Rajdeep On Deception Lane

There are principles of propaganda that Joseph Goebbels had laid out. Not sure if they were in an organised form but there is a writer, Leonard Doob, who has organised and listed Goebbels’ principles of propaganda very neatly. One can Google it and find those anywhere. There are at least two that Rajdeep Sardesai (RS) and his Hammam practice regularly and religiously:

Material from enemy propaganda may be utilized in operations when it helps diminish that enemy's prestige or lends support to the propagandist's own objective.

Who’s the enemy? Well, once again in the case of the spurious loan of 90 Crores by AICC to Associated Journals Ltd. (National Herald) it is clearly Subramanian Swamy. Here, he is the enemy of the Congress and the Gandhis. So Swamy’s own charges must be used to target and tarnish him to support the propagandist’s objective. Who’s the propagandist? That’s not hard to tell is it?

Propaganda must label events and people with distinctive phrases or slogans.

Bluff-master, muckraker, anarchist, fascist; you have all these titles and many more for Swamy from the Congress and the job of the propagandist is to further the agenda. Simple; eh? This is exactly what RS did on November 1 on his nightly show on CNN-IBN. He made a brilliant attempt at using charges made against Sonia and Rahul Gandhi (RG) by Swamy to tarnish Swamy rather than making an attempt to understand or explain the case for the viewers. Read the first principle of the propagandist I quoted above again. The very opening tagline of the show “Where is the fraud” gives the game away. The video of the discussion is available on Youtube (10.37)

Let’s hear Rajdeep’s mindless rant:

2.09: These are mere allegations; no quid pro quo has been shown.

Wilful ignorance doesn’t have a remedy. Young Indian is a company in which 76% shares are held by Sonia and Rahul Gandhi. Who benefits by transfer of National Herald to Young India?

4.05: RS claims having spoken to “sources” close to the Gandhi family who stated they are restructuring the entire National Herald company.

Really? Restructuring to what? First the Congress and the media touted the nonsense that Young India hopes to revive the National Herald newspaper. Then there was a clear statement by RG that there was no plan to revive the newspaper. Either RS must be blind or, once again, wilfully ignorant. The nonsense of RS goes on in that vein right through the show. But here’s the first clincher:

6.10 RS says the acquisition took place in April 2012 and it’s now November and that Swamy should have taken the case to the courts instead of making allegations.

That, for you, is stupidity personified. Consider this: It took the PM over two years to sack A. Raja and took him over 3 years to even reply to Swamy’s letter on 2G. ET article on Robert Vadra was in March 2011 but the news channels didn’t pick it up till there was an outrage in October 2012. And Rajdeep would have everyone believe that six months are too long for Swamy to wait to go to the courts. Where in the world will you find such a media propagandist?

Firstly, it’s Swamy’s business whether he wants to go to court or not. Secondly, RS completely ignores the fact that SS has written to both the Election Commission and the PM for action on this fraudulent donation of 90Crores by a political party to a regular company. SS is on record stating that if he doesn’t get a reply or action he will indeed go to court. I guess only misadventure enthusiasts like RS pick up documents and rush to court without exploring normal procedures of seeking action or inquiry. Whatever else RS can justify for his propaganda, not once does he bring up the question of a political party, which gets income tax exemptions, loaning 90 crores to a company. In all of this that issue is the crux of the whole argument of Swamy. So, SS is the guilty party for making the allegations, with documents that seriously need attention, and not going to courts. He is kicking up dust in the wind. See the propaganda principle number two that I stated at the beginning. Tarnish the enemy to protect your party.

Now, even the Congress first dismissed all of Swamy’s charges as baseless, motivated and utter rubbish. But by late evening on November 1, a somewhat agitated Janardhan Dwivedi, their spokesman, helplessly admitted that the AICC had indeed made a 90crore interest-free loan to National Herald. It doesn’t matter whether it was interest-free or if it was unsecured. Question remains; do political parties make such donations which they receive from the people? Are they lawfully allowed to? Out of 90 crores it is safe to say 27crores can be assessed as IT exemptions that the party has already received and that is public money that the party has used for the illegitimate loan to a company. None of these serious questions figured on Rajdeep’s show. Well, obviously the purpose of the show was to protect and serve. Then RS comes up with further nonsense of RahulG threatening defamation case against Swamy. If RS truly believed RahulG then he is clearly more gullible than I thought he was; hardly fit to be the “newsman” that he calls himself. Even ordinary folks didn’t believe RahulG’s silly threats.

