Pak's Useful Idiots

“We will never forget! We will never forget!” screamed Arnab Goswami and the scroll on TimesNow during the 26/11 attacks. It didn’t take even a year for TOI to forget and start the crappy “Aman Ki Asha” campaign with Pak newspaper The Dawn. While Arnab screams at everything else, he feels shy in asking how much money TOI made from it and who paid that money. It appears that many alleged journalists are practically jobless now and are finding their passion elsewhere to keep themselves relevant. Politicians going to Pakistan to appease Muslims back home is not new but it’s the phenomenon of media crooks engaging in covert activities that should be worrying us. Earlier, some of these media folks were guests of Ghulam Nabi Fai who wanted to free Kashmir and was funded by ISI. Prominent among his guests was India’s second biggest Intellectual Moron (IM) Dileep Padgaonkar. This worthless editor is a paid junkie who is into everything but journalism.

How we respond to tragedies is an indicator of a nation’s policy on war and peace. A day after the heads of two of our jawans were chopped off at the LOC, Shashi Tharoor was moderating a debate between journalists of India and Pakistan. These are meaningless exercises by our elites. I call them Candle light sinners. Just as TOI shamelessly forgot the dead from 26/11 our media folks along with some politicians have scant respect for the dead. There can NEVER be peace with Pakistan. Only the world’s greatest morons would believe that is possible. That country’s way of life is not cut out for peace with India. The only option is to avert wars, avert terror attacks and maintain a constant vigil to protect our borders. And what is there to discuss and negotiate with Pakistan? Other than onions I doubt there is anything we can get from Pakistan. Err… Maybe item girls for Bollywood or lousy singers and actors who can’t make money on their own soil. This is why Ved Pratap Vaidik’s trip to Pakistan and his meeting with terror-chief Hafiz Saeed is nothing short of a sinister act.

In January 2013 when our jawans were killed at LOC Hafiz reportedly announced a reward of 5 lakhs for every Indian soldier’s head. Vaidik is a bumbling moron and that’s a given. But his extended enthusiasm in acting like he was Allah’s diplomat in meeting Hafiz and trying to understand that “innocent” soul is the kind of stupidity that our senior journos are blessed with. While Vaidik deserves condemnation why should we pick on that one idiot alone? Along with him there were other useful idiots of Pakistan who went on a joyride. Among them were Barkha Dutt (Pakistan’s permanent fool in India), Dileep Padgaonkar (India’s 2 nd biggest IM), a non-Indian like Sidharth Varadabhai and politicians whose careers have ended like Manishankar Aiyar, Salman Khurshid and Sudheendra Kulkarni. All of these people are worthless in India and supposedly make a “self-styled” bunch of peace-brokers in what they fashionably call “Track-2 diplomacy”. Who authorised these morons for any track-diplomacy? Nobody! What lures them to such activities? That is a question no one is asking. What is the motivation for such deliberate misadventure? Obviously, since the election loss by Congress, most of their members and puppets have nothing to do but attempt to thwart the new govt in international diplomacy. Their Pak junket is one such meaningless exercise.

Vaidik, in particular, is hardly a practicing journalist and cannot claim he met Hafiz as part of a journalistic exercise. So it has been handy for the media and the Congress to label him a BJP tout who met Hafiz under authority of the BJP govt. Why would any govt authorise this joker to meet Hafiz? And even if they did, would any govt acknowledge it? It would be foolish to imagine that Hafiz is an easy person to meet. He’s a guy who would be looking over his shoulders all the time. While there is no evidence, it is not far-fetched to assume that his meeting with Hafiz would have been facilitated by one of the crooks in the gang that went to Pakistan on a joyride. Some of these people have had a backdoor channel with the Pak media and establishment for a long time. Hamid Mir, a Pak journalist, had interviewed Osama Bin Laden even when Laden was an internationally wanted man. So it is not wrong to assume that the Pak media circuit and their establishment have access to all the wanted individuals. Some of the known crooks in the gang of 15 certainly do have deep connections with this circuit and establishment.

