BARKHAGATE: What's up with Barkha Dutt

* * * 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:

Barkha: AT NO STAGE WAS I EVER ASKED TO PASS ON ANY MESSAGE TO INTERCEDE ON BEHALF OF A PARTICULAR MINISTER OR PORTFOLIO. NOT ONCE, WAS I ASKED TO "LOBBY" FOR A. RAJA. NOT ONCE WAS I ASKED TO CARRY ANY MESSAGE REGARDING HIM OR ANY OTHER APPOINTMENT.

Contrast with Vir Sanghvi: One conversation relates to a call Radia made to me [..] but the problem was that nobody was speaking to Karunanidhi directly. Could I pass this on to Congress leaders? I had no intention of passing along the information but I strung her along and said I would ...

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:

Barkha: "The edited conversations" - "Oh God, What should I tell them", is in fact two separate sentences ...

Vir: They seemed to me to have been doctored (I said so last week in a statement on my website). I then listened to the actual tapes. There were gaps, words had been deleted, whole chunks of conversation had been removed and there was an obvious malafide attempt to cause mischief.

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:

Conversation between Barkha Dutt, Managing Editor, NDTV and Manoj Modi, the right hand man of Mukesh Ambani, July 9, 2009, 4.14.11 p.m [AUDIO]: (Transcript mostly via Indiasreport)

Radia: Barkha, one second, Manoj (Modi) wants to speak to you.

Manoj: Hi Barkha, sorry couldn’t say bye to you yesterday night. Parimal (Nathwani, Rajya Sabha member from Jhakhand) was remembering you yesterday night.

Barkha: Oh, he , he once saved my life on the plane you know. It was nice to meet you, Manoj, kabhi aap ko fursat hoga toh we should meet araam se (whenever you are free we should meet freely), without the crowd.

Manoj: yeah, yeah, we will meet, but Parimal is my cousin brother, I have brought Parimal to Reliance.

Barkha: Reallyyyy!!! I didn’t know that, ohh, I didn’t know that, ohhh.

Manoj: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Barkha: You please give him my regards, aur aap kabhi dilli aaye toh fursat mein, not that you have any thing like fursat, but if ever you—

Manoj: No, no,no, you know I never come to Delhi, but I came only for this ... last night, only for this purpose I have come.

Barkha: It was very helpful Manoj, it was really very helpful. But then maybe main aapke saath ... ( gets disconnected).

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:

Ma'am, could you expand on "he once saved my life on the plane you know" ...

Barkha: ?? is this a scandal, that someone helped me on a plane when i fell sick. for gods sake. This discourse is now absurd

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)

BARKHAGATE: When news manufacturers become news

Run, rabbit run
Dig that hole, forget the sun
And when at last the work is done
Don't sit down
It's time to dig another one

- 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:

• This year alone, NSUI and "Youth" Congress activists indulged in dozens of acts of vandalism. How many did you see on the TV ticker?
• In the past couple of years, dangerous riots occurred in Miraj, Bareilly, Farakka, Deganga and many more places. How many do you recall?
• Based on the coverage of politics, why does it feel that BJP and not the Congress party is running the Government?
• It has been revealed that the Karnataka CM (BJP) used his "discretionary" quota to grant lands to his kids. Subsequently we learn the practice has been around for decades. Why do we learn about this now?
• Should media give equal emphasis to scams worth tens of billions of dollar and those worth a few million?

Rasheeda Bhagat writes:

Readers of the print media and television viewers are strange creatures. Most of them are generous in heaping encomiums on their favourite reporters, columnists or anchors. Despite growing cynicism and scepticism about the media, unfortunately, most people in India tend to take the written or broadcast word as gospel truth. So, any journalist with good articulation skills, flamboyance and a dash of glamour — oh yes, glamour is important in the electronic media, ask the plain Janes and they'll tell you horror stories on this aspect — can catch the fancy or admiration of thousands of followers. (emphasis added)

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?

Remembering 26/11 - Missiles, not Mombattis

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.

• We summarily reject these bogus gestures of the corrupt Indian Government.
• We reject the crocodile tears and overtures of their "civil society", for we find them merely an extension of their corrupt, morally decrepit Military-Industrial-Jihadi complex.
• We reject any notion of friendship, Track II, goodwill, Aman-ki-Asha and any such bullshit.
• We strongly protest ridiculous attempts to connect this with Kashmir or social justice issues by a section of Indian "liberals".