What RS should have stated at the beginning of the segment he states at the end. He had asked Congress men to appear on the show and they refused. That says everything. Rajdeep doesn’t like his integrity being questioned. Nobody does! But I have to remind him again that he’s in a profession that has been acknowledged as dishonest long before he was even born; long before TV was invented. John Swinton, Chief of Staff of New York Times, was called the ‘Dean of his profession’ by the industry. This is a speech he made to the New York Press Club in the US in 1880:

"There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell the country for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press. We are the tools and vassals of the rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes”.

At the feet of Mammon! Even if Mammon represents greed, I could easily replace Mammon with another word. Rajdeep once used to have a segment called “Crossfire” on his shows. It used to be a full-fledged show on IBN’s US partner CNN. Once called on Crossfire, Jon Stewart, the satirist, blasted the hosts for their divisive program and said: "Now, don’t you think that, for people watching at home, that’s kind of a drag; that you’re literally walking to a place called deception lane”? Following the beating that the CNN hosts took on that episode ‘Crossfire’ was permanently pulled off the air. It was dumped. Rajdeep may not face the same fate for his spin but there is no doubt he knows quite well which direction he’s headed when he walks that Deception Lane. 

Sweat Love Story - Part 2

Beni Prasad Verma was right in a way about Salman Khurshid. In the days of scams worth hundreds of thousands of crores why would a minister like Khurshid scam a measly 71 lakhs? Practices by team members usually follow those set by the bosses. The boss either indulges in or approves and overlooks corruption. It is, therefore, hardly a surprise that most cases of corruption come from Congress or Congress-ruled states.  Even the size and nature of Shashi Tharoor’s 70 crores shouldn’t usually worry the Congress.

Barter is a very old form of trade. It still exists and there are even online companies that provide barter services. As transactions get more sophisticated barter trade acquires new names and meanings. Sweat equity (SE) is really not very different from barter. Only, in the case of Sunanda Pushkar (SP) we have no idea what was being bartered. We do know of equity being allotted to her but have no idea what she delivered in return or was hoping to. A very clever barter system was devised by none other than Times of India. It fashionably called it ‘Private Treaties’ (PT). Companies used to seek and pay for publicity, pay for suppressing adverse reports and, of course, for normal advertising. The last part is fine but TOI decided since the first two parts are already being done by PR people why not legitimise it and run private treaties.

Under PT TOI picks up an equity stake in a company in return for publicity through advertisements, news reports, or advertorials in print or TV. Usually these are young but promising companies that are likely to go public in some time. So, for services provided, PT gets equity from a company. Is it any different from sweat equity? No, not really. When the public issue does come about and share prices are sky high TOI sells off the equity and makes a killing. So if 70 crores of SE were given to Sunananda, who knows, in five years it might have been worth 200 crores if everything else had gone smoothly. We’ll never know.

If you search deeper you are likely to find that under PT TOI hid many facts, passed off advertisements as news or editorials and in certain cases went much beyond. As Moneylife explains, in the case of Pyramid Saimira Ltd. journalists and the company owner colluded to forge a SEBI order and illegally made a killing with inflated prices of its shares. The persons involved have since been banned from trading by SEBI. The innocuous concept of SE does come with its own lethal doses of crimes. In another case ‘The Hoot’ discovered something unusual about an accident involving lifts at a construction site in Bangalore. The accident caused some deaths but while other newspapers named the construction company TOI didn’t mention the company at all. Well, that’s somewhat like an Indian house-wife who never mentions her ‘bread-winner’ husband by name. Turns out the builder, Sobha Developers, is a husband in TOI’s private treaties. Such sweat love, isn’t it? TOI has now made PT sound even more fashionable and stylish; they now call it Brand Equity Treaties Ltd. Brand Equity, a supplement in Economic Times, also used to conduct quiz competitions between corporate houses under the ‘Brand Equity Quiz’.