The master-chef who organised the joyride for the gang of 15 is none other than Manishankar Aiyar. He is a board member of the Regional Peace Initiative which organised the junket. It is needless to add that any such outfit operating in Pak would obviously be filled with their former army heads and ISI operatives. As in the case with Fai, the ISI is good at identifying the most useful Pak idiots in India to serve their purposes. The choice of MSAiyar as one of the board members and through him the choice of other members of the gang of 15 is a good indicator on the people India should keep a close watch on. Here’s a montage of the worthless exercise which does nothing but fatten the flesh of this gang and indulge their greed for luxuries and goodies.

Why do these guys suddenly want a peace initiative with a junket? Obviously, the new govt in Delhi is not one to the liking of Congress or the Pak establishment. A gathering of all the useful idiots from India for the Pak establishment, army and the ISI is what the doctor ordered to throw a spanner in the works. Vaidik comes across as a stupid moron but I have no doubt who the conduits are. Do you? Permanent Pak friends like Barkha, Varadabhai, MS Aiyar all must have had a hand in what transpired. That Vaidik met Hafiz is public now. MS Aiyar also appeared on a show in Pakistan with Hafiz in February 2012. It’s all a nice family. There are people who want the govt in Delhi to have lots of thorns in their flesh. We can trust Barkha, Padgaonkar, Aiyar, Khurshid, Zoya Hassan to provide those thorns.

One would like to imagine someday peace with Pakistan is possible although that is never going to happen. Pakistan doesn’t want peace. But there are people in India who want to encash this situation to spruce up their lifestyle. They love that this cold conflict will always be there else their “Aman Ki Asha” money-churning machine will die. The ISI knows who these useful idiots are. The gang of 15 that Manishankar Aiyar led to Pakistan knows that too. Everyone has ranted about Vaidik’s meeting with Hafiz, except the gang of 15 that went with him. You and I can ponder but they are richer for their effort. How they get funded and how their travels happen will offer the answers to such episodes. Pakistan is a goldmine for some of these useful idiots. Here’s what the C5M rants about press freedom:

There is press freedom in India but it has always been misused. Most of the people pretending to be journalists have often turned out to be political brokers. How does one explain a bunch of journos constantly involved in political activities like Barkha, Padgaonkar, Varadabhai, Vaidik & Co. do? It just so happens that Vaidik was exposed in his meeting with Hafiz. The others are just as shady in their dealings and we are yet to know the people they meet and the deals they make. The Ghulam Nabi Fai episode was an indicator of what the sco called journos are up to. Now that the new govt has rendered most of the media celebs useless they are likely to be more useful idiots for Pakistan. 

Sonia Gandhi's Fake Victimhood

The Congress has been badly dumped by the people in the last elections. There are chances they may be dumped from some states in the upcoming elections in a few months. Yet, our media still reports on their silly utterances as if Sonia Gandhi still rules the country. During the last few days Subramaniam Swamy has boldly said “Sonia Gandhi is a crook” and that “BJP is soft on the Gandhis”. Take a look at how Gandhi-slaves NDTV report on the sleeping beauty called Rahul Gandhi:

They show the video, they show RG yawning, they show RG falling off to a quick sleep and then they report “BJP alleging RG sleeping in parliament”. Even their tweet on July 9 says the same. What are these people, blind idiots? If the man is caught sleeping on video does it take for anyone to “allege”? Such are the slaves at NDTV who still twist ordinary news reports into an act against the Gandhis. Oh! You can’t do that! See the Gandhis are like “sacred monuments”. Having played the idiotic “alleged” tape the channel then goes to a Congi who goes one step better (I’m not sure but I think it was Rajiv Shukla but that doesn’t matter). The Congi says “It is inappropriate for LSTV to show such images”. Okay, so it’s not inappropriate for the bumbling Pappu to doze off but it’s the camera’s fault. It doesn’t even occur to the Congi that the camera is not focused on RG but on an MP who is speaking in parliament and RG just happened to be in Zombieland right behind him. That’s the lighter part though.

