Economics Of Deception

Transparency! It’s something that the news media demands from everyone; particularly public officials, businesses and other institutions. This particular news item, although not from India, makes fascinating reading. In response to the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rulings that require TV stations to keep a log and publicly declare political ads received by them there have been strong objections. And guess who’s objecting? The TV channels and the media themselves! “Meet the Media Companies Lobbying Against Transparency” would not be very different if the article were to be written for the Indian media. It is the news media that of late has been guilty of sacrificing transparency, especially when it comes to reporting about Gujarat. Naturally, given that Narendra Modi is the CM, a good number of agenda-driven journalists try their best to drive a stake through the Gujarat story. On May 2 we had another such extraordinary deception, this time on the economics and the growth story of Gujarat.

It’s not even a month since the social media put an end to the career of Abhishek Singhvi when the MSM chose to hide behind legalese. This time it was the turn of journalists who were bent on twisting Gujarat’s economic growth story to be dealt a severe blow by keen observers on the net. So let me quickly run a summary of the story from Kartikeya Tanna who wrote this in Firstpost (Excerpts):

Yesterday the nation woke up to several articles belittling the Gujarat growth story. Relying primarily on the Business Standard op-ed by AK Bhattacharya placing Gujarat’s average growth rate between 2003-04 and 2011-12 at 6.3%, Rediff published a state-wide comparison by the same author quoting similar data, while Soutik Biswas  in a BBC Asia cynical op-ed popped the question whether, in view of this revelation, the Gujarat story was a “myth” and Modi a “spinmeister”…. though the 6.3% rate “puzzled” Bhattacharya, he did not quite bother to double-check. Worse, both columnists ended up making several conclusions and raising severe doubts on how and why Gujarat lagged behind. This led many intellectuals and commentators to gloat over how Bhattacharya had “punctured” Gujarat’s growth claims. Modi was accused of “peddling” the Gujarat myth. Many independent online forums picked up these articles and continue to host them. And, all of that was based on a serious error of fact. Fact, not inference.

Then as has happened often in the recent past, all hell broke loose on Twitter. Vijay (@centerofright) busted this grossly incorrect assertion by pointing out the data available on the Planning Commission’s website. It so turns out that the 6.3% figure peddled around by many was, in fact, the growth rate of Jharkhand. Gujarat’s average growth rate over the past eight years has been 10.08%. Repeated efforts by Twitterati to point this out to Business Standard, Rediff and BBC Asia resulted in corrected versions of the articles being put up on the websites. Bhattacharya substantially modified the analysis from statements like “the performance of Gujarat in this period is a puzzle” and “how does one explain Gujarat” to “Gujarat’s story is well-known and shows what sustained growth-oriented policies can do to a state’s economic fortunes”. Biswas had a bigger problem. Having chosen a rather direct title in undermining Gujarat’s growth, he had to change the title from “Is Gujarat’s red-hot economy a myth?” to “Gujarat IS a red-hot economy”  stating how he “had also wondered whether there was something amiss with the data on Gujarat in the Business Standard article”.

The screen shots and the original articles and the revised ones can be viewed here, detailed by @centerofright (Vijay). The idea that the Gujarat story is a myth or mystery because its growth is 6% (even if a false number) and that other states like Maharashtra, Harayana etc. had higher growth is first and foremost mere academics. Numbers never tell the whole story but economics writers do make sense out of them. In this case though, they made nonsense out of numbers. Tanna has been kind to the writers and probably treats the blunders as ‘honest mistakes’. I don’t see any honest mistake. When quoting numbers it is not only the job of the journalist but also that of the editor of a journal to double-check facts. The double-digit growth story of Gujarat has been around long enough to ring alarm bells for these journos when they came up with 6%. And to be deliberately peddling a story with wrong numbers can only be ‘motivated’. AK Bhattacharya didn’t write his piece in Filmfare or Cosmopolitan, he wrote his piece in a business journal. These guys are supposed to keep a watch on numbers even in their sleep. What about Soutik Biswas of the BBC? He comes out as an absolute dunderhead.