So what exactly is Sunanda so upset about the ‘50Cr’ tag? Well, not really her but the “ever-Aurat-ki-Izzat” loving media. The first one she ran to was NDTV. I have long back written a post: “Tainted? Have a chat with Barkha”. Lately in Barkha’s absence Sunetra Chaudhary fills in for her. But let’s not deviate. This NDTV is the same channel where Syed Bukhari called Shabana Azmi a “Naachne wali, Gaane wali” in a live program. Umm.. I guess both are “secular” so that can pass. This is the same NDTV who more or less painted Bhanwari Devi a money and fame-chasing whore in their article “Bhanwari Devi was determined to live a life less ordinary”. You can be forgiven for reading the article and believing BhanwariDevi sort of invited her murder. And the murderers? Oh some Congressmen are accused, so that case is likely to linger for eons. Their group editor, who else but Barkha Dutt, outraged against the ‘50Cr’ but forgot how she suggested women “self-combusted” over loutish politicians (This was around the suicide of Geetika Sharma in which politician Gopal Kanda has been accused and the other probably a reference to Bhanwari Devi). It wasn’t NDTV alone, Headlines Today and CNN-IBN didn’t lag behind. Any idea why all of a sudden these channels were so enthusiastic in letting SP, the oh so ‘Bhartiya Naari’, play ‘victim’ on TV? I leave that for you to figure out.

All this when just two years ago our media was eager to trash SP. Some headlines are quite interesting. Outlook called her a “..Girl, named Sue”. Can’t be sure, but this was probably picked up from the legendary late Johnny Cash’s country song about “A boy named Sue” who wanted to kill his father for naming him so and finally finds the reason why he was so named. Even Tehelka, the cheap tabloid, didn’t want to be left behind and headlined her a “Vamp” in an article supposedly meant to defend the woman. Sensationalism, Tehelka style! Not to be left behind Indian Express in “Jammu to Dubai…” carried a comment that shockingly casts more aspersions on the woman than any other comment you may have heard. I wonder if IE would have carried the comment today. That comment is from someone who claims to know SP but we can’t take that on face value. Mind you, I’m not in any way endorsing that comment or treating it as true or validating it. Just showing our media what they carry in their pages depending on the sign of the times.

Sweat is thicker than love. It pays! Robert Vadra bought a piece of land for 7.5 Crores. He pays for it with a cheque (A cheque? All of it with a cheque? Ha!) that is not to be presented. It’s money he never even had in the first place. He shows the amount as a ‘ghost-loan’ or OD from Corporation Bank in his books. A few months later he sells it to DLF for 58 crores. Neat! Surely, land prices didn’t go up that dramatically, did they? No! But I guess Vadra sat on that piece of land and sweated for four months to earn get the difference of over 50 crores for the same land. How did he sweat? Well, he got the Haryana govt to alter the land use privileges for that land in a jiffy and that’s the sweat he added. After being rattled from their slumber our media now reluctantly carries stories of Vadra’s land dealings. The Hindu’s latest article even reveals “Web of political links helped Vadra’s land deals”. Sweat love can be expressed in different ways. 50Crs tag for SP or 50Crs profit to Vadra.

The most intriguing aspect of the whole story is that fountain of sweat love; Rendezvous Sports. Very apt name, Rendezvous! Who or what exactly is Rendezvous? Who funds it and where did the funds come from? That’s what started the whole controversy in the first place. Ironically, it’s another Modi, Lalit Modi, who let Tharoor’s sweat out of the bag by disclosing the background through Twitter. With a 26% share in Kochi IPL team, this company handed out free gifts to many. 5% was handed out to SP for her sweat. Even Salman Khurshid stated back then that the ROC may look into Rendezvous to check if they violated rules to enter IPL. The IT Dept. stated it will initiate an investigation. Ever heard anything? Ever heard any media outlet following up on that story? The story dried up and died. Not surprising. The right question that the media cronies aren’t asking is “Who is Rendezvous and why was SP given SE in the first place?” Not even in the latest series of interviews was SP asked the question. I guess it’s not relevant for the purpose of the interviews.

While SP is a character in this story it’s not about her. She doesn’t realise how the media used her first as a “vamp” and now as a “victim” to suit their own agenda. But SP played right into their hands uttering typical victimhood rubbish. I do have a message for our media and SP. Stop teaching us we need to go to convents to learn about “cattle class” and that PDA means “Public Display of Affection”. What SP did show right through is a different type of PDA; “Public Display of Affront” and contempt for the intelligence of ordinary men and women. To indulge in opaque deals and then for the media to present certain people as “victims” is where our media becomes the first line of defence for the corrupt. Sweat Equity is a good thing; it’s a good concept for budding entrepreneurs who aren’t cash-rich. Unfortunately, in India, the powerful public figures are capable of turning any good concept into a delivery system for bribes. After all, even that DLF CEO, Kushpal Singh, called bribery “facilitating speedy disposal”. To rephrase the great, revered freedom-fighter: “Give me sweat and I’ll give you equity and endless love”.