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.

A few thoughts on Micro Finance

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.

Who let the dogs out?

A dog walks past Mike Fennell, president of Commonwealth Games Federation

People are ostensibly upset over the tragic-comic events of the CWG unfold before our eyes. It is a combination of law of averages catching up (foot bridge collapse), the stark reality that socialism simply does not work (dog poo on the beds in the athletic village) and massive levels of denial (the non-terror attack).

It actually took international criticism for our media to actually realize that the village was a dud. Conversely, the message could not be controlled this time since it went beyond the scope of state controlled media. Thus, oh what a a shocker!

Of course the socialists will tell you that none of these matters - a Government that can not build a decent athletic village for a smallish international games meet in its capital city (and Governed by its star CM) can administer a gargantuan scheme like NREGA successfully across the nation.

As country after country, athlete after athlete pull out of the game, watch our media honchos (many of whom actually have a real financial stake in the loot - more on it later, watch this space) scramble for the proper verbiage to tell us that it really is our collective shame.

Exactly how? Aren't we the communal greedy unneeded people relegated to the sidelines while The Crown Prince traipses around the countryside as his Momma the Queen watches over an able bodied administration like a Guardian Angel that sends poor children to school, feeds the hungry and (most importantly) keeps us at bay?

CWG pierces the narrative, it is a peripheral event that will soon be lost to memory and obscured by TV overload. It is the dog that escaped the catcher.

The Judiciary strikes back ....

As usual, the recent Supreme Court order on food grain distribution triggered a deluge of editorials, TV shows and commentary.

What we find interesting is not the order per se, but the curious evolution of the dynamics between the Judiciary and the Executive/Legislative branches of the Government.

The key issue in Indian politics is the regime of ad hoc and unmonitored benefits, as blogger RealityCheck has chronicled on his blog. Ad hoc benefits directed to minorities or "caste" groups, even when thinly disguised by catch phrases like "classes" is de jure unconstitutional. As a matter of fact, a modern Constitutional Democratic Republic (CDR) can not have any incentives tied to social groups. The Liberal Democratic Republic (LDR) works around this problem by secondary activism, whereby pressure tactics and intense propaganda causes public opinion to steer so much as to threaten the functioning of the state.

Compromises are struck and the public is served a full load of BS, by a group of bureaucrats whose key qualification is that they can keep a straight face amid the stench.

Invariably, when CDR trends towards becoming an LDR, the Judiciary conflicts with the other two branches. In well functioning countries, Legislative eventually sides with Judiciary since opposition parties do not want to be railroaded. In other words it balances out. Executive proposes, Judiciary opposes. If executive goes too far out, political opponents exert pressure via Legislature. In other words, in order to work around the constitution, the Executive branch needs to overcome both political as well as legal challenges.

In Banana (or Pasta, if you like) republics, ALL political parties want to create their own social justice groups. Contrary to secular propaganda, even the BJP holds regular Iftaar parties, promises loads of stuff to minorities - thus, in this ruinous journey all parties are but Humsaafars.

In this way, in India, the judiciary comes into direct conflict with the executive.

We saw this come to a head in the apex court during the "OBC reservations in central institutions" issue. After several months of duking it out, the court finally gave in. The verdict had a resigned tone about it which was not surprising, coincidentally during this time the issue of asset declaration of Judges came to the fore. It was clear that the executive was willing to go to extreme lengths.

The current Supreme Court order on grain distribution is interesting because here the court has deliberately trespassed into executive territory by using the biggest trump card in an LDR poker game - social justice for the poor. This has caused much public hand wringing by the Manmohan Singh Govt. It will be interesting to see the moves of the court in the days to come.

Freedom ...

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose ... (Janis Joplin/Me & Bobby McGee)

Hockey Schticks

The general feeling among India's liberalatti (usually also socialists, seculars and staunch defenders of the dynasty) is that goofy editorials can really fix the country. The big disconnect is between what they believe or at any rate want us to believe and what really goes on.

Nothing illustrates this better than the elevation of Vidya Stokes (Age: 83) as the President of Hockey India. This is the ultimate bait and switch for a political outfit that keeps harping about its "youthful" image, albeit one reinforced mainly by dynastic leaders who do not seem to want to grow up at least in terms of responsibility. After a Bollywoodized campaign based on the youthful hockey movie "Chak De", we get a Granny with Indira Gandhi hairdo who likely never held a hockey stick in her hands.

