impossible. Some of the most stirring fightbacks in cricket history have come after follow-ons. But team managements and captains have to do something bravely different to make that happen. Like, for example, changing the batting order. Or threatening some irresponsible batsmen with the sack. Is the UPA (or rather Congress) management capable of doing that?”

I completely agree with Gupta there. But first, let me bring him up on some facts about Cricket. As of date, there have been over 2000 test matches played. A team following on has won only on 3 occasions. Alright, so if you think that is not a fair look into the facts then here’s more: there are over 290 matches where follow-on has been enforced and the number of victories by the team following-on still remains 3. So while the possibility cannot be denied, Gupta doesn’t  really examine the theory of probability or past experience in any way.

Two of the greatest victories after follow-on were in 1981 and 2001. In the first, Eng V Aus, an out of form Ian Botham had been removed from captaincy in an on-going series and in the first innings had scored a fluent 50 while his team crumbled. After follow on, even when his team was slipping he scored an amazing 149. In the second match at Eden Gardens, India V Aus, V.V.S. Laxman scored a fluent 50 and then went on to score 281 in the second after following on.  That is as much for statistics. Now let’s really examine how his theories pan out.

One of the most brilliant minds of our times has to be the scientist, Richard Feynman and here’s what he had to say:  “In general we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience, compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is - if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. That is all there is to it.” That was said in quite a different context but can fairly be applied to any major theory like the one of Gupta. It is not ‘decide on the doctor’.. In fact Gupta IS playing the “doctor” himself.

“First of all, the Congress has to decide whether it wants to continue with Manmohan Singh as its prime minister.” Aha! So who exactly does Gupta mean by Congress? The party? The CWC? The Congress parliamentary party? Shekhar Gupta feigns ignorance of the basic qualification required to be a Congress PM, and WHO decides it! The unwillingness or inability to identify the exact person/captain who must make the decision is the first flaw in his theory. Of course, that is easier in Cricket, isn’t it?

“Next, tell Chidambaram, who has been keen to get back to Finance, to wait just a bit, that he will move sideways into his preferred half in North Block as Pranab moves into Rashtrapati Bhavan. That will settle the issue with — and between — these big two.”  So Dr.Gupta’s advice is to gently get rid of Pranab and get the unartful Chidambaram back into finance. Well, this clearly reflects the concern not of a journalist opining but that of a politician playing games. Hmmm! It is exceptionally dishonest not to admit that PC not only needs to be kicked out but also faces serious trouble with the SC sword hanging over him on 2G and a court case on election fraud. Even discounting those issues PC has simply failed as a performer both as a Finance minister and as a Home minister. It has to take an extraordinarily bad captain to retain him unless the merit is ‘loyalty and protecting family jewels’! Ambitious as he may be Pranab is still the one who has fought many battles for the Congress successfully on many fronts. Even L.K. Advani is on record stating in the parliament that he wouldn’t know how Congress would face all its troubles without Pranabda. No mean compliment that! No matter how thorny he might be, only a bad captain would throw him to the Rashtrapati Bhavan just yet. But Dr. Gupta would.

“Who will then replace Chidambaram in Home? Start now, by bringing Sheila Dikshit into the cabinet. S.M. Krishna, one of the nicest, most gracious people you’d meet in politics, has to be most respectfully offered a Raj Bhavan. Sheila Dikshit’s induction will achieve several things. One, you will bring an experienced, true-blue Uttar Pradesh politician, with experience and thick skin, in the cabinet. See how skilfully she handled the CAG report on CWG compared to how many other Congressmen blundered. She would be the first woman in the Cabinet Committee on Security since the passing away of Indira Gandhi, and she would also be the first member from the Hindi heartland in this most powerful body in UPA 2. By next year, she can be a deserving replacement for Chidambaram in Home. Of course, the second benefit would be the end of blood-letting between her and Ajay Maken, provided he is appointed Delhi chief minister. The challenge of winning Delhi for the fourth time in 2013 will keep him busy and quiet."