Concluded

Sweat Love Story - Part 1

Each day I wake up I realise I’m totally out of sync with this tech-age; that I’m not fashionable. It’s just a few years ago I learned that PDA stood for ‘Personal Digital Assistant’. So when Sunanda Pushkar (SP) told NDTV “I don't know. I can only say it's very sad that in a country like ours that they don't believe in PDA because the point is we are a country...” I was totally flummoxed. I was wondering what a stupid PDA had to do with her defence of the ‘50Crs GF’ tag or Shashi Tharoor. Thankfully, Sunetra Chaudhary quickly clarified that SP’s PDA means “Public Display of Affection”. These things keep changing faster than I can learn. And hold on, I did go to a convent school for a few years of my primary education. You know, we were taught about cows and dogs.. as in 'domestic animals’. In some exams we even loved drawing pictures of animals. But hell, that convent never taught me what “cattle class” was. And SP insists only those who went to a convent school would understand that. I’m now wondering if it’s a good idea to ‘sue’ my school.

So this Sunanda was on all the English channels and all the ballerinas in the news channels were shocked over the 50Cr GF comment and how it was ‘sexist’ and an insult to ‘womankind’. All very nice! But it doesn’t alter the fact that 50 or 70crs of ‘sweat equity’ was the reason why Tharoor was sacked from the ministry earlier. Nothing had changed in between to bring him back. That was a question no news channel wanted to ask. Well, it’s election season in Gujarat so that part can wait. I’ve seen the Bachchan movie “Khoon Pasina” and even heard of the rock-band ‘Blood, Sweat & Tears’. Salman Khurshid explained the blood and tears part well. There was his ‘Ink & blood’ comment and then how SoniaG had ‘tears’ in her eyes over the Batla House shoot out.

However, it took the Tharoor-Sunanda duo to bring home the full understanding of ‘Sweat’. Theirs is a true love story as Tharoor indicated in his tweet-back to Narendra Modi. Like PDA this ‘sweat equity’ is also a concept that’s not very old. Start-up companies which don’t have lots of money issue equity shares to people like lawyers, marketers etc. in lieu of cash payments for their services. The shares, of course, are liquid assets like any other. But this sweat can also be misused to reward people as bribes under crony capitalism. And the best place to borrow capitalist concepts from? You guessed it – US of A! Nobody does it better. Every form of economic system or ideology has its evils; or should I say evil people? For instance govt officials handing over land or public facility to a private citizen or entity for a small price and then getting kickbacks. Or buy a piece of land dirt cheap, sweat over it with govt help and then sell it for an extraordinarily high value. I know what you’re thinking. You’re probably thinking Robert Vadra but we’ll get to him later.

In the meantime let’s remember what Swami Vivekanand or even Stephen Covey has talked about many times. Good is difficult to emulate but evil can and will always be exceeded. In other words, it’s hard to pick up good practices or habits but bad habits are usually exceeded from where they were picked up. If one is a smoker, chances are the person is probably now smoking more than the person from whom the habit was picked up. Remember September-October 2008? That’s the time many crony American companies with fake balance sheets and figures, companies with nothing but paper assets crashed. Those included AIG, Merrill Lynch and housing loan companies. While many in the public suffered, the owners or management members of these companies made a killing. The sweat love story is not very different. You’ve heard of Cash4Votes, of Cash4Questions in parliament. Here’s something similar: Kids4Cash. The story is old and also features in Capitalism: A Love Story by Michael Moore.

In the year 2001 a private company in Pennsylvania (PA), US offered their company, PA ChildCare, to replace a county’s Juvenile Detention home and the contract of detentions outsourced to them. The two people who offered this “social service” were as Greg Zappala and attorney Robert Powell. As it happened Powell had a friend in Judge Michael Conahan who shut down the public juvenile facility since it was “run down” and stopped its funding by end 2002. In due course the contract to run the detention centre was handed over the privately run PA ChildCare of Robert Powell. That’s not all; the contract was a $58 Million per year lease. So essentially, Powell’s company built his private detention centres with public money and had an annual lease amount too. Nice, isn’t it? But, that’s not all.

Powell’s company added a sister company to the original PA ChildCare and both started operating juvenile detentions for the govt. Powell’s business of reforming of spoilt brats of PA flourished. He even bought a private jet and yacht that was ironically named “Reel Justice”. Now that the detention business was privatised, more and more kids were convicted for juvenile offences. The number of kids being sent to the detention centres grew, business grew. In a 5 year period Judge Mark Ciavarella (seemingly a partner in crime of Judge Conahan) sentenced an astonishing 6500 kids to Powell’s detention centres. You see, the more kids they sent to the juvenile centres the more the money to the private businessmen. More money to the private businessmen meant … Hmmmm! That’s the beauty!