It is easy to see where this is coming from, after all the same house gave us Pratibha Patil, Navin Chawla, M.S. Gill and of course Kalmadi - the latter being a constant on the headlines these days for the comical ineptitude and jaw dropping corruption at the Commonwealth Games.

If Stokes' election wasn't funny enough, the aftermath is downright hilarious. Mainly due to the torrent of secondary criticism after Stokes' election, the machine is now seeking to de-legitimize its own Hockey body! The machine will likely get away with the layer of plausible deniability supplied by a pliant media but we will know forever this wasn't by design - the election was. Why? Because editorials and glowing profiles had already been written and in the momentary loss of coordination between the body and its PR agents, some of them had actually made it to the press too!

Frankly, we do not understand a lot of this, why for instance are there two Hockey organizations, why did the Govt wait until Stoke's election to de-legitimize IH? Why, within hours of his election, the Joint Secretary of IH resigned his post? If it was due to ordinance scams, why was he allowed to stand in the first place? Also, who else are charge-sheeted in the same scam?

The secular party can not have it both ways - either they are fully complicit in this intriguing and distasteful business of empowering loyal members of the extended family or they are so utterly inept that a private body can masquerade as India's official Hockey organization under its very nose.

Maybe we will read some more goofy editorials to find out.

The Socialism Train Wreck

Headley's singing

NEW DELHI: Pakistani American terrorist David Headley has said that Ishrat Jahan, the Mumbai girl who was killed along with three alleged terrorists in 2004 in a police encounter, was indeed a Lashkar-e-Taiba fidayeen.

Sources said Headley told interrogators from the National Investigation Agency that Ishrat, a resident of Mumbra in Thane, was recruited by top Lashkar commander Muzammil who was in charge of LeT's operations in India till 2007. [link]

This one stayed as the third lead story on the TOI site for a few hours, below the wedding story of a cricketer. Now a different story is back as the lead story: Ishrat Jahan's mother seeks Chidambaram's help - and the revelations by Headley is a footnote to it. The latter story has already stayed on the top spot longer than the main story did, on the third spot.

All of us knows just how much attention the Ishrat Jahan "fake" encounter story received in the media. For months, even years, the seculars would not stop talking about it. Given this backdrop, Headley's revelations should have been treated as the most explosive story to break within at least this past week. Yet, the editorial desk decided to run with the most vague and redundant aspect of it all.

Ishrat Jahan's Mom seeking HM's help is hardly news, the family has been all over media, treated as top priority by various national and international human rights groups. They are really the elite "victims", the picture perfect election campaign poster of the Secular Party. In fact, we would not be surprised if they have a hotline to the Home Ministry or something.

Was Ishrat Jahan's demise a result of a "fake" encounter? We are not so sure. The jury is still out on that. Based on TOI's headline football, we are not going to take media's word for it for sure, let alone the word of the so called "Human Rights Activists".

Do we feel sad for Ishrat Jahan? The answer is yes. In this case though, the Secular media and intellectual narrative and high def Bollywoodized victimhood stories are as much responsible as the virulent religious ideology that drives that sort of thing. From what we read, she was likely a smart girl albeit from a family of modest means. She fell victim to the "liberal" spins, those passive aggressive and garbage blogs and webzines. She trusted the only ones she could, and she did not know any better.

Perhaps if she had read this blog, she would have trusted those award seeking vultures a little less. She might have chosen a different path.

So yes, we feel sorry for her, she didn't have to die so some rat continues his sorry fucking race for a Pulitzer prize based on prevarications and wholesale canards.

Terror: Admitted

MUMBAI: An 11-year-old girl, the youngest witness to depose before the court in the 2008 Mumbai terror attack case, was denied admission in a private school which fears that it would become a terror target if she was admitted.

"My daughter (Devika Rotwan) has been denied admission in New English High School at suburban Bandra. School authorities say they may face a terror threat as my daughter had deposed as a witness in the 26/11 case," her father Natwarlal Rotwan, a businessman, told PTI tonight. [Source: TOI Lead Story]

Like it or not, terror has won. People are not confident that the current ruling dispensation can save them from terror attacks. Of course, your local secular honcho will give a different spin to the story. like, for instance how you are responsible for all this. But then again, by now you should get used to it.

