Its leaking! And its leaking everywhere!
Overseas, in the country, in the city and even in my house, I got an errant flush rectified before I moved in! Mumbai experienced rains at strange times of the year this time. Maybe a result of a leaking tap somewhere up there, if not due to the detrimental effects of global warming as discussed in my last post.
Nationwide, leakage of a completely different type has been in the news off late. The Niira Radia Tapes leak has kept everyone in the country interested; and some even amused. The tapes reveal Ms. Radia spinning her corporate / political lobbyist web over all top dogs of Indian politics, business and even the fourth estate. Conversations with Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi are especially very explicit and expose the connivance of the media in the unholy nexus of business, politics, babudom and crime. As a young boy, I used to admire Prannoy Roy from the time of his 'The World This Week' days, as a pioneer in news coverage. Further on, his election news coverage was also path breaking. Naturally, I carried forward the same respect to his media house, NDTV, for all these years. Barkha Dutt and her 'error of judgement' has eroded that respect. Not only for NDTV, but for all of Indian media. Interestingly I saw Peepli (Live) today, in which Aamir Khan Productions has given a lot of credits to NDTV, strangely, in a film which mocks the media and its greed for the 'next big thing'. It will take me a long time to regain confidence in the media and its independence. As of now, I just can't get the image of them as the power broker and agent out of my mind. There is no question of whether what Barkha Dutt / Vir Sanghvi have done is right or wrong. It IS wrong.
In other parts of the world, another big time leakage is making big news. Wikileaks and Julian Assange have taken the world, especially the cyberworld by storm. The release of classified information, exposing the big boys of all kinds of wrong-doing, has actually triggered a cyber war. The United States of America has been at the receiving end of most of the classified cables which have been released by Wikileaks. Interestingly, it transformed itself into a 'Ku Klux Klan' type of propaganda machinery, with Ms. Clinton and Ms. Palin coming out strongly and denouncing Assange and Wikileaks. US based servers have off-loaded the website; payment mechanisms to the website have been stopped and the hence now the website itself is off the web. Assange himself has been arrested in UK on flimsy charges of rape (actually having consensual sex without condoms!). A group of Assange admiring hackers have taken on the might of US and started retaliating by hacking into many sites which supported US action.
The question that I beg to ask is: What is right and what is wrong in this whole series of events? Is Assange the villain or the hero? Is he the symbol of the right to freedom of speech or a crook who has accumulated classified information to be used against countries? I am in no doubt that the original thieves of these classified information would have been Americans themselves and are on the wrong side of the law. Is Wikileaks also on the wrong side of law by buying the information (from the capitalist thieves of a capitalist country) putting it in front of the world? Maybe yes, but a whole lot of people out there obviously do not feel the same way and consider Assange to be a crusader. In the same vein, is Niira Radia wrong in what she has been doing? Maybe not, she is just doing her job for which she is paid. The true criminals are the people who entertain her.
I have to however say, that after hearing the transcripts of the Radia tapes, Ratan Tata definitely comes across as someone who is not comfortable with this lobbying business. There is nothing in the tapes to suggest that he was party to anything unethical. He can only be accused of one thing, which is, hiring Niira Radia in the first place.
Thank heavens for that! My goodwill for the House of TATAs remains intact, Rajeev Chandrasekhar notwithstanding. But then that is another chapter of the same story.
Take care!
6 comments:
I like it when you say, the respect we all had for Mr.Pranoy Roy. The soft spoken, intellectual must now be seriously re-assesing his opinion on the so called 'Glorified' correspondent. I think, media in a country like us (an infant democracy) should be regulated. But who can regulate, how will they and how to regulate the regulators. I feel, deeply crestfallen, this dirty situations. On the contrary, I beleive, Julian assange is doing what he likes and what he is good at. I don't see anything immoral in his activities. US talks about the release of Hu Liu in China. Now, I would like to see which country is going to support the release of Assange . . .May be Ecuador ?
Or Cuba! :-))
Cheers!
Suresh
Your views on Prannoy Roy and TATA are very synonymous to mine too, a special thnx to Ratan for that. "Corruption" continues to acquire its real sense in India as it has always been but reached superlative levels after the current political scenario and the associated events. After this, I guess "lobbyist" would have been the most googled word in India over the last few days. Blood sucking parasites in the name of politicians, God save India. To start off or end off "Currencies" should first of all be international(ized).What say??
Interesting point of view, Nalini. What do you mean by currencies should be internationalized and how will it help? Can you elaborate?
Actually, I said that to address the lust for economic power and money at a global level. Also by saying " internationalize currencies" I did not mean the current practice of it where all the emerging economies desiring to replace US dollar with their own currency....
I meant that universally there should be a single currency to trade ((it's just my personal opinion and might seem a fantasy as well) which in turn would eradicate the distinct line of poverty and richness and also threats to economy across the borders of countries(for eg.,the one b/w India and China). If something like that happened a middle class man would not dream of buying a property in Swiss,UK or US...in fact, no categories of low, middle and high class in economy which solely would depend only on the intellectual wealth. When currency is universal so will be the new protocols to be abided by 1 n all.
Am I making any sense??? ha ha...
Thanks for the explanation, Nalini. It is definitely an interesting idea.
Cheers!
Suresh
Post a Comment