'No Boring Babu'; Outlook's Irresponsible Journalism

Exactly a day after the world witnessed the humongous response to #SelfieWithDaughter, seemingly joining hands to support daughters in particular and promote gender equality in general, I read this piece in Outlook India’s Deep Throat Column, by a female journalist. Read:

“No Boring Babu

The portfolio of a junior bureaucrat, who is posted in the Telan­gana CM’s office, is a mystery. She used to be posted in a district earlier. But things changed all of a sudden after the elections. The lady is present at every meeting and seen in almost every official photograph sent out by the CMO. But what she does exa­ctly is a puzzle. She makes a fas­h­ion sta­tement with her lovely saris and serves as “eye candy” at meetings, admit leading party politicians. In fact, it’s this burea­ucrat who calls up other officials in the CMO and asks them to come for meetings. She knows exactly what time the CM will arrive and leave the office. The lovely lady, known for her ethnic style, recen­tly stunned all by appearing in a trendy trouser and frilly top at a fashion show. And for once, she wasn’t sitting in an official meeting. But this appearance too made for a great photo op.”

It also carried a cartoon, which was later removed.

Do you too think this is troubling, sexist and full of insinuations? Made more shocking by the fact that it is Outlook India printing this? (Alas! Like fools we cling to the hope that some reputed media houses are free from the scum of sensationalism.) 

The young IAS officer under question, Smita Sabharwal, had qualified in the UPSC exams with an AIR 4 back in 2001. (Yes, that means she’s been in service for 14 long years, something that the journalist would not have called ‘junior’ if it was her own profession being talked about.) Presently she is Additional Secretary to the CM of Telangana, Hyderabad. Over 2.5 years the district she was collector of, before coming to the CMO’s office, saw visible changes for the better. Residents of Medak and Karimnagar swear by her honesty, her dedication and her work. They responded to this piece of irresponsible journalism by talking about programs and processes she initiated and executed. 

Thank god for that. Else, I may have lapped up Deep Throat’s journalistic innuendos verbatim over dinner tonight, creating my very own version of this soap-y "truth"!

Which, actually, is a habit we as people are coming to enjoy; that of swallowing-without-chewing news which at best is half-concocted and at its worst fully false and even defamatory. Three humour pieces, 30 status updates and 300 tweets on any issue of socio-political import are created and shared only by looking at the breaking headlines. Who has time to wait for the real news to come in, which, when it does after a few days of replayed tamasha on TV, is something no one is interested in? Of course we need the press. But it’s time we asked ourselves - Are we giving the media too much importance? Are we laying at their feet the thinking caps we were all born with? And, are we killing with it our ability to critically examine, argue and really draw out a thought-process instead of hammering on tables because apparently the ‘nation wants to know’ and it’s always comfortable to take a #tag’s side? 

The nation does want to know. It should. But from whom? Now that is a question. 

What is the nation if not the people who inhabit it? That’s another question. Look at the language contained in the few lines of this article. By a woman, for a woman, sans proof, sans responsibility but with an over-dose of sly insinuations. (If the journalist was playing Taboo and was not to use the word ‘slut’, she’d had won with flying colours!) It isn’t Smita making for a ‘great photo-op’. It’s the ignoble parade of most media houses which slut-shame even as they try to be pillars for exposing unfairness and injustice. It disturbs me that educated professionals from a sex we’re trying to uplift have no qualms deconstructing clothes and provoking lines of thought based on invented reasons. Would this have occupied news space if this Additional Secretary was a man? The journalist didn’t feel the need to do her ground work before talking about another woman. All she needed to do was ask politicians about this ‘not boring’ “eye candy” and create mystery around a woman who ‘knows exactly what time the CM will arrive and leave office’. And it gets published! 

What role is journalism playing here, really?

I do wonder why this surprises me and angers me still - this gall, this utter lack of respect towards public servants, for instance, and a fellow human being at large. If it isn’t already fashionable to misread, mock and malign them with each passing prime time, it will be. Just like it is already in vogue to find the easiest scapegoat, the government, to disown our responsibilities as citizens . Please tell me how we as a collective seeking services motivate the ones who are working up good in the yellow corridors? By playing with their dignity, with as much liberty as we use to make police uniforms dance to item numbers in movies? Does few-and-far-between mean naught when it comes to good officers? 