Economic stories ARE often deceptive

It’s a cardinal sin in statistics to use second-hand information as the foundation of your entire thesis. This is what Soutik Biswas is guilty of. But hey, this was probably second-hand information that was handy for him to rubbish Gujarat and Narendra Modi. He is the economics version of Teesta Setalvad or Shabnam Hashmi or even Sanjiv Bhatt. The fact that Biswas had no intention but to simply paint Modi as hiding behind fake numbers is evident from the title of his bullshit itself: “Is Gujarat’s red-hot economy a myth?”. Usually, titles with a question mark are used by journalists who don’t care about facts. The second-hand liar, on being pointed out facts, quickly goes on to change the title to the exact opposite of his original one: “Gujarat IS a red-hot economy”.

Regardless of these foolish articles and foolish journalists there’s another angle to the story which most of these willful deceivers miss. It’s called ‘Experience’. Be it a restaurant, a rail company or an airline, people’s association with these is not driven merely by numbers. It’s the experience they go through that decides their opinions and relationships. Any marketer would tell you that customers buy and involve in enduring relationships because of this ‘experience’. I guess neither Bhattacharya nor Biswas understand that ordinary people don’t form opinions based on numbers, not even accurate ones. Kiran Shaw, the renowned businesswoman from Bangalore recently tweeted (May 3): “After putting up with B'lore's awful roads, its a pleasure to drive on Ahmedabad's roads. Wish Ktka's BJP Govt cd learn from Modi's BJP Govt”. That’s an ‘experience’ which mere numbers won’t tell you.

Fact remains, except for motivated liars, most people who visit Gujarat go through a very different experience than in many other parts of India. The govt is not in your face every day in Gujarat. Tribals are not in turmoil. Average Gujarati families live in decent homes with decent incomes. Your newspapers don’t headline the daily murders and crimes as routine. The girl child has more programmes than the rest. Your daughter, your wife or sister or mother is not under constant threat from goons on the streets. Immigrants from other states are not treated as unwanted intruders. Farmers are not killing themselves leaving dying declarations blaming some govt. Can it get better? Sure, Gujarat has many faults and problems of its own but hatred spewed by the media, either by fake stories or hate by numbers, is of their own imagination.

The other fact also is that the lies on other fronts have failed. The NDTVs, the CNN-IBNs, the Teestas and Bhatts have failed with their game of untruths and hate. All the fictitious cases haven’t found any merit so far in courts. What’s left to puncture? Maybe the Gujarat growth story is the last resort of the scoundrels. Of course, these stories aren't the first. You've had social scientologists like Dipankar Gupta or eminent distortians like Ramchandra Guha peddling such in the past. It’s an election year in Gujarat. But unlike the 2002 riots period and after there is a watchdog over the MSM. Social media doesn’t allow peddling of lies anymore. 

I started with a note on ‘transparency’ aversion of the media. On a different note here’s a report that further sounds a warning to MSM: “CNN Loses Half Its Viewers:  Corporate Media Downhill Plunge Continues As Alternative Media Explodes”. India’s net users are set to grow from the current 10 million to 200 million by 2014. So if the Indian MSM doesn’t get its act right soon and stop spreading lies or suppressing truth they will end up the second choice for news and facts. We’ve had a taste of social lies in the past by the Modi and Gujarat haters and now we have economics of deception. These won’t pass anymore.

Rahul Gandhi - Failure Analysis To Improve Learning

Failure analysis to improve learning is not a bad idea at all. That is what Rahul Gandhi is currently doing in the family backyards of Amethi and Rae Bareli. He is finally forced to listen to people who count. People on the ground! And they aren’t making music for his ears. I actually couldn’t find a good antonym for ‘Evolution’. ‘Devolution’ doesn’t exactly fit as an antonym. So the best I could come up with as a sequel to a previous post titled ‘Evolving the Gandhi’ was ‘Dissolving the Gandhi’. That one was about how NDTV wanted us to believe RG had evolved and was decimating every opponent in UP. This one is a lot more humble because it’s not nice to rub salt into wounds. So has the man learned anything? Well, first of all the Narcissist seems to be without his sycophant in chief, Digvijay Singh, for a while. If that riddance is permanent then it’s definitely is a good start. But has the narc himself changed any?