There are many misdeeds that the Nehru-Gandhi clan has to answer for. Our historians and media have conveniently washed off those sins. Recent revelations about the 1962 war appear to show Jawaharlal Nehru goofed up badly. Monuments are made for him. Indira Gandhi went unpunished for Emergency crimes. More monuments! Rajiv Gandhi had no accountability for 1984. Some more monuments! All three were happily awarded Bharat Ratna; two of them during their own tenures.  This fake greatness to the family now even extends to the Vadras. This is why, regardless of what one might think of Swamy, he is doing a monumental job in prosecuting the Gandhis for their crimes in the National Herald scam. Predictably SoniaG and Congress cry “vendetta”. It’s time people and GOI stopped listening to such nonsense. Courts don’t rule based on someone’s vendetta else Narendra Modi would be in jail instead of being the PM. The Congis who carried out the biggest witch-hunt India has ever known against Modi are now screaming “vindictiveness, vendetta”.

In bogus defence of the NH scam there is a lawyer called KTS Tulsi who even grandly claimed “Young India” (76% owned by the Gandhis) which scammed NH was formed to promote “democracy and secularism”. Really? And what’s the Congress supposed to promote? Minority appeasement? Even AK Antony has now rubbished the Congress’s “secular credentials”. The TOI report says: Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday said a court summoning Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi and herself in connection with the National Herald case, smacked of 'political vindictiveness' by the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government… Sonia also confirmed that the income tax department has served her party notices in a case that alleges that she and other party leaders misappropriated funds of a company that used to publish the erstwhile National Herald newspaper. "This kind of political witch hunt will only help us and help us to come back faster (to power)," she said.

So Sonia Gandhi and her son will keep on committing misdeeds but no one should act against them? The woman is seriously hallucinating if she thinks the IT notice and imaginary “vindictiveness” will bring them back to power faster. She probably thinks she will be fortunate like IndiraG who could topple a “Khichdi” govt in 1980 and return to power. It appears that the pathetic number of 44 that Congress got hasn’t taught her any lessons. At the other end of this saga of misdeeds her “Damaad” quietly closes down six spurious companies he floated to carry out all kinds of dubious dealings. He is so brazen he doesn’t even file annual returns for these companies. Read this: Vadra, the husband of Priyanka Gandhi, is quietly closing down six companies set up just two years ago.The firms have never filed annual returns or balance sheets, an examination of company records by HT shows. Lifeline Agrotech, Greenwave Agro, Rightline Agriculture, Future Infra Agro, Best Seasons Agro and Prime Time Agro are all private limited companies established between June and August 2012, purportedly as agriculture or agro-processing firms. Vadra is named as managing director and promoter in company records.

Had it been you or me or any ordinary citizen we would be hounded by the authorities and made to pay heavy penalties for not complying with statutory requirements. Vadra quietly winds up companies but still retains his security and exemption from security checks. Who the hell are these people? And the BJP guys in GOI don’t have the courage to act on him? This is why Swamy makes sense when he says BJP is soft on them. For all the scams and misdeeds of the Congress, SoniaG and some ministers should be hounded the way Al Capone was hounded with a special task force. The new govt may be in its early days but if they let them off for their crimes against this country it will be one promise that Modi would seriously fail to keep. Following the court summons to the Gandhis in the NH scam the IT department was compelled to issue a notice on the tax exemption. If they hadn’t done that someone would have again gone to court and forced them to act.  

After SoniaG reacted with her statement about vindictiveness bringing her back to power soon, TimesNow ran a headline “Sonia warns BJP”. So for these media crooks she is so powerful? Rahul Kanwal on July 9 ran a poll on his nightly show on Headlines Today asking people if this was “vindictive politics”. Some 50% seem to have said “yes” to that stupid question and who knows who or how many vote on these silly polls. It’s a stupid question because it is not the right question. And these dumb morons pass off as journalists and editors to fool the viewers. The right question would be “Have Sonia and Rahul scammed NH”? The facts of the case clearly indicate they have indeed scammed NH along with others. They have also rented out properties of NH when they had no business to do so. Swamy has also written to the SIT on Black Money formed by the new govt asking for investigation into foreign bank accounts of the Gandhis. Is this all a figment of his imagination? Is all of it vendetta?