And if it’s their job to serve you, pray, what is yours?   

I don't know Smita and know not how this story will unfold, but at a larger level I do know that no matter how many like her, #DespiteBeingAWoman, work their years away in public service, popular journalism will read and look like exactly this above. Because as a nation what we don’t want to know is where we as people are responsible, or even where we are being irresponsibly spoon-fed tasteless food 24X7. 

Our taste-buds have been that dumbed down, and our antennae for Trending News always on alert. Not a good combination, don't you think? 

To Tarun Tejpal: The Alchemist of Desires?

Mr. Tejpal,

The cat is out of the bag. While they still try to ascertain if it’s black in colour or white, the crow has certainly flown away, never to return and sit as honestly, fearlessly and with as much dignity on letters which stood for all three – TEHELKA.  

Since news is all about numbers circled in red and flashed till the lights go off, let’s begin with what your site shows me. On searching for stories on ‘sexual exploitation’ covered by Tehelka, this is what I find. What a big number! More than 500 times, you have told us the truth and nothing but the truth, be it on trafficking of little girls or the ‘saint’ Assaram losing his halo. Losing his halo. Why, makes you think, does it not?

First – What you did, allegedly 

A woman journalist has accused you of sexually assaulting her on two occasions during a media event organized by the publication in Goa, earlier this month. Let’s put it differently. A woman whose father was your colleague once, and who is good friends with your daughter – someone who ‘had so deeply respected and admired you for years.’ If you fail, it will not just be at a professional level but at a very personal level too. You also know how shamefully that failure, if at all, will come about, for it would be proven beyond doubt that you assaulted someone who considered you a ‘paternal figure … responsible for offering me my first job, and always just a phone call away whenever I needed his advice on a story or life.’ 

After the first episode of what you call in your conversations ‘a drunken banter’ ... 

[To read further, kindly click here.]

An Open Letter to Educated Indians

Dear all,

The trigger for this letter is IAS Durga Nagpal’s controversial suspension from duty. The trigger is also everything that follows the UP government’s move – be it what I see in the mainstream media over heated debates and campaigns for justice, or discussions in our drawing rooms over glasses of whiskey and gin. 

And I write this letter from first-hand experience, since my husband is a bureaucrat himself. 

Through him, I have come to know and know of countless officers in the Indian bureaucracy. Some are what you read about in the black book. But many others, although not material for prime time news, are stuff that inspiration is made of. You probably do not know too many of those diligent ones. It’s understandable. One, because the “good” ones are perhaps too few and far between to garner attention or even a little column dedicated to the historic changes that they have wrought about. And two, it takes being a part of the government machinery to really know it and understand it from the inside, rather than how popular journalism portrays it. 

I know. Things are not just tardy in government offices they can be downright unfair and even illegal. I see it more often than you do. And do you know why? Not just because something is rotten in the state of our Indian bureaucratic “system”, but also because something is amiss within us as citizens seeking services.

I have come to realize that in India we exist in various levels of ‘Power-ty’. Everyone has power, over someone or the other, which they greatly enjoy. And they want more. The daroga over the havaldar, the permanent driver over the ad hoc one, the principal over the teachers, teachers over the students and senior students over the junior ones. RWA Presidents over the colony residents, Chairmen over board members of companies and parents over their own children, why not. It is like a food chain of power. And at each level, we do not sit satisfied. We are ambitious. We want to be more powerful than we already are, more successful than everyone else in the city, and better than the neighbour, certainly. And in order to have that comfortable upward mobility, we seek and patronize those apparently sitting cushy in the proverbial corridors of power. How? 