“It was a thoughtful, mature speech by young leader Rahul Gandhi. If you closed your eyes and listen to the voice, one could hear echoes of Rajiv Gandhi speaking 25 years ago..”. That was none other than Psychophant Chidambaram during the plenary session of the Congress in December 2010. And no, there’s no spelling error in the name. Any intelligent man would be seriously offended by such sycophancy, but RG either didn’t mind or let it pass. Then the titles of Yuvraj, Prince and all that probably led RG to believe all the nonsense being spread by a media fed and doctored by the ‘spinsters’ around him. Arrogance was further on display when a group of villagers from Ralegan Sidhi, Anna Hazare’s hometown, were led to believe that they were invited by RG for a meeting in Delhi. Sure, they turned up in Delhi in October 2011, only to be told no such meeting was scheduled and were sent back. That was an opportunity to build bridges with Anna but dealt with undiplomatically.

The list of extraordinarily silly utterances by RG  will make a very long list. There is a departure from the past though. For once, RG stepped up and stated he accepted responsibility for the thrashing in UP. What after that? Has he stopped uttering gibberish? Hardly! In a meeting in Delhi to analyse the UP disaster, to an angry member claiming Congress paid a price for ignoring upper castes, he proclaimed “I am a Brahmin too”. That gaffe was enough for another round of jokes on the social network and even in the MSM. That done, last week of April, he rushes off to Satara district in Maharashtra to visit drought-hit farmers and has lunch with some. Seriously, at age 41 do you have to visit every stricken area to understand problems? Droughts have been a permanent problem in India at some place or the other. And what do farmers have to say about his visit? “He has come, his father had come, Indira Gandhi had come but nothing has ever happened”. And Prithviraj Chavan, the CM of Maharashtra, tags along with RG on his trip like a small-time assistant.

Symbolic theatre like dressing up as a muslim or a tribal or eating at Dalit homes do not entice or impress voters anymore. It may have worked for RG’s grandmother and father but doesn’t work anymore. Even his greatest promoters in the media like Barkha Dutt of NDTV or Vinod Sharma of Hindustan Times have shut up after his moronic display and the UP results. Oh and where are the ones who cooed “She is so charming, so natural, should be in politics”! Well, that was about Priyanka Vadra who has simply disappeared from the scene after the elections for peaceful resort locations. Let’s see if she surfaces during the monsoon. In what should now be the most serious confrontation with truth for RG has to be his current visit to Amethi. For meetings to analyse the UP debacle RG had come prepared to give the little people a pasting but instead had to face a barrage of unexpected angry retorts from his own Congress workers.  All this came in response to Rahul's repeated warnings about taking action against erring party workers during the March election. Here are excerpts from Rediff.com

"Rahulji, you may fix the responsibility on us, but don't absolve yourself of the larger responsibility for the debacle." … According to an insider, one of the party workers in Salon, where the party nominee lost miserably, went to the extent of accusing Rahul of depending solely on "middlemen". He even sought to ask Rahul, can you recognise and name five workers who were closely involved with the electioneering process," to which Rahul confessed apologetically, "sorry". "How is it that your own party leader Pramod Tiwari managed to do so much for his constituency in the neighbourhood," asked another worker, leaving Rahul completely stunned. (That, in reference to lack of any development work in Amethi).

"What we needed urgently was ruthless surgery by plugging the loopholes and by restructuring the party well before the crucial Lok Sabha elections in 2014," observed Binda Prasad, the head of Chatoh Block in Salon assembly constituency. "It is high time our top leaders prepare themselves to listen to harsh truths if they sincerely want the party to stand up on its feet again," he added.

While accusing every other party of playing communal politics the UP election proved once and for all that the Congress is the most communal party in India and is hell bent on dividing the nation on religious and communal and caste lines. While he was visiting drought-prone Satara, RG’s mother was surprisingly charming the Lingayat community in Karnataka. If RG really wants to accept responsibility for anything he has to first act on something. First, learn about India and Indians. I mean seriously learn. People are not fools. Secondly, sack nation-dividers like Salman Khurshid, Beni Prasad Verma, Sriprakash Jaiswal who campaigned on communal lines. And, of course, he has to permanently get rid of muck-spewing Digvijay Singh. That’s asking for too much. His latest aide is a Jenny-come-lately called Meenakshi  Natarajan ,Congress MP, who wants to gag the media and wants a regulatory body with sweeping powers to ban and punish media. Hardly the wisdom learned from failures in choosing aides I would say.