Lessons from the Bhopal Tragedy

We belong to a generation that grew up knowing that the man was important, not quite understanding why. Even today whatever little we know about the man is from hagiographic accounts sanctioned and approved by the dynasty. Funny thing is, even the current generation will grow up with exactly the same feeling.

You can run and you can hide, but from there is no escaping the myth making machine. Everything good about India or rather everything that the feudal masters think that the public think are good for them, are stamped with the man's name. So far, this has worked beautifully, India's ignorant masses believe in the mythology.

The Bhopal disaster happened right after the man took over the helms of the country. He would continue to rule over it for several years. After him, his party would continue this rule for several more years. Actually, all this is rather redundant really - suffice it to say the country has been ruled and any dissidents roughshod and silenced by the family to which the man belonged except for a few brief periods of times.

Yet, column after column, editorial after editorial, TV show after TV show discussed anything but this singularly important fact in the context of the Bhopal tragedy. This is no surprise. This is what this group is tasked with. Lying with a straight face and deflecting blame from the dynasty is their primary responsibility.

Every now and then, the nation will be gripped with some grave concern or the other, like hay fever. A few frenzied editorializing days later we will move on to the next topic. In this case perhaps Bihar elections where presumably the myth loses much of its power in transit.

In the end, we are left with an empty feeling. We still do not have any clarity whatsoever on industrial regulations, land acquisitions, accident redressal. A few days ago an airplane belonging to the national carrier nose dived on a substandard runway, killing all but a few on board. Yet nothing since the incident suggests a change in policies that could improve the situation. Bhopal happened over a generation ago.

The only lesson we ultimately learned from the Bhopal tragedy is that we do not learn from past tragedies. The only thing changes is the number of human rights activists, their relative wealth and power and the poisonous fumes coming out of their mouths. Needless to say, we are pretty darn near suffocating as a nation.

Azizul Hawk Molla, vegetable vendor

"The UPA government has been a complete failure in this respect. It has not only been unsuccessful in curbing price rise but also has cut a sorry figure in bringing about useful economic reforms.

"Things were not this bad under the National Democratic Alliance. Poor people's misery never reached this level during Bharatiya Janata Party-led government. Prices of essential commodities, as it stands now, are totally out of our reach.

"I have a feeling that the government wants to eradicate the poor from India. It wants them to die of starvation."

Read the whole series, it is enlightening.

We are guessing the water carriers of social justice and the poverty pornographers are not gonna be amused.

I saw poor people

I felt sad

I wrote about poor people

Now gimme a prize

gimme gimme

gimme

gimme gimme

Hang the man, spare the boy

So, the Indian courts have handed down the death sentence to captured militant Ajmal Amir Kasab. Predictably, the socialists want him pardoned and given the life sentence instead. This is what socialists do, in these matters they are more predictable than Bollywood melodramas. Actually they do these things more for the shock value and future award potential rather than any kind of ideological conviction. They think they are pissing off Hindoos.

Actually, they would be wrong, as a matter of fact they would also be pretty late to the party. We said the same thing more than a year ago.

Among the more idiotic concepts posited by socialists is that since suicide attackers want death, pardoning them would deter future attacks. Let's see how this might play out: not awarding the death penalty to suicide attackers would prevent future attacks because suicide attackers will be afraid that they might live! As you can see, this is not really a symmetric situation.

If you have not figured out the illogic in this, let's spell this out further: the objective of a suicide attacker is not just his own death. That is to say, the definition of a suicide attacker is not a person who simply covets death. If that were the case, they would all just commit mass suicides like the Jonestown cult or something and we would all be happy. A suicide attacker is one who wants to inflict death and injury upon those he considers his enemies (us, in this case) - and in the process he does not care whether he lives or dies.

To summarize, one could argue awarding death to Kasab might not act as a strong deterrent to future foot soldiers of G-Had, and we would agree. But to say that not awarding him a death sentence will act as some sort of a deterrent is juvenile.

As we laid it out in the previous post, the socialists should have thought this through before demanding a civilian trial in the first place. At the time they were basking in the reflected glory of the newly anointed Messiah and started a chorus of how Kasab should get a just trial and not merely thrown to the hounds by a blood thirsty crowd (of Hindoos).