Both Judges Conahan and Ciavarella received up to $2.6 Mn in kickbacks and bribes. It came to be known as the “Kids for Cash” scandal which broke in 2008. Both judges also didn’t report this income and didn’t pay income tax on it. The case broke just around the time financial markets were crashing in the US. Both judges were prosecuted. On February 18, 2011, following a trial, a federal jury convicted Ciavarella and the prosecutors said the former judge used children "as pawns to enrich himself." On August 11, 2011, Ciavarella was sentenced to 28 years in federal prison as a result of his conviction. On September 23, 2011, Conahan was sentenced to 17-and-a-half years in prison as he pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy. On November 4, 2011, Robert Powell was sentenced to 18 months in prison for failing to report a felony and being an accessory to tax conspiracy. Consequent to the frauds all the 6500 convictions by Ciavarella were also overturned. Read more at Juvenile Law Centre site.

There are only two things that separate the crony capitalism of the USA and India. One is that their media, probably equal with India’s in every other way, does not directly support crony capitalism. The other is the Justice system. The US justice system appears to be fair and is definitely far swifter. It is merciless on any criminal regardless of who the person or entity is. Out here, there is an outpouring of tears in the media for Rajat Gupta and he would have probably not been tried for another 25 years even. The concept of sweat equity was originally a good one. But as we keep observing, crony capitalism ensures equity and assets pass to hands without anyone running or breaking into a sweat.

Just about two years ago Sunanda Pushkar was a hounded woman with many media crooks painting her a “vamp”. Now, she is being painted a “victim”. For the media everybody is a victim where it concerns Narendra Modi. In her interviews she goes around saying “there’s no money on the table”. She even quotes from Jerry Maguire and says “show me the money”. Well you see, viewers are either idiots or didn’t attend a convent school to understand that the very reason for “sweat” equity is because the start-up doesn’t have enough cash. Question remains, why exactly was she given that equity for. There’s no evidence she had done anything for the Kochi IPL team, unless it’s a big secret. She didn’t run and break into a sweat. It must have been Kochi’s way of expressing affection. Sweat is thicker than love, it’s priceless. 

To be continued...

 

Walking The Dog

The theory that dogs resemble their masters or vice-versa has been around for a long time. I have no idea why. It’s possible that people look around for pet dogs that look like them but that again is a theory. Maybe stray dogs somehow find their way to houses of people resembling them but that again is a theory. Whatever the reason, there seems to be some valid logic for such theories. Look at these pics and I think you’ll find it hard to deny that there is some secret or divine resemblance dogs have to their masters:

No matter how far you drive a dog away it has this uncanny but natural ability to find its way back to its master. Is the dog biased? Sure it is! It is biased beyond reason and will remain faithful no matter what. It does not tolerate any reason, question or logic against its master; which is why it’s called a man’s best friend. (Is it sexist to say just ‘man’ anymore? Should I say a person’s best friend?)

There has always been a question on many people’s minds: “Are our judges really unbiased”? The answer is a simple but emphatic “No”. Judges are as human as you and I and have their biases, opinions and preferences on almost all issues that come to their courts. In an unusual incident a former judge, Justice SM Soni, even wrote to the SC to keep Justice Aftab Alam away from Gujarat related cases due to his “communal mindset”. If you have heard the frequent statements by Justice Katju it won’t be hard to see that he has very strong views on almost every issue that surrounds us. The reason why judges are able to rise above their biases is because they are trained long years to interpret the letter and spirit of the law and go by facts and evidence. In higher courts it is rare to find a single judge deciding a case. It’s usually a bench of two or even more judges. Also, for their judgements they are accountable to the Law, the Constitution and their conscience and no other master. Beyond that, there is also a system of appeals that includes seeking a review of an SC judgement and can go right up to the President. What are our options with the media?

So when the eternal journalistic-bimbo announced her FTN show “Is Narendra Modi PM material?” you naturally wonder if she is even fit to discuss the topic given her hatred and bias. No, don’t take my word for it. Look at her tweet and look at the response she got from noted journalist Swapan Dasgupta (SD). Now I have to tell you, I have rarely seen SD being so blunt about anything. He is usually direct but with a lot of subtlety but in his tweet he directly charges the Social Genius not with bias but with “hatred” of Modi. Just a few weeks back Modi had sarcastically asked Rajdeep Sardesai, the ‘Numero Uno political analyst’ according to the Social Genius, if the people had assigned the task of finding a PM to the media. What SD asks is a very pertinent question. Many of our media celebs have made their fortunes not based on their bias but based on their “hatred” for Modi. In doing so, some have been as faithful as dogs are to their masters. Naturally, some even speak and bark like their masters do. They have come to resemble them in their discourses.