Manish Tewari, in a debate last night on presidential candidates, suggested that in a nation of youth someone younger may be a better choice than APJ Kalam. Dr. Subramanian Swamy who was also on the debate pointed out to Mr.Head-To-Toe that it’s not how old you are but whether you are able to “inspire the youth” that matters. For a so-called ‘youth-icon’ Rahul Gandhi has failed miserably to inspire any confidence in anyone, young or old. Apart from a terrible poverty of knowledge RG is also handicapped by an equally severe poverty of ideas. Unfortunate, I would say, for a man who had so many opportunities. Another lesson RG must learn - whatever the media hypes, the opposite is usually the result. Failure analysis to improve learning is a good exercise, except that it has a flip side – the acronym is FAIL!

Blackmail Not New To Media, Arnab

First, someone called Sten Lindstrom comes out with supposedly new revelations about the Bofors scandal. Chitra Subramaniam, who originally broke the whole story and followed it for long also surfaced after all these years to talk about it. Some in the Indian media were quick to dub Lindstrom the Swedish ‘Deep Throat’, after the famous Watergate Deep Throat (William Mark Felt). On a lighter side, they do share something in common though. The Watergate deep throat was named after a controversial porn movie titled ‘DeepThroat’ which was released in the same year as the Watergate burglary and the Swedish DeepThroat comes after the infamous Abhishek Manu Singhvi sex tapes. The remote similarity ends there. There’s just one small difference: the original DeepThroat led to a dozen or so convictions leading up to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. The so-called Swedish DeepThroat is still where Bofors is – Zero convictions. Of the 64 crores of bribes in Bofors not a single rupee has been recovered, not a single conviction has happened and some of the players are dead. In contrast, by strange coincidence, another case of bribery involving Bangaru Laxman, former president of BJP, in a sting operation by Tehelka came to a conclusion. Today Bangaru was sentenced to four years in prison and a fine of Rs.1 Lakh, the same amount of bribe he has been convicted of taking.

The CBI court judge, sentencing Bangaru Laxman, said it is time to "shun" the "sab chalta hai" (It's OK, whatsoever!) attitude and courts should deal strictly with persons found guilty of corruption. With all due respects, your honour, most corruption cases don’t end up in courts, they are washed up by our govt and our media. Worse, in my belief the Bangaru Laxman case was one of a fake operation and more of ‘entrapment’ by a journal seeking ‘instant’ fame rather than genuine investigative journalism. It’s a classic case of journalism by ‘script writing’ rather than investigating actual events and wrong-doings. But that is not even the issue here.

Within hours of Laxman’s conviction our media was clamouring to equate Bofors with Bangaru. Rajdeep Sardesai, who called the 64 crores of Bofors scam “loose change” in comparison to current scams like 2G, suddenly found the 1 lakh bribe case similar to Bofors. He’s not the only one though. Arnab Goswami, who runs his own private court on TV, actually ran a debate “Bofors V Bangaru” on TimesNow on the night of Friday, April 27. The debate involved Meenakshi Lekhi (BJP), Vinod Sharma (Smirk Times), Manish Tewari (Head to Toe fame) and a couple more people. In the melee the discussion ended up in a question by Arnab to Lekhi: “Are journalists being accused of blackmailing?” (In the context of the Tehelka type spurious sting operations). Hmmm! Arnab shot that without thinking too much.

Long back I had narrated how media outlets approach corporate entities to get their share of ads that were released with a competitor. Nothing wrong with that, except that where companies were reluctant, the second-rung media threatened them with exposure of various misdeeds by the company. Not unusual considering most companies are in the practice of avoiding excise, customs or other taxes. The journals and journalists keep a dossier on the misdeeds of such companies and use it to blackmail them into running campaigns in their journals similar to the ones run in other media. This gets even better when the media outlet has juicy tidbits of the private lives of the CEOs or owners of businesses. Don’t be surprised if you even find govt officials or police officials under payroll of a media outlet. Once such officials are ‘sanitised’ they then remain obligated to leak news and confidential reports. Else!

