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Socialism is immoralProtest the quota systemEnd entitlement benefits for freeloaders Support the death penalty for terrorists and anti-nationals Resist "Global Governance" |
| FAKE STINGS AND SECULAR GAMES: | |
| The deep rooted conspiracy to subvert the political process [link] |
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Monday, November 29, 2010 |
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BARKHAGATE: What's up with Barkha Dutt | |
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* * * EXCLUSIVE: Barkha Dutt's response to hitherto undiscussed tape * * * The 110 odd tapes that have been released from the cache of about 5000 contain conversations with or references to dozens of journalists. But none have taken the issue to heart as much as Barkha Dutt has. She has taken the battle to the front lines - engaging directly with her social networking fandom, responding with a sense of righteous indignation. This is however at great variance with her TV channel - which continues the blackout till date. Unfortunately for Barkha Dutt, her online responses combined with continued blackout on TV has raised more eyebrows than the tapes actually did. For instance, RCR being the OB van etc. We have no way to confirm this but people speculate RCR is Race Course Road (PM's residence). Someone suggested journalists sometimes refer to OB vans by their location. Since the issue has been discussed endlessly, both on and off TV - we will focus on certain aspects that we feel were not adequately covered. We will use Barkha Dutt's response on NDTV website as a reference. 1. Like Vir Sanghvi, Barkha has also taken great issue that she is being selectively picked for reasons she attributes to personal vendetta. Both have hinted at conspiracies. 2. Unlike Vir Sanghi however, she flat out denies that she was actually asked to pass on any message:
3. Both Barkha and Vir Sanghvi allude to tape doctoring or editing in a manner suggestive of manipulation or outright fraud, Vir more strongly than Barkha:
4. Here we come to the most interesting part - so far all discussions related to Barkha Dutt were based on the tapes released by The Outlook on a single page. These are the tapes that Barkha Dutt bases her response on. But one more tape contains a discussion with Barkha Dutt. Unlike the other tapes, which are dated 22 May, 2009, this tape was recorded on 9 July, 2009:
This tape throws a new light of sorts on the whole issue. From her response, Barkha appears to suggest her conversations with Niira Radia took place only during the cabinet formation, in May 2009. However, this particular conversation takes place more than a month later. Reading this transcript along with Barkha's response throws the latter somewhat out of gear. We were very curious about how did the person Nirmal once saved her life on a plane. So, we reached out to her and this is the response we received:
That's about as far as we got and needless to say we have to take her word for it. 5. Barkha Dutt's claim related to NDTV coverage of 2G scam: It is simply scandalous that we first came to know about the spectrum scam from a blog. Check out the date of the first post on RealityCheck on the subject - December 12, 2008. In her response, Barkha Dutt cites her "consistently hard-hitting and scathingly critical of the ongoing 2G scam and the former Telecom Minister" as proof that she could not possibly have lobbied for the man. We are not saying she did, one way or another - but the issue that we have is with her claim. She provides a list of shows in her response. We provide three graphics below and let you decide whether this is a fair coverage of the largest scam ever (~$40 B) in the country or whether her claim of "hard-hitting and scathingly critical" coverage stands up to scrutiny: (please click on the images for a larger version)   
posted by barbarindian at 11:55 PM Permalink
8 comments
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Saturday, November 27, 2010 |
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BARKHAGATE: When news manufacturers become news | |
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Run, rabbit run - Breathe, Pink Floyd It is telling that much of the shock and awe surrounding the so called "Radia Tapes" aka "barkhagate" involves the news industry and some of its most revered icons. This should really have been a sideshow, the real story is the massive scams and systematic loot of the country and the wholesale destruction of institutions by the ruling UPA dispensation. However, cutting Indian mainstream media down to size was also necessary and somewhat inevitable. Consider the following:
Rasheeda Bhagat writes:
