The conspicuous absence of union human resource development and telecom minister Kapil Sibal — hitherto the prime-time spokesperson and trouble-shooter of the Congress party and the Congress-led UPA-II coalition government at the Centre — from English language television news channels and chat shows in which he was a standard fixture, is an indicator of the extent to which this poster-boy of the Congress has fallen in the public esteem, and from grace within the ruling party.
When Sibal was promoted to the high office of Union HRD minister in 2009, his appointment was greeted with universal approbation. And in his new and vitally important ministry, he got off to a flying start becoming the first minister to draw up an ambitious blueprint for the reform of Indian education. But since then his over-sized ego has got the better of him, steadily eroding his popularity. Despite being a legal luminary, several Bills of the ministry have been criticised by his own party members and stalled by Parliament.
Moreover, in a now infamous televised interview relating to the 2G telecom spectrum allocation scandal, which according to the comptroller and auditor general of India inflicted a massive revenue loss of Rs.176,000 crore upon the national exchequer, Sibal argued this was a “zero loss” as it was “notional”. On another occasion, he failed to hide his scorn for social reformer Anna Hazare’s campaign for installation of a Lok Pal or ombudsman to fight pervasive corruption in government. And latterly, Sibal in an interview to the New York Times advocated censorship of social media networks (Facebook, Google, Twitter etc), to win brownie points with Congress president Sonia Gandhi who is being increasingly lampooned in the social media. This more royalist than the queen initiative earned Sibal an Outlook magazine cover, depicting him with a trademark Adolf Hitler moustache.
Quite patently Sibal, who during his long and successful career in the legal profession has no track record of reforming — or attempting to reform — the rotting legal system from whose built-in iniquities he has earned a vast fortune, has a very high opinion of his argumentative skills. But it’s high time he realises that his hair-splitting legal skills don’t cut ice with mainstream politicians and the public, who have seen through his too-clever-by-half defence of corruption in government and the bureaucracy. Hence the decline and fall of this once-shining star of the Congress party.
Nothing personal
Even though it’s common for print media editors to routinely rubbish and dismiss television news channels, the anchors and managers of the country’s half a dozen English language — and therefore national — news channels need to be given credit for having mastered the art and technique of packaging news as entertainment or ‘infotainment’. But television is a high risk medium as the time available for reflection and response is much less than in the print media. Nor can sympathetic anchors edit out embarrassing faux pas and statements made by interviewees on live television news broadcasts.
The hazard of agreeing to participate on live television debates which have become an established feature of daily news telecasts, was highlighted in a debate conducted by Times Now anchor Arnab Goswami on the Jan Lok Pal Bill on December 19. In the course of the debate, Mumbai-based columnist and litterateur Anil Dharker, expressed doubts about the “intellectual capability” of Anna Hazare. Despite Goswami giving him several opportunities to retract his statement, Dharker dug himself in deeper by insisting that he had made a mere observation, nothing personal.
But on closer examination, it seems Dharker’s observation was based upon the modest form rather than formidable substance of Hazare, a former army truck driver turned die- hard social reformer. For one, after his retirement from the army, Hazare returned to his impoverished village Ralegan Siddhi, Maharashtra and engineered a water conservation and harvesting-driven socio-economic revolution which has transformed it into arguably the most prosperous village countrywide. Moreover Hazare has had the wisdom and prescience to identify corruption in the Central, state and local governments as the prime impediment to India’s failed national development effort, and has assembled a formidable coalition of experts to write a detailed draft Lok Pal Bill to rid the country of the corruption scourge.
All this requires considerable intellectual, organisation and managerial capability. In comparison the achievements and demonstrated capabilities of Dharker — a friend of many decades — pale into insignificance. Just an observation, nothing personal.
Rogue cops menace
Although these days the violent and anti-social mores of members of Parliament panicking at the prospect of an independent Lok Pal bringing them to book for their scams and shenanigans looms large on television and the print media, the reckless and self-serving conduct of state level legislators also needs rigorous scrutiny. For instance in the southern state of Karnataka, which according to Transparency International (India) is India’s most corrupt with a reputation worse than Bihar and Uttar Pradesh for routine bribe demands and official extortion, the incumbent BJP government is turning a blind eye to the multiplying extortion rackets of its rogue police force, all set to rip off the citizenry in the New Year season.
Last year, following public and media outcry against the increasing incidence of drunken driving accidents in Bangalore, in a fit of righteous indignation the state government raised the minimum fine for drunken driving in this city, from Rs.100 to Rs.2,500. Inevitably, this great leap forward in punitive fines isn’t applicable to habitual offenders such as politicians, bureaucrats or their progeny, who freely run amok in the streets of the garden city in lethally fast cars. There’s an unwritten social contract that they are exempt.
The prime victims are lay citizens who even when they consume minimally permissible alcohol in this metro awash with liquor, are at the mercy of mercenary traffic cops who routinely insist motorists are over limit and extort massive bribes correlated to the enhanced penalty.
Quite obviously the state’s distracted legislators are innocent of the knowledge that the pre-condition of condign punishment is a clean police force. Therefore for many citizens of the garden city — including your modestly abstemious editor — it may not be a Merry Xmas and Happy New Year.