I strongly recommend that you read all the responses to that tweet of Swapan Dasgupta. Some are quite interesting and I reproduce a few:

One asks: @Swapan55 that just Paradoxically displays ur love for Modi!!! @sagarikaghose #FreedomofSpeech anyone?

This guy probably doesn’t realise the difference between being a biased journalist or commentator and being an anchor. He forgets that the anchor is supposed to be a moderator and not let her own opinions, bias and hatred dictate the course of the debate. SD’s sympathies for BJP or Modi are not a big secret. He does not pretend to be an “independent observer” like Sagarika or Rajdeep. More importantly, SD doesn’t allow his bias to condone lies, untruths and outright misdeeds by the BJP. The tweeter even overlooks the fact that SD is being invited for the very reason of his sympathies for Modi. SD further tweets that owing to her hatred of Modi, Sagarika should be a panellist and not the moderator. That would have been fairer.

Here’s another one from a regular moron on Twitter: @swapan55 Ouch. Clearly @sagarikaghose didnt invite you on the panel :p

Haha! This moron tends to speak before actual events. Little did he realise that when the show actually took place SD would indeed be on the panel. Perhaps it didn’t even occur to him that SD may have tweeted for the precise reason that he knew he was on that panel. Of course, ‘scoop and break’ specialist of CNN-IBN wasn’t to be left behind so he tweeted thus:

Bhupendra Chaube: @swapan55 ha ha, where is that anchor swapan?

That’s probably a dig Chaubeji wanted to take at someone. We know that lately Chaubeji is at the receiving end of some internal politics at his channel’s office and his bosses seem to be running a cheeky rivalry between him and Pallavi Ghosh in public through their tweets. All in good fun, one hopes. There are some other silly tweets like one asking if SD is being “paid” by Modi which don’t really warrant any comment.

As for the debate itself, there was Modi sympathiser Dasgupta, Modi critic Yogendra Yadav and Modi-haters Javed Anand and Sagarika Ghose. Yogendra Yadav has made a gentle shift from a “jholawalla” to politician recently. Javed Anand, husband of the washing machine of justice Teesta Setalvad, is as much a Modi-hater as Sagarika herself. So it’s 3 against 1 so you can imagine how the dice is loaded, loaded.

So let’s ask the same question we asked about judges. Can we expect media celebs to rise above their biases? Absolutely not! Especially not when it borders on hatred as has been over the years. Sagarika, Rajdeep, Barkha, Vir Sanghvi, Vinod Mehta, Vinod Sharma are not driven by bias. They follow a political agenda set by their masters. In the absence of independent moderators these media celebs automatically become the voices and barks of their political masters. By pitting 3 against 1 CNN-IBN has already skewed the time-share that would be available to each participant in the debate. This is the simple reason that the US presidential debates now have a clock running on the screen for viewers to see if both candidates are getting a fair timeshare.

Even in pointing out non-threatening PMs in the coalition era the SocialGenius reels off names to compare what she calls a “polarising” candidate in Modi: MMS, Narasimha Rao, IK Gujral, Deve Gowda. Oops.. the most assertive and yet a non-threatening PM in the recent past would have to be Atal Behari Vajpayee. Reminder: No matter how far you drive a dog away it has this uncanny but natural ability to find its way back to its master. It’s not only unconscious it is second-nature for dogs. As for threatening, who exactly does Modi really threaten? India? The idea of India? (As the social scientologist kept mentioning), the minorities, the media? Looks like Modi threatens the very Macaulay Putras and Putris who have so far lived a life of luxury and entitlement. He threatens the very masters of this class who hate anything that is likely to challenge the status quo.

After years of an insipid, lack-lustre, puppet PM like MMS it is only natural that many would like to see an assertive and decisive PM. Modi need not be the only candidate who fits that bill but there isn’t anyone else who's standing up yet. It wouldn’t be unfair to say that the Cong-UPA under MMS (or Sonia if you like) has figuratively burned down mission-India and many dreams and houses. As for the dogs, even if their masters literally burn down the mission and the house, I leave it to you to wonder who they will still follow. Seems their masters walk them well.