Since the concept of equality so completely eludes socialists, we have to spell this one out too. Once a case reaches the civilian courts, it is out of their hands. Then it will just work its way through the legal machinery. Then the only question to ask is whether another person, say Ram Sharma, would also get the death penalty for spraying bullets on innocent commuters at a train station. If the answer is yes, then Kasab should get the death penalty too and he did. The socialists don't usually get this, since they live in a world of politburos and so on. They think they can change the rules on a case by case basis, merely upon whim. That's why they like China. It does not work that way in a constitutional democracy. They can't demand a sentence dilution just because they like Kasab.

At this point, the best option for socialists is to make Kasab a Muslim folk hero like they did with Afzal. Once that happens he will join the mercy petition queue behind Afzal and live happily ever after. Heck, he might even score a date with a Bollywood starlet.

Coming to what we think is going to happen, we believe Kasab will not become a folk hero, Congress will make sure he does not. They will hang him just before the next general elections trying to score cheap points. They will try to prevent Kasab from submitting a mercy petition at the legal level and in any case obscure the issue. Because if he does, he will have to jump the queue to pass Afzal and in the process make Chidu a bald faced liar. But then again, we already know he is one.

Here we go again

'South Park' and the Informal Fatwa

Our "Liberal" Values - Part I

The torture was so brutal that there were blood stains on the wall of Anu's room ....

The news that dominated the headlines and TV spots for the past few days was predictably the Swamy Nithyananda happy ending case. Since it involved a religion which is every secular person's mission to fix and a movie actress, the case had great tabloid appeal. Prima facie it does not appear any laws were broken. Plenty can be said about the moral aspect of the case but should the secular state get involved? There is an obvious catch-22 in such private sting operations, especially when it involves gross violation of privacy, you can not just barge into someone's bedroom. Yet, the courts admitted a case of "rape and intimidation" against the Swamy. This is a very clever ruse, something tells us the dude called K. Lenin did not think it up all by himself. Maybe it had something to do with land disputes between the Swamy's organization and a powerful regional satrap, who knows?

The point is, we expected our liberals to take a contrarian stand with their fiercely individualistic fearless selves. Alas, as "liberal" journalist after "liberal" journalist wrote about and one rating hungry secular TV anchor to the next discussed the salacious aspects of the case, no one gave the poor Swamy a break. Forget the Swamy for a moment, what about the poor woman's privacy? The sting video kept on running until it was dislodged off the prime slot by the Queen's triumphant appearance post passage of the Women's reservation bill in the Rajya Sabha. What good is empowerment if ladies can't have a bit of private fun on the side?

In any case, titillating as the case might have been, no small animals or little children were hurt in the process.

Unfortunately, the same can not be said about another case that flew past in the minor headlines. No one took any notice:

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A Kerala Christian priest has been arrested for alleged sexual abuse of a minor girl inmate of a hostel run by Orthodox Church at Pothukal in Malappuram district in September last year. The victim is a student of Catholicate Higher Secondary School run by the church. [source: The Times of India]

This is a very serious, big ticket crime, the holy grail of any public prosecutor, and yet:

Father K G Joseph alias Father Habib Joseph was arrested and produced in a local court on Thursday. He, however, was granted bail. Joseph later denied charges. Crime Branch sources said the priest was charged under Section 354 IPC (assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty), a bailable offence.

It is astonishing that a monster who abuses a 14-year old kid gets booked under IPC 354 as opposed to IPC 375. Given the situation, letting the dude out on bail basically means letting him walk free.

Wait, there is more:

Police are also probing the "unnatural" death of the girl's elder sister, who "succumbed" to suspected food poisoning at hostel in October last year. A few days after her death, the 14-year-old class IX student had alleged that she and her elder sister Anu were made to wash feet and massage Joseph and another priest who was a regular visitor to the hostel and that it often ended up with them being sexually harassed.

If you are still shaking your head in disbelief, you are not alone. Yet the priest was booked under a bailable offense. This is what we call outstanding success of sensitivity training of public prosecutors in a secular country.