One of the most glaring cases of journalists blackmailing a businessman comes from the house of Arnab’s own group – The Times Group. Sure, Arnab wasn’t associated with the group then but he’s seriously mistaken to imagine journalists don’t indulge in extortion and blackmailing. Here’s the interesting story:

“Such spurious news has included gushing endorsements of flop movies, fashion and lifestyle products and the promotion of hotels and restaurants that enter into a payment arrangement with the organisation. The reader has no clue that the adulatory report is nothing but a paid advertisement masquerading as objective reportage or opinion. Even while the debate over the ethics of a newspaper 'selling news' was hotting up into a regular war of words between two of the country's top-selling English dailies, journalism was dealt another stunning blow. Last week, the Mumbai police arrested Rishi Chopra of The Economic Times along with an accomplice (a former journalist with another business daily) in an alleged extortion attempt. The duo was trapped accepting a Rs 700,000 bribe which was the second installment of a Rs 2.5 million payoff to kill a report about the shenanigans of one Poonamchand Malu of Malu Financial Services. Worse, the pay-off itself had apparently been haggled down from an initial demand of Rs 10 million to Rs 2.5 million. Although corruption in the media is no longer news, the actual arrest of two scribes and the sums involved, marked a new low in this once honourable profession”. There! That’s an extract from a report by Sucheta Dalal titled “Selling news or buying silence?” in March 2003. Do read the whole article, it truly exposes pathetic journalistic practices of Arnab’s group. Have these practices ended? Let Arnab verify and confirm they have.

In the post “India’s Biggest Mafia” I had written: "Look deep into our media.You will find extortion, blackmail, murder, connections with anti-national elements, black money. Everything you can associate with a regular mafia you will find in equal measure in the media too. But since they claim to be ‘God’s own messengers’ they will never expose their own mafia". Blackmailing is just a small part of our media’s operations even if Arnab finds it amusing.

Why Indian MSM Wants Social Media Dead

In recent times Herman Cain, an Afro-American candidate, pulled out of the race for the Republican party’s nomination for US Presidential election in 2012. Three women from his past had alleged sexual harassment by Cain which eventually forced him to abort his campaign. In contrast, Abhishek Manu Singhvi (AMS), MP and Congress spokesman, resigned on April 23 from various posts after his alleged sexual adventures were leaked through a video on the internet. That was enough for the Mainstream Media (MSM) and even PCI Chairman, Justice Katju, to start screaming for controls over the social media. The sex CD which involves AMS and a female lawyer was reportedly made by AMS’s driver and according to AMS was “fake, doctored and morphed”. How a driver went to Darbangha (Bihar) and found enough money and support and morphed a tape will remain a technological wonder for a long time. His alleged motives are “dog-bites and low pay”. Seriously, many of us may complain about our salaries but going to the extent of morphing our bosses into sex videos is taking even revenge too far. Tsk, never mind!

The case was brought to public light not by the driver or by the MSM or by the social media. It came to prominence when AMS filed a police complaint against the driver and got an injunction from the Delhi HC against airing of the CD. On what basis the HC gave the injunction is another mystery and it almost sounds like pre-screening. Naturally, people wanted to know what was on the CD and what the facts were. This is where the MSM failed as it completely blacked-out the story. The court had stayed airing of the CD and not the reporting of the story. It was then that the story spread like wildfire on Twitter, Facebook and other social media and finally parts of the CD were uploaded by some on the internet.

In response to the public clamour for the story Rajdeep Sardesai even responded by calling them “Eternal Voyeurs”. Such is his disdain for ordinary people. Rajdeep also asked why the Opposition was silent over the issue, as if they, or any political voice, should determine what the press or media should be reporting and discussing. A dead give-away. 

Even so, when the cookie finally crumbled, the MSM wasn’t discussing the AMS sex incident, they were busy debating whether ‘Internet is above the courts’ (For uploading the CD against the court injunction) and some like Justice Katju and Sagarika Ghose were discussing ways and means to ‘check’ the social media.

Nothing would please our MSM (and some politicians) more than to see the death of social media. It has come to challenge their monopoly, their bias, their spins, their lies, and their selective reporting. In the US the Internet media has seen the death of many newspapers and quite a few TV channels. Some 300 newspapers have died in a small country like UK. Unlike print and TV, social media requires the regular MSM and public figures to be interacting with people sensibly which is where they have failed in India. Public opinions can be suppressed in newspapers and TV but not on the social media. So while raging against the people on the social network and wanting to desperately ‘check’ them the Indian media really needs to understand the way social media works and harness it productively and profitably. Comments under the post “Media as cover-up artist for Seedy Singhvi” will reveal how even keen news-watchers were totally unaware of the AMS incident. That is how successfully the MSM blacked-out the story.