Okay, I was already under the impression that Krishna was brought into the cabinet from a Raj Bhavan and Gupta wants to send him back to one. Reason? Unclear! So I have to assume that of all in the cabinet he has been singled out as a non-performer and should be rewarded with the Raj Bhavan. Pretty much Congress style isn’t it? And cleverly, Sheila Dikshit must be promoted because she has handled the taints of CAG and CWG smartly. And that itself is supposed to have cleared her of all the taint. Bravo, Dr. Gupta! And no matter what, Chidambaram must return to the ‘old boys club’ as Finance Minister. He has failed as Home Minister and wanting PC as Finance Minister is like asking a bad wicket-keeper to open the bowling.

The rest of Gupta’s article is dedicated to how these shuffles and foot work might help win the general elections in 2014 or 2012, whenever they happen. This is where Dr.Gupta’s analogy with the cricket follow-on fails miserably. He forgets, the follow-on happens in a ‘current’ match and winning it and not about winning or losing the next match. A strong political leader recently said in a rousing speech that most political parties on coming to power get busy with how to win the next election instead of focussing on good governance. I wonder if Gupta heard that speech. I suppose not, but he falls into the same category of politicians who is very concerned about the next election and not the current match on hand. The current match is about returning to good governance, punishing the corrupt and getting rid of the tainted and accused. The one thing Gupta doesn’t dare to question or answer is – should Manmohan Singh remain or not. He leaves that to the ‘party’.  He has recommendations for all others. That’s the perfect doctor prescribing shoulder surgeries for brain tumours.

If you carefully go through his whole article the names of Sonia and Rahul are mentioned only once. That is in reference to the CWC as their being LS members. This is servantile journalism at its best. Dr.Gupta does not dare to even estimate what should be the new role for Sonia or what decisions she must take. He does not dare to question or decide whether Rahul Gandhi should be in the team or the water-boy. Frankly, any discussion on changes, shuffles and foot work in Congress is at best disingenuous if it does not include a discussion on Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. Rahul has, by his own stupidity, proved beyond doubt that he is no PM material. Dr. Gupta won’t recognise that or even deal with the question who should be the PM if not MMS. As for Sonia Gandhi, she is untouchable and out of bounds for him. So for all that his ‘doctoring’ is worth his article only yearns to see Congress remain in power. Politics maybe a game, Dr. Gupta, good governance and country are not.

Shekhar Gupta's Summer Freeze

This afternoon I had posted sermons to the media and the UPA by Rajdeep Sardesai. A little later I was delighted to learn that the question I asked through my post ‘Why is Indian media scared of Sonia Gandhi?’ is a question a lot of people have been raising. Well, that’s because I ran into an article by Shekhar Gupta, Editor of Indian Express and Padma awardee. This one is nicely titled ‘The Summer Freeze’.

Overall the article fairly reflects the mood in the country and is as well written as can be expected from a journalist of Shekhar’s stature. Except that there are few jarring notes, almost bordering on delusional. One cannot help agreeing that appointments to major positions in important government bodies are held up due to the government’s summer siesta. Sensex and markets are battered. I wouldn’t really consider stock markets to be an indicator of anything more than economic concerns of a limited population. Besides, markets act more on sentiments than mere economic logic. Here’s an excerpt:

“The paralysis in the government is matched by the confusion in the Congress party. Its carefully scripted strategy of distancing itself from all government decisions except the most obviously populistic ones has now unravelled and backfired. While the government finally responded to this by suspending all decision-making on anything even remotely controversial, it is the party that is now getting the rap for all the scams, some real, some exaggerated and some……. You can blame the formidable whispering machine of the RSS for it, and maybe you are right, but the clamour over “hundreds of lakhs of crores of dollars” stashed away in foreign banks has a very strong undertone of Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin’.

So you see, the temptation to drag in the RSS out of nowhere in an otherwise sensible article gives away the whole plot. It makes me wonder what the difference is between the Congress and Shekhar Gupta. Next, what does money stashed away in foreign banks got to do with Sonia’s foreign origin? It’s been reported there are many Indians who have stashed away money in foreign banks too. Even assuming that’s an RSS whisper campaign how do you explain Shekhar’s next para?

“The same whisper machine talks of her recent Europe visit as some smoking-gun evidence of a conspiracy to vacuum-clean India’s wealth. The more brazen, like Subramanian Swamy, say so in public: that Sonia and Rahul have gone to Switzerland to sort out their secret accounts, nervous that now their time is up. Over the past three weeks I have been stopped by ordinary people at airports, in shopping malls, at a petrol pump, in a spiritual ashram, at the national athletic games in Bangalore and so on with a question that seems to have become a clamour: why are you in the media so scared of the Gandhis? Why is no one exposing their humongous stash overseas?.... It is all bunkum, of course, and in any case the beauty of Swiss accounts is that nobody needs to go to Switzerland to do anything with them.”