  

It is not power that corrupts, it is need for power that corrupts. And it corrupts not just the powerful but also the powerless. Ever since my husband assumed office, his phone has not stopped ringing. Calls asking for pulls and pushes to do with school admissions, request letters for special discounts from marriage pandal organizers, calls-upon-calls for settling property disputes and even demands for arranging boxes of liquor for someone’s parties. The list is endless, and often borders on the bizarre. And no, it is not just so-and-so’s helpless neighbour or Mr. X’s poor sister-in-law calling for lazy files to move in the right direction. It is even those friends and family members who sit lambasting the government and it’s functioning as a fashionable topic over parties or on Twitter's hallowed pages in better weather, but waste no time in picking up that phone when it comes to a little favour, even if of the extra-legal kind.

When a young officer assumes charge, two things can happen. One, he will go with the flow, become a spoke in the wheel, especially if that is why he wanted to leave all other lucrative career options behind and get a powerful post to enjoy in his sarkari naukri. Or two, he will reject becoming a part of what he does not agree with and try to bring to the system his mind, heart, sweat, career and ideas, all towards contributing to his/her sense of duty, responsibility towards a post and position and with a hope for a better tomorrow. The latter are so scarce, we can barely see them, as I mentioned above. 

But then I ask you - do we want to see them? 

What if one of the shareef ones cancels the license of our cement mill? Or Mr. Clean refuses your packet and asks you to pay your duty in its entirety for your imported car? Today, we shout slogans to reverse Durga’s suspension. Tomorrow, we will be visiting the service tax officer with a box of laddoos, and more, so that the interior designer under his jurisdiction waives off a few lakhs for designing our new condo, or finds you a house maid from a reputed agency. And the day after, we will again be spewing venom against the same system that we have helped prop up on our favour-seeking attitudes – not just in helpless situations, please note, but otherwise too. 

Ask yourself, honestly. What scares you more? A corrupt babu you know you will be able to work your way around for whatever you want, or a clean civil servant who will not sign on the dotted line and not pick up that phone to get your daughter admitted to her engineering college? 

When you have answered that, ask yourself now. Are you angry over the unfair suspension of dear Durga and what she stood for, or are you protesting because you have got another reason to protest for the sake of protesting against the favourite goat – the government? Did you bother to find out and be thankful to the many Durgas who are working in your cities right this minute to keep your roads free from lawlessness, or your trains running smoothly, your hospitals ticking or your terrorism-infested districts safe? As a people demanding services and your rights, what do you do to incentivize those who you know as honest, hard-working and fair, so that they continue as exactly that and not fall to the many temptations around? But then, I guess we do not even prefer to have that breed around any more. Because we too are part of a certain nexus, which has no room or use for those goodly kinds. 

I do not condone or deny the rot. God knows we get to see it every day. But as the wife of a bureaucrat husband, I do realize how much easier it is to generalize, to opine, to blame, to other, and then even to protest. And how very difficult to realize the parts that we, the so-called educated people, play in the perpetuation of wrong. The system will not change, because we do not want it to change. We are all very hungry. The corridors of power are present in every home, and we want to keep them gleaming with comfort and we want to keep ourselves, our rashly driving sons, our daughters caught in rave parties and our factories evading duty as safe as bribery can buy. 

We, as a people, are bureaucratic existing at various levels of ‘power-ty’. We create mai baaps because we ourselves dream of being a bigger one. And while we do that, the real aam junta which cannot read this post sits and suffers, hoping for change.

And ‘Change’? Just a 6-letter-word we paint on our posters but are simply not interested in working towards in our daily life. I wish some sign campaign would work towards changing that attitude too. Perhaps that day, my husband's phone will stop ringing so much!  

Regards,

Sakshi Nanda.

[First on CNN-IBN ]

From Behen ji to Beta ji - A Letter

Dear Beta,

I will call you beta, not because I am your mother’s age, but because the world calls me behen ji and I have no room for any more bhaiyas. Once upon a time, the usual UPpity politics and dreams of PM-ship, scams and shoes, mammoth memorials and money kept me so busy. Sometimes it was like making a row of 50 elephants with imported soil with my two bare hands. That busy I felt! Today, I am not so busy, but neither am I free. Because today I realize that every move of your government seems to be politically motivated to undermine me, and my party’s hard work. So much political motivation this state has never been seen before.    