The NH scam broke sometime around November 2012. The media washed it off and would have liked it to be buried. If Sonia and Rahul actually have any high morals as they cry vendetta, why didn’t they act then? They could have reversed the transactions and sought a political closure to the case. They did not. They were brazen because they thought they could somehow still cobble up a “Coalition of the Corrupt” in 2014 and get away with the scams. Unfortunately, events did not turn out like that. Fake victimhood may have worked in the past when most people in the country did not have information. The South voted for IndiraG after Emergency because most states there didn’t experience the brutality of that period and because of censorship not much information travelled. It is not possible to escape now. Subramaniam Swamy is absolutely right in pursuing the cases against the Gandhis and the govt should actually back him. If corruption has to stop, the cleansing has to start from the top.  

 

The Political End Of The Gandhis

There’s something common about all corrupt leaders at the top. They manipulate systems, try and destroy democratic institutions and make every effort to destroy political opponents. They keep it at it till the end is inevitable. The most prominent one is the case of Richard Nixon. He and his loyal foot-soldiers manipulated every institution and destroyed many political opponents to ensure electoral success for his second term. Unfortunately for Nixon he kept tapes of the conversations at his office which eventually caused his downfall. Whenever in trouble, Nixon and his little coterie always managed to “get around” the hurdles. They somehow “managed” it; until the US Supreme Court ordered the tapes be surrendered as evidence. Here’s a little exchange between Alexander Haig (then White House Chief of Staff) and Nixon (from his bio-pic) during the last days of office:

That date being referred to, June 23, 1972, is the date of reports a few days after the Watergate burglary (June 17). The burglary itself didn’t cost Nixon all that much but it led to the discovery of a whole web of corrupt operations. Nixon wasn’t after any personal monetary gain or wealth. Alexander Haig tells him “It’s the SC, you don’t get around it”. In what Robert Vadra calls a “Banana republic” Nixon would have happily continued. In “Banana republics” even SC judges can be bought. You just have to hear Prabhu Chawla in the Radia tapes to understand that. The Congress and Sonia Gandhi have also manipulated and destroyed many democratic institutions. You just have to know the modus operandi. The National Herald scam involving the Gandhis is one such operation. It has even attracted an IT notice for a political party lending money to a commercial business house. There doesn’t seem to be a way to “get around it” as many of the Congress and alliance ministers have “got around it” in the last decade. The question is: why were these people so brazen?

Although they aren’t showing it, it must be the biggest heartache for Congress and their clones to find that the man they wanted to burn in hell is now the PM. It must hurt them that he has outsmarted all of them to secure a clear majority in the elections. Nothing explains how the Congress hoped to come back to power or support a “khichdi govt” formed with its support than Dileep Padgaonkar’s belated confession (Read here). Padgaonkar wrote: “The dread possibility of ‘communal’ forces coming to power, we believed, would override all other concerns of the electorate”. In other words, fear-mongering, fake secularism, Muslim-appeasement and tainting opponents would help the Congress somehow control power at the centre. Media crooks like Padgaonkar, Barkha Dutt, Rajdeep Sardesai, Arnab Goswami and Intellectual Morons like Amartya Sen, Ram Guha and others hoped and expected BJP would fail to get a clear majority. Here’s part of the coterie that Sonia Gandhi, Congress and media crooks hoped would see them through:

We all know how Mulayam and Maya were continuously hounded and manipulated through CBI. DMK was a partner in crime. The murderous CPM is an “ideological” spouse of the Congress. The JDU driven by one man’s lust for power that broke up with BJP. The step-child of Congress called the AAP. The NCP that has equal number of scams to its credit. And key media crooks cleverly campaigning for Congress-UPA to return. One can recall Arnab’s non-stop slavery of Priyanka Vadra as if she was the next queen of India. SoniaG and Congress had hoped that somehow these clones would garner enough seats to either support the Congress to form a govt or they would form a govt that also includes AIADMK, TMC, BJD etc which the Congress can prop up from outside to keep the evil “communal forces” out of power. In particular, they hoped that would stop the man they wanted dead from becoming PM.

