On Wikileaks

As the Wikileaks ‘Indian Cables’ controversy erupted in Parliament today, I thought it might be a good idea to carefully scrutinise the particular cable itself and its purportedly explosive content.  The facts first. The cable was sent by the US Embassy in New Delhi to Washington and contains information collected by consular officers across the country. Written in the nature of a briefing document, its substantial points rely heavily on newspaper reports, unconfirmed stories and meetings which took place between various Indian officials and ‘PolCouns’ presumably an American consular officer in-charge of political affairs.  The points themselves concern political parleying before the trust vote on the nuclear deal. They compass a wide range of information ranging from those publicly known (fissures in the Left for voting along with the BJP on the trust vote) to the relatively less publicly known (Sonia Gandhi’s plans to meet the JD-S and JMM to secure their votes). The two exciting revelations which have provided the talking points for the last two days involve Satish Sharma’s political aide Nachiketa Kapur (though the relationship has been flatly denied) telling an unnamed Embassy Officer that Ajit Singh’s RLD MPs received 10 crore rupees each for their four votes, substantiating his point by showing him chests of cash which were lying around the house for pay-offs; and a ‘Congress party insider’ saying that Kamal Nath, the then Minister of Commerce and Industry, was also helping in ‘spreading the largesse’. It is these two pieces information which have dominated news in the country this week.

In this piece, I want to make two points. First, the alacrity with which the country was up in arms after the leaks were published demonstrates the extent to which politics in India is carried on by crass rumour-mongering aided by a largely irresponsible and sensationalist media; second, that the very idea of holding governments accountable by leaking sensitive information which Wikileaks does, is an unwise and dangerous approach to engendering transparency in government.

The perfectly responsible reporting of the Indian Cables first in the Hindu, prefaced by a carefully drafted explanatory note by the editor N. Ram soon degenerated into a crass war of words amongst politicians and a competitive frenzy in the electronic media with most channels scrambling to interview the prima donnas named in the leak, a long-forgotten politician and his completely obscure ‘aide’. What was particularly shocking in the reactions both by the politicians and the media was the complete lack of discretion and nuance in even attempting to ascertain the context in which the statements reported in the cables were made and their veracity. The statements in the cables made to American officials do little to reveal the truth. First, Kapur’s exact role in this matter is surely in question. Who is he— Satish Sharma’s aide, a former aide or a mere go-between? How is one to know whether he actually made these statements and that they are not planted at some stage? How does one know that the cash was for paying off MPs and not for some other purpose? How does one also know that this entire episode was not done with an express intent to defame?  As far as Kamal Nath’s role is concerned, the cables are of even lesser probative value since the information is provided to PolCouns by a “congress party insider’. How does one know that such a person did not have a grudge against Kamal Nath? How does one know whether Kamal Nath actually ‘spread the largesse’? Innumerable such questions which impugn the veracity of the cables can be raised. My purpose in doing so is not to say that the cables are untrue, fabricated or Wikileaks’ attempts at maligning the Indian government since I cannot back up that statement. It is merely to suggest that before the country thinks of them as major talking points it is imperative that an attempt is made to establish their veracity—both by the media in not painting it as the event of the decade, as well as by the politicians, who while understandably seeking to extract their political dividend, must not irresponsibly demand that the Prime Minister resign from his post because of what a low-level American embassy staffer in New Delhi wrote to his supervisor in Washington.

The larger point emerging through this controversy is of the entire idea underlying Wikileaks as a method for making governments accountable. The setup works through anonymous tip-offs, whistleblowers and informers. Once the information is accessed by Wikileaks it is hosted by them, without (it is claimed) any editing for content, on their websites which are hosted by servers in different countries. Then of course, they depend on the generous support of mainstream media to publicise the leaks for them. There are problems at three levels with this arrangement: First, Wikileaks as an organisation wields great power with minimal accountability. Unlike a state which has to explain its actions, Wikileaks publishes reams of material on its site, which leads to significant political repercussions, stalls parliamentary proceedings and wreaks havoc in countries. However the organisation itself is not accountable to anyone for their publications. This mismatch between power and accountability is wrong in principle. In addition it can be dangerous in practice if the organisation itself is not bona fide regarding which leaks it chooses to publish. How can one be sure that Wikileaks deliberately does not publish leaks relating to a particular country, a particular government minister or a particular corporation, especially when it wields such immense power? Further, what is to say that the person who broke the story for Wikileaks did not tamper with it to suit a personal interest? That power corrupts need not be reiterated to underline Wikileaks’ complete lack of accountability and consequently the possibility of its information being tampered with.

Second, Wikileaks may have relevance in countries with oppressive authoritarian rule marked by serious restrictions on free speech. However in countries with established democratic processes such as India, leaking documents is not the mechanism for holding governments accountable. An independent judiciary, an effective police force, a responsible and accountable media and a keen opposition in a strong Parliament exist for the purpose. What technological parvenus such as Wikileaks do, with the aid of a sensationalist media is to subvert the democratic process, create superfluous talking points and distract attention from equally relevant issues which are not headline-grabbing. This is not to say that the police, judiciary and the media work always as effectively as they are meant to in an idealised democratic system. However the panacea to a leaking system is not to supplant it by an unaccountable alternative—that, if anything would be moving from Scylla of relative inefficiency in existing accountability mechanisms to the far more dangerous Charybdis of holding a national government accountable to an unaccountable and mysterious Sweden-based internet website.

Third, governments, whose misdeeds Wikileaks strives to expose need to function in a manner which cannot always be maximally transparent. It is imperative that negotiations between officials are held in private, with a press conference at its conclusion, highlighting the key discussions for public knowledge and dissemination. With the Damocles’ sword of the private conversation being leaked hanging over it, there is every possibility of a sanitised meeting, playing to respective national galleries and little in the way of actual meaningful discussion. Which raises the issue relating to the right to privacy of the individuals in question. Perhaps, one is inclined to forget (and civil liberties activists, particularly vociferous about privacy in India seemingly are), that the persons whose conversations are being leaked have the right to privacy too. The silence of these activists when a flagrant violation of privacy serves their pet theme of transparency, in contrast with when, for example, it actually seeks to empower citizens by providing them an identification number (and that too without any ostensible breach of privacy), seen as a grand design to create a panopticon state, points to a hypocritical, results-oriented activism shorn of principle.

It is trite to say that unethical behaviour in governments must be revealed, as Wikileaks does on its homepage. But as the controversy over the India Cables shows, to jump to a conclusion on the basis of a cable littered with hearsay, purportedly reporting a conversation regarding an incident which may or may not have happened, whose primary characters may or may not be telling the truth, that certain behaviour in question is unethical is itself unethical to the core. This is the hypocrisy which Wikileaks actively fosters. And it is high time that people realised this and pushed Wikileaks along into the murky but tremendously entertaining world of tabloid journalism, which is where it rightfully belongs.