In our view, that is the real scandal of Indian media and journalism. Much of it comes from the explosive growth and extreme visibility of news anchors. They keep getting industry and national awards. They also become part of international junkets and foreign think tanks which wield great influence on policy. They also seem to be raking in crores. As a result, in our aspirational society, where chances of escaping "darkness" without resorting to "white tiger" type tactics is rather thin, they start to seem like demigods. The way the urban white collar middle class teens fawn over these media icons is astonishing, you could strike some of these awestruck specimens down with a rose petal. Indian journalists exploited this factor to the hilt by building loose fan networks by pretending to be accessible. In a society where connections and plugs go their distance, they also managed to coopt so called independent media - a plug for profuse praises for a show or an article. Thus their influence far exceeded the reach of television both in terms of coverage and influence. The gory details in the tapes reveal they might have also exploited their proximity to businesses and politicians to their full advantage, bartering favorable coverage for favors ranging from the trivial to the substantial to the much more serious - possible insider trading tips. Possible effect on Indian Media The "barkhagate" tapes initially had a deer in the headlights type of effect on MSM - when the young and still idealistic Open Magazine broke ranks and went ahead with the story. The OutLook magazine soon followed suit. The impact on the Indian netizens was instantaneous and devastating. Various related topics started trending on social networking sites and continues to trend till this day. After an initial period of blackout, various news channels have started covering the incident - but metering it carefully. Some channels like NDTV, whose star journo Barkha Dutt was among those "stung", continues the blackout. Let's take a step back and look at the media situation in other countries: in the US for instance, journalism commands very poor respect from the public. A recent Rasmussen poll reveals that Americans regard journalism as one of the least respected professions, after their lawmakers and CEOs. In this regard, American public has been pretty consistent over the years. This merely shows the maturity and pragmatism of the electorate, which, needless to say has been a crucial factor in the country's destiny. The second important factor about the US news industry is the dramatic shift of power from organized media towards crowd sourced media. Today, at least half of all Americans consume news from what they consider more trustworthy sources of news - news aggregates, blogs, alt websites and social networks. High traffic websites on both sides of the political aisle not only thrive but increasingly referred to by the MSM itself. Alternate news sites have come up in many countries including Japan, South Korea etc. and act as governors which keeps the MSM honest. The self-evident fact that BarkhaGate must have been powered by not just political detractors but a large portion of Indian netizens, including former fans of Ms Barkha Dutt, gives us hope that at least in the the credibility department, we are seeing a course correction in the right direction. Now every time you read a story or see a TV report, you can not but wonder about the phone calls that might have preceded it. As a matter of fact, this has been an ongoing process - Indian MSM has been slowly losing credibility over the years as this blog post shows - India's trust in media down by 7%. As far as alternate sources of news is concerned, it will have to be seen - we fear that various Congress party affiliated outfits or NGOs might hijack this most opportune moment. This is a battle that must be fought till the bitter end. Beware of lifelong Congress supporters or connected people suddenly claiming to be "disgusted" by the "system" and launching a website - inviting you to be a part of the change etc. Remember, even Tehelka started out as a "free and fearless" website. Look what happened - sample this (if pressed for time, search for "Tarun") and ponder. Next Up: What's up with Barkha Dutt?
posted by barbarindian at 6:16 PM Permalink
3 comments
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Thursday, November 25, 2010 |
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Remembering 26/11 - Missiles, not Mombattis | |
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 Two years ago, a belligerent neighboring country launched a pre-planned, deliberate and deadly terror attack on Indian soil. The attack resulted in hundreds of casualties in our largest metro, at the heart of our financial capital. The Indian response to it was to organize rallies by Left-Liberal secular crowds. With candles in their hands, they insulated the political fallout and prevented the true state of the disgusting rot within our security apparatus from reaching the aam aadmi. Some of those journalists who now find themselves in an uncomfortable situation (aka #barkhagate), carefully metered and steered public opinion. Ever since the attacks, we indulged in a series of comical "diplomatic" moves. The Secular hard left lobby became even more chummy with their "civil society" counterparts from the belligerent country. The offending country received even greater foreign aid and now actually possesses the capability to harm our nation even more. Complicity of certain Indian citizens in the attacks were never seriously pursued.