The Congress knew the tide was against it but it was this hope that they can somehow cobble up a non-BJP govt that fuelled the belief that they can “get around it”. That even if court cases came up against the Gandhis, they would “get around it”. It is this brazenness that led to many scams, including the National Herald one. The magistrate who has summoned the Gandhis and others on August 7 has observed: “It appears that Young India was in fact created as a sham or a cloak to convert public money to personal use or as a special purpose vehicle for acquiring control over Associated Journals Ltd assets worth over Rs 2,000 crore”. The DNA article linked here adds “K Vikram Rao of Indian Federation of Working Journalists states that the alleged misappropriation of Rs 2,000 crore is ' the tip of the iceberg. We are planning to implead ourselves in the petition in the court. It is a huge scandal and needs to be probed by the premier investigators of the country. This scam is bigger than Sahara," said Rao, whose father was the founder editor of Associated Journals in 1938”. 

The case is not going to be concluded anytime soon and will drag on for some years as most Indian cases do. The unfortunate part about that, in this one, is that it may keep the Gandhis embroiled in a legal tangle. Years ago such a case would not have dented the Gandhis too much because of equity the Gandhi name had with people. After all, there are millions who believed these fake Gandhis are somehow related to MKGandhi. But the thrashing they got in the recent elections which resulted in a miserable 44 seats to the Congress is proof that Indians have finally woken up to the fake Gandhis. Time and technology dismantles many myths and lies. Leadership is often tested more in adverse situations than in good ones. Both Sonia and Rahul aren’t really great leaders in the first place. The latter is more a useless burden on the party. SoniaG could claim some credit for restoring the Congress party’s standing after the previous NDA govt but much of her political capital has eroded since then with the corruption taint. The third left-over Gandhi, Priyanka Vadra, has shown immaturity in her political campaigns and other than emotional and childish gibberish had nothing to offer. I therefore believe that this is the end of the Gandhis politically.

Historically, the only thing Congress knew when they were in opposition was how to manipulate, horse-trade, bribe, induce and bring down govts. Every non-Congress govt in our history has been brought down by the Congress except the last term of AB Vajpayee and it is not because Congress did not try. This time, the Congress is in no position to bring down the BJP govt which has a single-party majority. This is something no politician, no pundit and no media crook ever imagined would happen. That is one of SoniaG’s biggest hurdles for a return. In case of Indira Gandhi, the serious cases against her for the Emergency crimes got wiped out because she could bring down what she called the “Khichdi” govt and return to power. The NH case is not going to be wiped out. On the contrary, one can expect more cases to follow and there is every reason why even Robert and Priyanka Vadra may also face court cases for land deals. Also, Subramaniam Swamy who is following the Sunanda Pushkar murder case has alleged that the Kochi IPL scam money belongs to Robert Vadra. Things get even murkier.

They say it’s a serious mistake to write off politicians. Well, I have done that before and I am starting to enjoy it. I predicted in “Reincarnation of Arvind Kejriwal” that he is finished and AK helped himself to doom. AK even insisted on realising his last dream of ending up in jail as that post hoped he wouldn’t. His recent utterances do not indicate he has learned any lessons. AK, of course, has age on his side and can re-invent himself if he so chooses. But SoniaG doesn’t have that advantage. By 2019 SoniaG will be 72 and given Congress claims of her health it is unlikely she will be able to cope with anymore gruelling campaigns. Even in the 2014 LS campaign she had a much restricted campaign and the gaps were made by RahulG and Priyanka Vadra. Rahul and Mrs Vadra filled the gaps quite badly to leave no future expectations from them. A senior Congress leader in Kerala called Rahul a “joker”. Even the family poodle Digvijaya Singh now says RahulG lacks temperament and avoided leadership by not becoming head of the Congress LS group.

The worst truth was to come in the form of a belated confession by AK Antony who said “People have lost faith in the secular credentials of the party. They have a feeling that the Congress bats for a few communities, especially minorities”. The confession is half-hearted. He should have clearly said Congress bats for Muslims and Christians. Sonia’s inner coterie would reflect that kind of batting. The UP results have shown even Muslims aren’t buying the Congress “fake secularism” anymore. All the elderly Congis are suddenly finding the nerve to speak which they couldn’t when they were in power. There is good reason to believe this country has moved on from the dynasty. I see no way that the Gandhis will command the influence they did in the past. They will not disappear but the last elections and current events certainly signal the end of the Gandhis.  