Here I was, sitting on my humble stage and reading the copy of a newspaper reserved for me. Sitting and noting that “dirty politics” was being played over Sarabjit Singh’s death. That allegations and counter allegations are “unfortunate” and that we need to rise above politics and “unite as one party”. And there, in another corner nearby, dirty politics was being planned over my image itself. Even when I was openly and so bravely warning China against Ladakh incursions, asking them to take a few steps back “otherwise the result will not be good”, little did I realize that my own report card was being given grades ranging from D and F and worst of all C (is that the correct grading order?) by your party. I hereby rubbish all reports about certain Rs. 1400 crore being irregularly consumed during my regime, for memorials, parks and a few things here-and-there which not many know about. If you are someone's beta, I am a beti too, and as a beti of the soil, I dare anyone to dare me and prove me wrong. 

But damage had been done, and what was expected happened. One of my most favourite statues got damaged by miscreants, such boot polish you have put over minds that worshipped me once as their queen. As their very own jagat behenji! Those very brother log beheaded me, my statue of marble or something like that. What shame, the way you are promoting vandalism in the youth rather than starting some university with technical and vocational training for the unemployed. You went to Sydney to study environmental engineering and should know the value of good education. I am sure UPpity could do with another university giving out foreign degrees. But coming back to the point, I hope that one day the accused are brought to task and made to pay for 4 identical statues of mine, looking in 4 different directions, to be put in place of this one. And no, I don’t want my head stuck back on it. I want a new one, altogether. I demand all lost respect to be given back to me – new stone, new sculptor and perhaps I may even give him a new pose.  

Talking of respect, it seems that power has made you blind. Your party “goons” are openly disrespecting not just the opposition and the supremo that’s still me, but also Ambedkar ji. To celebrate his 122nd birthday I got hoardings installed in his park so that lakhs of people could come and pay their tribute to him. And here you dared to remove all the hoardings to serve your own political vendetta after so much night “drama”, despite my party workers having taken due permission (even though, when it comes to Ambedkar ji, and myself, I need no permission from anyone for anything) to install them. I am telling you, beta, you are “being watched and will be taken to task when my government comes back to power” one day. And tell your minister to not try teaching me about good language, haan! What does he mean by “restraint” over my language? Doesn’t he know where I come from restraints have to be broken to fly freely and equally?

And flying reminds me, yeh jo flyover you are building at Mall Avenue better not get built – not in 15 months, 15 years or ever. I am a self-made woman who rose from the lowly ashes and my house and party office cannot be subject to such ignominy without enraging my very insides. Do you know how much I spent on building my abode? And a puny Rs. 40 crore flyover is to pass near it and mar its magnificence? I heard you, beta, I heard you say nothing will come in the way of development and easing of traffic problems. But I can assure you that nothing will come in my party’s way either when one day this very flyover will be shifted to Vikramaditya Marg – every inch of its 650 meters – when I am back in power! And not just that! I will even broaden it to 25m from 15m. Dekhna tum log! 

And see, how I got busy with all things political and motivated and forgot the real reason why I write to you this day. Such is politics, so misleading. OK. Forget all that I just said! Suno, you are planning to open the doors of parks and memorials that I built to hold weddings for the poor, free of cost. Ok. I agree it’s a lot of prime land and not enough to build hospitals as you gathered, but what about the insult it will cause to the icons in whose name the memorials have been constructed? Not just an insult but a maha insult. Free of cost? What are you thinking? But you are a reasonable and well-educated young boy. So, at the cost of forgetting all the hurt I mentioned just now, I will request you to let me guide you how best to use the animals and Ashtdhatu trees installed in the park, about which you seem confused. My 60th birthday is a few years away, and I would like to hold my birthday party in the grandest of memorials and as usual in the grandest of ways. Arrey, ek minute, that will not be an insult to the memorials. See, I am a daughter of the same soil everyone knows that, and then I built them with so much cost and care. On top of that, I am ready to promise that after the party’s over, I will make sure I don’t leave them without added ornamentation or some sangmarmar statues of the national animal of India, Jumbo. Some newly discovered marble is coming in from Italy, which is bird-dropping-and-damage-resistant. Since some memorials look too bare and vast we can do with a few more statues. Perhaps, one of yours too, beta? Or would you share the note-d garland with me, please, on my day? Imagine what message it will send to Madam. I request you to let the memorials be shut till a certain distant January, and after that we’ll see what’s best for both you and me.       