The Internet wasn’t created in India. The Internet didn’t evolve in India. None of the major social media engines were created in India. For all its other problems the US still remains a country with absolute freedom of speech. President, Pope and even religion are no exceptions to such freedoms. Books are not banned and books can be burned. Nazi group marches through Jewish localities to offend them is allowed. Protests at funerals against dead ‘gay’ soldiers, in bad taste, are allowed. Bad taste is not a crime. Therefore, for Internet and social media to thrive in the US environment wasn’t as big a challenge as it is in India. Mind you, the same laws that punish defamation or illegal activities otherwise also apply to social media in the US. It does in India too. It is just that in India free-speech is largely reserved for the powerful and the MSM. Now that the situation is changing it’s causing unease among many in the media and politics. US citizens over many years have grown used to and cherished their freedom of speech. Most of them know what to believe and what to ignore. The Indian govt and media simply doesn’t trust ordinary people to have the good judgement over issues.

If the AMS CD was uploaded on the net it was because the media didn’t discuss it. It got uploaded because people generally believed that this level of gagging by a court and black-out by MSM can only mean there is truth in the story. That a prominent lawyer like AMS would seek an injunction and instead of continuing the FIR against the alleged conspirator reach a settlement with him further reinforces the belief that the CD is neither morphed nor doctored. Apart from the frivolous discussion; “Is Internet above courts” on CNN-IBN (who else but Sagarika Ghose?) and other channels, NDTV even discussed if ‘India is going the US way’ on the media issue. Among participants on NDTV was Shoma Chaudhury, editor of Tehelka, a near-gossip tabloid, and the same tabloid that famously used call girls to do their jobs. That is enough said for morality in media.

If there is evil in the social media, it is prevalent elsewhere too, particularly in the MSM and politics. It is how we respond to it that counts. It is not easy for someone to survive in the social network by constantly peddling lies and misleading information. In Indian media it is definitely possible and sometimes it even seems they are paid for it. For those screaming about morals so much in the MSM there is an example of a prominent journalist Keith Olberman who was suspended from his channel, MSNBC, for a small but undeclared donation he made to politicians. In contrast people like Barkha Dutt are celebrated in our media despite established wrong-doings. In the US Barkha Dutt would have been permanently trashed and out of the media for good. So people like Rajdeep Sardesai would do well not to sermonise on morality, which he often does. The likes of Shoma Chaudhary, Sonia Singh (NDTV), Sagarika Ghose should also be frequently reminded of the sordid NOTW affair in UK. That tabloid is what much of Indian MSM should be compared to and not values of ‘Freedom of speech’.

In the last US presidential election Youtube was successfully used by CNN to allow ordinary people to put questions to the candidates and have them debate the issues. Many other clips from Youtube are also used by US news channels in their reports. Why Indian media cannot find productive use for social media other than promoting egos of individual journalists is simply the fear of sharing their turf. Forget harnessing social media productively, the frequency with which our news channels twist and manipulate tweets to suit their agenda actually amounts to abuse of social media by them.

The MSM perceives a loss to the social media on the issue of AMS, his sexcapade and his final resignation. This is hardly the truth. Social media did not bring AMS down. In the final scene of the movie ‘All the President’s men’ WaPo editor Ben Bradley chides Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein thus: “You know the results of the latest Gallup Poll? Half the country never even heard of the word Watergate. Nobody gives a shit”. That’s right half the US didn’t know and didn’t give a shit till Nixon finally resigned. That was despite tremendous coverage by the Washington Post and a few more newspapers. Here we are, an entire MSM blacking out the AMS story and they want the world to believe it is the evil of social media that has to be ‘checked’.

Social media didn’t bring AMS down. He brought himself down with his dirty deeds, social media just showed the courage that MSM did not just as Woodward and Bernstein didn’t bring down Nixon on their own. MSM, and Justice Katju, would do well to partner social media rather than try to check it. If ever ‘Power to the people’ made sense in a democracy it is Social Media. Celebrate it!