Can Javdekar Prevent A Tragedy?

If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. There are reports that suggest Gopinath Munde could have survived the car crash if he had worn the seat-belt. It was a tragic, avoidable death. Within the day most TV channels had programmes on driving-safety and the use of seat-belts, how to follow traffic rules. These are routine hygiene issues in driving and use of roads. It is how easily we dismiss routines that often costs more lives. (On why “routines” and routine hygiene are important I recommend you read these two posts: Fool’s Secularism and Broken Windows).

Even on flights the most frequent travellers don’t switch off mobiles or wear their seat-belts when required or pull their seat-backs upright despite the signs or announcements. Some crew member has to come and persuade them to do so. Recently two buildings collapsed, one in Delhi and one in Chennai. The Chennai building was a 12-storey high-rise that killed 10 people and injured several others on June 29. Usually, the ones killed are workers who put up temporary residence in the basement or ground-floor of the building or the space around the building. Immediately, HeadlinesToday ran a show on what measures buyers should take before buying a flat. Tips like checking on cement quality, soil tests and so on. How dumb can these people get? Do ordinary folks buying a flat go around checking cement and soil? And how are they supposed to do it? Do they have the expertise? This is essentially the failure of the municipality or the govt in enforcing strict construction laws. It would be fair to expect building and construction inspectors to carry out regular checks and put out notices prominently.

The media loves a tragedy; natural or man-made. Remember how all the media folks gathered on the coast of Orissa and Andhra to report on cyclone Phallin in October 2013? Fortunately, the govts there took precautions and evacuated people and there was no heavy loss of life or damage. That’s a blow to media! The next day all of them had packed up and returned to Delhi with not much of a tragedy to report. That was a great exercise in “preventive action” by govt. There is a need for such a desperate preventive measure in the media to avert a possible tragedy. It’s a question Prakash Javdekar, the new I&B minister, must seriously address. A serious tragedy or death is waiting to happen because of media’s misconduct, particularly from TV reporters. This concerns the hounding of individuals who are either soft targets for media or because their political agenda dictates such intrusions. Take a look at this pic:

The top row has pics of Nitin Gadkari being hounded by reporters in Nagpur. They also hounded him at Delhi and Nagpur airports over an alleged scam. In particular, it involved a 19-part witch-hunt by Arnab Goswami on TimesNow which had nothing but a political agenda to unseat Gadkari as BJP President. NG was pushed and shoved around, he was waylaid when he tried to enter his car, and he was accosted at airports because of the desire of an orgy of violent reporting by the media. Last year Gurunath Meiyappan had reached Mumbai to surrender to the police in the IPL betting scam. TimesNow chased the police vehicle from Mumbai airport to the police station giving a running commentary all through the drive. Yes it was a chase almost like the one seen in the case of OJ Simpson. This is a seriously dangerous trend. Not just that, at the police station the cameramen and reporters jostled and poked mics at Meiyappan in the most uncouth and uncivilised manner. It took half an hour for the police to get out of the vehicle to the building in the complex.

Immediately after he took over, the first announcement that PJ made was that he would discuss 100% FDI in media with the media folks. Enthusiasm! One can understand his enthusiasm to please the media crooks and score some brownie points. PJ perhaps forgets that most of the media is still a bunch of poodles of Sonia Gandhi. The only privacy they respect is that of the Gandhi and Vadra family, everyone else is fair game for them. We have known film actors like Salman Khan and Dharmendra to have assaulted reporters or cameramen for excessive intrusion and harassment. The reporters want to provoke such actions with their hounding to create even more sensation. It is just that most decent people helplessly tolerate this unwarranted intrusion and nonsense. Take a look at these:

On top is the pic of Preity Zinta being hounded. Timesnow even sent a reporter to stalk her house in Los Angeles where Preity travelled after a molestation complaint she had lodged in Mumbai. On her return her car was crowded again by reporters making her life miserable. What is the purpose of all this? Just a few soundbites? Is it impossible to report on any case without such uncivilised behaviour? Is it necessary to push, shove, jostle and shove mics and cameras into people’s faces and vehicles to report? TimesNow is the biggest offender these days. Earlier they had hounded N. Sreenivasan of BCCI so much that they stalked all his houses and even filmed while he was jogging. I have no love lost for Sreenivasan but I certainly don’t think the media has the right to such invasion.