Further along, we find that the abuse was almost institutionalized and happened with full knowledge of other personnel of the institution:

Though they took up the matter with a nun, she instead of helping, threatened them with dire consequences, the girl had alleged. The two sisters belonging to a poor family of Kelakam in Kannur district thought it better to resign to their fate as otherwise they would have had to discontinue studies. Sixteen-year-old Anu, a class XI student, died on October 24, 2009. Soon after her death her younger sister had told reporters in the presence of her father that Anju was taken out in a car by the second priest on October 21 and they returned late in the night. Anu looked very tired and was crying and didn't eat anything the next day. This infuriated the nun who beat her up, she had alleged.

The systematic, pervasive and almost institutionalized abuse in such institutes happens right under the noses of our "liberal" people, the type whose every other spoken word is "justice". Just a few months ago, the Sister Abhaya case was finally wrapped up after years of legal intrigue. Another sister came out with a tell all book and received little attention. Every now and then one reads these horror stories and shivers, most of them involve a clique of religious leaders, politicians and powerful people. Little girls suffer silently, occasionally the walls carry the stains of their muffled cries .....

Minority Report

Outrage: People enforcing bandh in Khammam town protesting

against a book authored by Macha Laxmaiah on Thursday. [Link]

Move over the anguished, impoverished minority stereotyped by the Sachar report, here comes the newly assertive variety. In Khamman, AP (pictured above), minority youth protested against a supposedly inflammatory book and brought life to a standstill. Special forces had to be deployed to keep matters from going out of control. The Government did not take any chances, copies of the offending book were seized and the author promptly arrested.

In Shimoga and Hassan, Karnataka, things did not end so well. Protests against an article written by controversial author Taslima Nasreen turned violent and two people died in the ensuing police firing.

Alert netizens point out that cars with bumper stickers "KHANS" were noticed in and around Bangalore, it is not clear if it is the effect of the movie "My Name is Khan".

40 year old nabbed for raping minor
Youth gets bail in elopement caseKolkata
Kidnapped girl rescued after chase in Choolaimedu
Moharrum passes off peacefully
Four held with firearms in Uttar Pradesh
Indian workers sold like cattle in Saudi Arabia Stowaway
20 unruly fliers hijack AI flight for 15 hrs
Dawood man held with fake currency
Miracle doc took two govts for a ride
SIMs being misused by Pak callers
Victim gives two versions court acquits rape accused
Man who murdered vagabond held
Four held with 50 kg date rape drug from city airport
Bombay HC upholds ban on Islamic book
Sultan ul Uloom lands in trouble
Vedic case MLA brother surrenders granted bail
Man accused of molesting Jet airhostess lands in custody
Furnish whereabouts of Gulshan Kumars killer
Truck looting Gang of robbers busted
Minor girl rescued from Delhi brothel
HuJI south India chief arrested in Hyderabad
14 year old raped killed in up
Men killed by wife paramour
D company got fake passports issued from Lucknow office
Girl spills beans on killer father
6 with fake currency held
Man behind 1993 train blasts held near articleshow
Ex MLA could face minimum 3 yrs in jail for giving shelter to IM terrorist
Ban on SIMI extended by two years
Cops crack Rs 42 lakh heist
3 town planning men suspended
Wanted accused in 1993 bomb blasts held after 17 years
Indian Mujahideen terrorist sent to police custody
youth arrested for kidnapping raping 15 yr old in mumbai
HuJI man in city for fake notes probe
IM man posed as BTech student to buy ball bearings
Suspected terrorist arrested in
Two suspected Bangla nationals held in Muzaffarnagar
200 kgs of ammonium nitrate 600 detonators seized in Gujarat
Cameras of mediamen snatched by cops
mumbai boy rescued from employer s custody
rapist in ties the knot victim bails him out in mumbai
Ketamine powder seized from Ahmedabad airport three held
Judge to face probe over links with woman officer
First time offenders
jammu and kashmir sex maniac in police net
suspect rider leads cops to robbers
railway cops put lives on the line to catch a con man
Gang of highway robbers busted
Two arrested on rape charges
Rape accuseds bail rejected yet again
Five arrested in molestation saga
Left hoodlums in khaki attack N Bengal village
hubby in laws get 7 year ri for raping woman
haj house imam accused of harbouring terrorists acquitted
al qaeda terrorist arrested in bihar
HC nod for CB plea on Naseer Khan
16 yr old girl set on fire
Delhi serial blasts accused arrested in Azamgarh
Vedic case Court extends Khude bail
hamza handled dawood s ops
shahbaz khan plans to sue airline authorities for maligning his name
sons of deplaned businessman quizzed police do not get any clue
how many female cops do you have Woman Trafficked
fake notes flood wholesale market in and around mumbai
youth arrested for kidnapping raping 15 yr old in mumbai
centre to pardon j and k youth training in pok
boys face 55 cases in four states
indian mujahideen had plans to attack iit bjp cong hqs
2 held with 20 stolen bikes
Three gunrunners held in Palamau
Four get life for kidnapping killing boy
Counterfeiters arrested in Bangalore
MLA aspirant 2 others held for killing tailor
Five held for cheating woman
senior citizen held for rape in mumbai
jealous of ex wife s success lawyer turns into an outlaw
dawood paying crores to ensure own protection
double murder convict gets bail after 8 years
convicted murderer may walk free if dna test is valid
three persons arrested poppy straw recovered in kashmir
11 get bail in Shopian case
dalit woman set on fire for objecting to molestation
Cargo plane lands with AK 47 rifles from Dubai
Constables son arrested for chain snatching
Taslimas article sparks violence in Karnataka 2 killed
2 AI employees suspended for molesting 2 minor passengers
Two more arrested in drug seizure case
10 yr old girl molested in tony south mumbai club
eve teasing leads to mumbai youth s murder
Plucky 7 yr boy survives uncles bid to kill him
Four teenagers arrested for robberies
54 yr old aide of state cong leader detained in german bakery probe
Kerala priest held for sexual abuse of minor
Lover murders pregnant girlfriend in public loo
delhi cop killer arrested in mumbai
molester in south mumbai thought victim was a foreigner
Aftab case judge gets death threat
Man held for fraud