Arrey haan, one more thing! Tell that minister of yours not to misguide young girls who recently got laptops from you. What does he mean by saying “become anything but don’t become aheM”? Shame! I’m the only woman of such substances around and such inspiration that one day I swear on this very soil I arose from … but let that be. Just keep the memorial gates locked, and in the mean time send a spare laptop my way, will you, beta?  

For always,

Behen ji. 

My 5 points for a 5-point Neta

Good news! You may finally understand more than your favourite MLA’s favourite expletives in his speech on the microphone. Even better news – he may not dig for gold in his nose in front of you any more. As good fortune has it, MLAs, municipal councillors and aspiring candidates for the forthcoming elections are swarming finishing schools. From a puny Rs. 50,000 to a punier Rs. 4 lakh, a host of “shine-up-my-personality” activities are much in demand - public speaking and how to handle stage fright, body-language, self-promotion, gentleman etiquette, and then the more important ones like how to get down from stage, hair cut analysis, necessity of shaving, power yoga, how to do namaskar and the most important session of all, how to tackle allegations.    

Some of them are designed especially to lure the female vote-bank into thinking them clean-shaven, well-mannered, family-men, with such correct movements of body that instill in us confidence enough to trust them fully with our votes, our support and with our everyday well-being, all together.

As a member of the female vote-bank, I have the following list of suggestions for them, for free:

1. If you want to lead India but suffer from stage fright, avoid wearing lungi (and its cousins) no matter how much you love it and no matter how hot it is on speech day.  They certainly don’t go together. Knocking knees show more easily when exposed. Also, the finer the cotton the more exaggerated the knocking appears. (c.f. Prabhu Deva) Hence, best avoided if you shiver and shudder standing 10 feet above lesser mortals. If totally unavoidable, well, go ahead then. Just make sure the knees and much more doesn’t show. For the latter, sit cross-legged at all times.  

2. An itch is an itch, whether it’s the 7 year one or that 7 second one exactly in the wrong place and at the wrong time. If you’re rearing to go and scratch, quickly get your hands and mind busy with some other activity – say, cleaning your ears for instance. Apart from it being a common activity on a lazy day in politics, it’s an even more constructive one than just scratching, since you’ll go home feeling much cleaner in the ear and lighter in the head. Plus, research says it’s a vicarious way of taking other itches away. No harm in trying, I say.       

3. Noses are important. When we enter politics, it’s our nose which is usually to be kept out of all kinds of dirt and mess. Our nose is at stake always - the higher we keep it, the less untouchable we get. All the more important that we keep them clean if it’s our nostrils we point at everyone else! However, when cleaning nose sitting behind another delivering his speech, make sure the burp from that lunch-break is kept in check. You can’t afford to wrongly upset your party colleague by making him think you are emanating strange voco-nasal sounds as he talks of shining nirman in India. Fighting in the nose should never translate into infighting in the party.  

4. Prosperity deposits itself in bellies. The more prosperous your business of politics, the bigger the pot you carry around the waist, one assumes. Buttons on coats often rebel from closing in such cases, hence, avoid having buttons on your coats altogether. In an oft-hidden case of endangering another’s life, an MLA who managed to close the top button of his coat (in keeping with the proper norm) almost popped the speaker’s eye out when his button popped - as he stood in the House, opposing the ruling and getting opposed in turn as he flung his arms and legs here and there and a few objects too. It’s best to wear starched white patriotic kurtas in days of physical activity in the well. Not just low on maintenance, but also safe when in heated company.

5. Lastly, make sure you bathe, shave and use antiperspirant as often as possible in your busy schedule. Works well with both women and men, and gives you a look cleaner than may suit you. Use mild incense for morning puja. You may have pleased the deity for that day, but you won’t please too many if you look like an incense and smell like one too.

Thank you for your patient (and clean) ears Neta ji. You are ‘finished’ for Session 1, day 1.

Happy politicking! (Oh no! I don't mean those ticks.)