In the second row are pics of Nihalchand Meghwal, a union minister, who has been alleged to be involved in a sexual offence case. An FIR has been registered in the same case in which the investigation against him was closed earlier. A moron called Aditya Raj Kaul hounded him in some place in Rajasthan and grandly claimed they had “located him” as if Nihalchand had gone underground or absconded. I have seen the videos and it was Kaul who was offensive and provoking Nihalchand poking mics into the latter’s face and into his vehicle while the minister kept repeating “no comment, no comment”. Kaul then ranted that he was heckled by the minister’s men. I am surprised they didn’t beat up this idiot because some day such a thrashing is inevitable. Excessive intrusion is as much physical violence as a retaliatory violent action. Who the hell are these reporters? They have a license to hound people? After all this, the moron Aditya Raj Kaul tweeted he was safe as if he was attacked by terrorists. These are the antics they resort to when their target is clearly “political” and has nothing to do with journalism. Did you watch all this, Mr Javdekar?

In the third row are pics of PK Bansal who is alleged to be involved in a scam in the railways. The reporters zoom into his residence and show his “goat sacrifice”. That is perhaps even tolerable. But look at the next pic. The entire uncouth crowd of media has blocked the gates to Bansal’s residence. If the context weren’t mentioned these morons would look like they are protesting or agitating for “Goat rights”. Such is the cheap level to which journalism has fallen. The excessive intrusion is not journalism but Paparazzi behaviour. There is another serious issue where journalists are not being prosecuted and punished for intrusions: sting operations.

One has to remember that phone tapping and recording is illegal. If that is illegal then how are unauthorised sting operations legal? How is it legal to intrude upon a person, induce him or her to some offence and then grandly claim he or she is corrupt or a murderer or rapist? Private sting operations cannot be legal and there should be a law to ban them totally. Many journalists (like in the 2G scam or AR Antulay scam) have found genuine methods to expose corruption and crime. The only cause where stings can be authorised should be when the police or a legal investigating body carries out a sting to seek evidence for an already registered crime. The media cannot claim a license to such actions especially when most of the top editors of the media are corrupt and, if investigated genuinely, most of them would be in jail. Even if the media wants to carry out a sting it must seek prior authorisation by someone like the police commissioner or a suitable authority. Unauthorised sting operations must be made illegal and punishable.

Contrast all the above with the National Herald scam. Not one editor dared to ask any question to Sonia or Rahul Gandhi. Not one joker like Aditya Raj Kaul or Navika Kumar got anywhere near their residences. Not one cameraman filmed activities inside their residences. None of them dared to hound Robert Vadra. The circus clown Arnab did not even dare to call the Gandhis on TV to answer questions which he thinks is his birthright with everyone else. These criminals never know when and where the Gandhis travel, they claim respect for privacy. They don’t know if and what Sonia’s illness is for which she supposedly goes abroad for treatment. Again privacy! Why is it only this dynasty is entitled to privacy? All other citizens are third class citizens? The media has the right to ask questions. Their target has the right not to answer and when someone says “no comment” that should be honourably accepted. Especially in cases where the issue is a crime the target is entitled NOT TO say a word to the media. The target is neither answerable to the media nor is he liable to incriminate himself through soundbites to media, which is what our sensation-seeking media desires.

The media, like I said before, has the right to ask questions but must keep a very safe distance and ask questions honourably. They cannot poke mics at a person or into his vehicle. They can shout their questions from a safe distance of 10 feet. They do not have the right to picket and crowd houses of any individual no matter what the issue. This needs a law that bars them from such intrusion. Princess Diana was killed in such as case. OJ Simpson could very well have ended up in a disaster on the streets. This requires appropriate laws that can prevent a tragedy. Are you prepared to act, Mr Javdekar? Or are you waiting for a tragedy like all other tragedies to start thinking about it? Can you prevent a tragedy?