Previous:

Minority Report - December 27, 2009

Minority Report - September 20, 2009

Minority Report - August 2, 2009
Minority Report - May 10, 2009

India's bestest Home Minister evah!

India Inc. appears to be completely enamored by Shri P Chidambaram, who has already been anointed the best Home Minister ever by the secularatti. How quickly we forget that he has been at it for just a little over a year, having taken over the reigns very reluctantly in a politically expedient transition post 26/11. Till date Chidambaram has little to show for other than the creation of ever bigger bureaucracies.

There appears to be little evidence that any serious domestic investigation was even undertaken, if FBI hadn't caught Headley, India's "breakthroughs" post 26/11 would be exactly zero. Despite strong evidence of domestic terror cells in many cities, there seems to have been no attempt to bust these cells. Perhaps one such cell, alleged to be linked to Indian Mujahideen, which in turn is a polymorph of SIMI, may have been behind the recent Pune blast.

Yet, media persons covering the Pune terror attack proclaimed in reverent adulation how Chidambaram had "rushed" from Chennai to Pune and how well he handled the aftermath. This handling mainly consisted of a press conference, held in his preferred style, which is essentially a royal sermon. He does not like to be asked questions, setting the boundaries at the get go. The few he chooses to answer, he makes no attempt to hide his contempt towards the questioner, making hand gestures of impatience, his body language reeking of elitism. He drops recycled cliches ("they have to get lucky just once..") and his fanboys in the media lap it all up.

After Pune, Chidambaram claimed that there had been no intelligence lapses, which is probably true. There had been ample information related to flourishing terror cells in Pune. What was lacking was the political will to act on this information. It is obviously hard to prevent terror attacks, but "you are a sitting duck, too bad" isn't exactly confidence inspiring.

Perhaps what is most astonishing is that even after establishing the much touted NIA, the Pune terror attacks are still being investigated by Maharashtra ATS. Meanwhile there is something brewing with the whole NSA thing.

In any case, minor structural adjustments within the bureaucracy isn't really the job of the Home Minister. A seasoned bureaucrat can pull this through, there is no direct political consequence involved. A Home Minister is supposed to provide vision and handle politically difficult situations. This is where P Chidambaram has so far proved to be a complete failure, sending wrong signals to both fundamentalists and Naxalites.

The Naxalite situation has gotten progressively worse, now we are down to blaming local state governments. One wonders if the said state Governments will be given credit if the situation improves. P Chidambaram himself has denied there is such a thing called Operation Green Hunt.