Above all, we reject any calls for candle light vigil - as far as we are concerned, candles are items with the flame at the wrong end.
posted by barbarindian at 2:33 PM Permalink
6 comments
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Saturday, November 06, 2010 |
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A few thoughts on Micro Finance | |
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This post is about the general concept of Micro Finance as opposed to Micro Finance Institutions (MFIs), although we will also discuss the latter. At the heart of every credit business lies the same and incredibly simple fundamental principle. The lender needs to make a certain amount of money on his loans. In a world with no defaults and no fraud, all loans would bear the same interest rate, adjusting for term of course. But people often default on their loans and there is also considerable fraud. So, when you are paying that high "EMI", you are paying for the next person's incompetence or criminal intent. You are the default sucker. This is the first of the two ironies of the credit business. The second is also obvious - credit is not easily available to people who need it the most, i.e. poor people. Micro Finance was sprung upon us by the UN, NGOs, various do gooders and even some nasty rich turned "philanthropic" type people as the panacea for the latter evil. It came with lofty promises and was duly awarded the Nobel prize too. The story went something like this: Kalavati needed to raise her kids. She did not have sustainable income from the patch of land she owned and lived on. Enter the Micro Finance (the concept). Soon Kalavati is raising chickens, selling eggs, even omelets to day laborers returning from the field at dusk. In short she went from being the poor widow waiting for salvation to a veritable entrepreneur, a bourgeois! How did this magic happen? Simple, someone gave her a loan of Rs. 1000/- and a booklet Chicken Farming for dummies. This story ends nicely, Kalavati even pays back her loan. There are two obvious problems with this story. The first is, how do we know this woman is truly the poor downtrodden widow she claims to be? The second is, if there is a demand for eggs in that village, how likely is it that someone is already not selling them? In short, for MF to be successful, we still need to fix the original problems. MF proponents want to conquer these problems with the help of an army of volunteers or SHGs. With person to person contact, they want to achieve better weeding and also to find unexploited opportunities (chicken farm). The first is easier to achieve with physical verification, but the cost is high and unaccounted for since it is ultimately passed on to the tax payers. The second is extremely doubtful, except under extenuating circumstances. If there are unrealized returns, it will soon be exploited by someone until none is left at all. The fact that Micro Finance Institutions are charging the same high rates as moneylenders proves that accounting for overheads, defaults and after adding the purported benefits of unexploited opportunities, as a concept, Micro Finance is not generating value over what normal economic factors would predict. In addition, much of the nastiness surrounding the rural credit business continues to exist even with organized Micro Finance institutions. We should have opened up the rural credit sector to organized private sector in the first place, but we wanted to protect the rural poor from exploitation. After decades of exploitation, lost productivity and stagnation we finally did open up the rural credit sector but put a pretty weird spin and highly questionable moral tone to it. Isn't socialism just wonderful? Swaminathan Aiyar argues that we should still allow the MFIs to operate even after the "shocking" discovery they can be as heartless as the rural moneylender and the resultant indignation of the social justice wallahs. We agree, there is simply no reason to not let organized and better monitored operators make rural credit when we know that moneylenders can not be stopped anyway. Of course, Mr. Aiyar has nothing to fear. MFIs will emerge as the next big thing in our crony socialistic portfolio. Since much of the action happens away from the chatterati, this business will thrive with politicians staking a big claim to it. The overheads will be passed on to NGOs and ultimately the tax payers. Occasional loan waivers etc. will soon follow, also paid for by tax payers. Village vote marshals will double up as loan collection agents and a win win scenario will emerge for the right people.
posted by barbarindian at 12:52 PM Permalink
3 comments
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