P.G. Wodehouse in one of his novels talks about two train-engine drivers who jumped into the furnace of the engine to escape the oppressive summer heat. It sounds credible doesn’t it? So when Subramanian Swamy says the Gandhis went to Switzerland “to sort out their secret accounts” that sounds just as plausible, doesn’t it? Well for the benefit of Shekhar Gupta I must mention that the remark Swamy made can at best be described as ‘sarcasm’ and at worst a ‘snide’ remark. Ordinary people get it but surprisingly Shekhar Gupta doesn’t get it. So he even goes on to educate us that you don’t have to be in Switzerland to handle your accounts. Funny, lately you don’t have to go to your bank even in India to handle your account. What Shekhar doesn’t tell us is: how in the world does Swamy get to know all this? How does he know about Sonia Gandhi’s movements when all the media bimbos didn’t report it? There were some in the media who were even speculating if Jayalalithaa would meet Sonia in Delhi June 14 when Sonia was blissfully in Switzerland. And Subramanian Swamy is a maverick politician rather than a full-time media person. So at least it establishes one thing clearly – Swamy deals with facts while the Gandhis manage to hoodwink the media.

So all this money stashed in Switzerland etc. is “all bunkum” according to Shekhar Gupta. But that is not the only thing that makes Sonia Gandhi a very suspicious and intriguing character. Here is a write by Arun Shourie, one of India’s finest investigative journalists, (he was with the Indian Express too by the way). It’s titled Annexation Through Technicalities. Some excerpts:

“Sonia Gandhi, without having any known sources of income, has become the controller of one of the largest empires of property and patronage in Delhi. The Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Library and Museum…..It is situated in and controls real estate which, because of its historical importance, cannot even be valued. The institution runs entirely on grants from the Government of India. Sonia Gandhi has absolutely no qualification that could by any stretch of imagination entitle her to head the institution: has she secured even an elementary university degree, to say nothing of having done anything that would even suggest some specialization in subjects which the institution has been set up to study. But by mysterious technicalities she is today the head of this institution. So much so that she even decides which scholar may have access to papers…..

Real estate, only slightly less valuable, has been acquired on Raisina Road. The land was meant to house offices of the Congress. A large, ultra-modern building was built -- the finance being provided by another bunch of technical devices which remain a mystery. The building had but to get completed, and Sonia appropriated it for the other Foundation she completely controls -- the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation. The Congress(I) did not just oblige by keeping silent about the takeover of its building, in the very first budget its Government presented upon returning to power, it provided Rs 100 crores to this Foundation. The furore that give-away caused was so great that the largesse had to be canceled. No problem. Business house after business house, even public sector enterprises incurring huge losses, coughed up crores……The Foundation has performed two principal functions. The projection of Sonia Gandhi. And enticing an array of leaders, intellectuals, journalists etc. into nets of patronage and pelf.

But the audacity with which the land and building were usurped and funds raised for this Foundation falls into the second order of smalls when they are set alongside what has been done in regard to the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts…….This Centre was set up as a trust in 1987 by a resolution of the Cabinet. The Government of India gave Rs. 50 crores out of the Consolidated Fund of India as a corpus fund to this Centre. It transferred 23 acres of land along what is surely one of the costliest sites in the world -- Central Vista, the stretch that runs between Rashtrapati Bhavan and India Gate -- to this Trust. Furthermore, it granted another Rs. 84 crores for the Trust to construct its building….”

The whole article by Arun Shourie makes sorry reading for any Indian.

So Mr. Shekhar Gupta, you see it is not just the allegations of money stashed in foreign banks or payoffs by KGB. There are a whole load of other issues concerning Sonia Gandhi and her family which is not even being reported by the mainstream media, let alone conducting any serious debate on those matters. So the next time someone walks up to you and asks ‘Why Indian media is scared of Sonia Gandhi?’ don’t say “it’s all bunkum”!

The only bunkum around is a cowardly news media.