On the other hand, for someone who insists on taking the secular version of the ministerial oath, P Chidambaram allowed himself to be summoned by an Islamic seminary who then read him the riot act. Chidambaram went with his tail tucked between his legs and then surrendered. A good dog knows his masters. Under P Chidambaram's watch, Kashmir type tendencies has spread throughout India. It started with the student agitations post Batla-house encounter. Conspiracy theories abound yet the Home Ministry remains silent.

If P Chidambaram doesn't wipe off the smirk on his face soon and start showing some leadership, his legacy might as well turn out to be the Kashmirization of rest of India.

15 ...

On February 13, 2010, a powerful blast occurred inside a popular eating joint at Koregaon, Pune. The death toll from the blast has now reached 15. Most of the victims were in their early twenties. There were also scores of people injured, some with visible wounds, some with a scar deep inside ....

Excuse us for this anachronistic post, India has bounced back. We haven't ...

Justice gets a Secular angle

In an earlier post (Justice gets a Social Justice angle), we had discussed how the Secular Govt of India is slowly but surely changing the legal framework to incorporate ideas of social justice into it. A recent Supreme Court judgment not only confirms this, but starts an extremely alarming trend:

Poverty could mitigate crime, even murder: SC

In an order that is sure to spark a debate, the court said poor background of the accused should -- along with old age and years spent behind bars while awaiting death sentence -- be considered as mitigating factors when courts ponder whether life sentence should be used in an otherwise fit case for death penalty. The order was passed by a Bench comprising Justices P Sathasivam and H L Dattu while hearing an appeal against death penalty awarded by the trial court as well as Allahabad high court to two members of a gang of bandits convicted for killing four people in December 1995.

The Bench noted that apart from being old, the convicts had been in custody since 1996 and death penalty had hung over their heads since 2005, when the trial court gave its verdict.

The Bench further said, "The convicts (Mulla and Guddu) belong to an extremely poor background. One thing which is clear to us is that they have committed these crimes for want of money. Though we are shocked by their deeds, we find no reason why they cannot be reformed over a period of time." [source: The Times of India]

Were these men particularly destitute? How about the victims? They were farm laborers who had been kidnapped for ransom by the two men. Just because the ransom amount was small (Rs. 10,000) does not make the perps poor, it just reflects the fact that the victims' capacity to pay might not have been very high. To brutally hack to death five farm laborers upon non-payment of ransom does not reflect desperation, it reflects cold blooded sadism of seasoned criminals.

What if the names of the two condemned men had been Munna and Guddu instead of Mulla and Guddu? Your guess is as good as ours, but something tells us no minority is ever going to be hanged in this country, no matter how gruesome the crime. This isn't a stretch, if you take the Sachar generalization across the whole spectrum and apply the observation of the Hon'ble Justices Dattu and Sathasivam, this is but a natural conclusion. Indeed, the secular zeal of UPA is going in this direction for quite sometime now. Recent examples include clemency to J&K youth who had attended terror school in Pakistan and continued attempts by secular politicians to get the UP terrorists off the hook.

A quick search on Justices HL Dattu and P Sathasivam reveals interesting facts. Justice Dattu has Karnataka / Kerala HC background while Justice Sathasivam is a former CJ of the TN High Court. In other words, both hail from citadels of a certain model of social justice. Both are interesting 2008 appointees to the supreme court with a long tenure ahead of them.

It also appears that Justice Dattu had earlier recused himself from the well publicized and infamous Nun Avaya murder case.

Justice Sathasivam appears to be one of those who do not believe in practicing what they preach:

The Supreme Court’s pivotal role in making up for the lethargy of the Legislature and the inefficiency of the executive is commendable. But the law can be dehumanized and the final forensic floor–the Supreme Court–may turn into a dictator. He concluded by saying that the weapon of judicial activism should be used carefully. [source]

That rhetoric would nominally mean a judge who makes the strictest interpretation of the constitution and the laws, and these currently most decidedly do not have any provision for factoring in the "poverty" of perpetrators of heinous crimes in doling out sentences.

These two judges seem to be getting a disproportionate number of Police encounter cases and have presided over the bail plea of Gujarat encounter cops.

This is why we need think tanks to analyze and collate the judgments of supreme court benches, just to make sure nothing funny is going on. Watching this page would be a start.

Trial lawyers all over the country will make a keen note of this case, suddenly we will start seeing a lot of perps on trial suddenly turn poor and destitute, especially if they happen to belong to the minority community.