Jon Stewart’s retirement last week restarted discussion surrounding the United States’ dependence on satirical news programs. Much as Jon Stewart might have liked to call himself a person who merely made jokes, the fact remains that he was one of the most trusted voices in the media. And he’s not the only one. The US has a pantheon of such satirists- Stephen Colbert, John Oliver and Bill Maher, to name a few. Intentionally or not, Arnab Goswami makes a mockery of the news. In all seriousness, AIB has, on occasion, forayed into commenting on the political space, as has Justice Katju in his inimical manner.

America’s reliance on ‘infotainment’ made me wonder why we prefer getting our news from comedians. It struck me that America is not the first such country- monarchies through the ages relied on ‘fools’ or ‘jesters’ to be honest with the king along with providing entertainment. Jesters have been recorded in Europe, China, America, India, Japan and Africa. Jesters played a vital role in royal courts because most people were afraid to be honest with kings. Quite often, the task of delivering bad news was left to them.

The methodology used by John Oliver is actually strikingly similar to that of one of the most popular jesters in Indian history- Birbal. Oliver not only humorously lampoons the government and institutions, but often also instigates trolls to do things like crash the FCC website. This reminded me of one of the more popular Birbal tales in which Emperor Akbar believes that a man survived a winter night in a freezing lake by relying on a fire miles away. He accuses him of cheating and doesn’t reward him for completing the challenge. In order to make Akbar realize his mistake, Birbal invites Akbar for lunch and cooks his biryani from five feet above the flame. Jesters, modern and old, rely on witticisms to prove a point.

Jon Stewart often joked that it was a shame that people relied on him for news. And I agree. Effective as Stewart’s methodology might have been, he is no substitute for news. Nor is John Oliver. I can understand the rationale behind the existence of court jesters. They lived in an age when you could be whipped, beaten or worse for saying a word against anyone of note. These were men who were either ‘naturally fools’ or appointed and licensed to speak their minds. Their contribution to courts was significant in terms of addressing the information asymmetry that that naturally existed as a result of the court structure. America, on the other hand, considers itself a bastion of democracy and free speech. Freedom of the media has been extended to include fears and potential harms in the form of the chilling effect doctrine. The media and the ballot, not comedians, are supposed to be checks on institutions.

However, it is undeniable that they have a huge impact as this article suggests. And this isn’t because they are the only ones saying what they do say. John Oliver was certainly not the only one talking about net neutrality, as the various clips in his show demonstrate. And yet, he was the one who managed to make the FCC sit up and take notice. The FCC has no responsibility to either him or any news outlet. It is, however, accountable to public opinion. The fact that John Oliver did what several newsmen failed to do, speaks volumes not about the state of governance, but the average television viewer. Do we, the people, the new sovereign, also need jesters to tell us things we don’t want to hear? The jester must speak, not because no one else may, but because we wouldn’t care if they did. The jesters of old thrived on fear; jesters of the day thrive on apathy.

First, sample the image below:

This is Anil Kapoor in 1985. Long dishevelled hair, the compulsory 80s moustache, the leather jacket with steel shoulder buttons, epitomising the aspirational apogee of male machismo and an innocent smile, longing for something unattainable yet content. Much like a smile of happiness on seeing someone you love but who you know will never be yours.

Now take a look at the next image:

This is Anil Kapoor in 2009. Gelled hair, styled impeccably, black tie and tuxedo, the signature outfit of male Hollywood filmstars at any event that matters, hands spread wide taking in the applause for an uninspiring cameo in Slumdog Millionaire and a smile which says ‘I’ve arrived’. Oh and perhaps a botoxed face as well.

The changing face of Anil Kapoor in the last two-and-a-half decades is as accurate a reflection as any, of the changing face of India, pre and post-liberalisation. Awkwardness and innocence replaced by an easy conviviality, a seamless integration into the ways of the world and a constant quest for global recognition. With a growing economy has come an unquestioning assertiveness, with liberalisation a chutzpah loudly declaring India’s arrival on the world stage, and with fame, success and the world’s attention, a constant desire for gratification based on the flattery of others, fueling at times into a self-righteous rage in not getting one’s due, or a vicious one-upmanship to show who’s boss.

Take the BCCI in world cricket. The recent independent governance review of the ICC by Lord Woolf, suggested large-scale changes to the governance structure of the ICC so that it is not dominated by a few powerful boards with vested interests, but rather becomes optimally independent so that it can fulfil its role as “the leader of the international game”.  The suggestions, while certainly provocative, have considerable merit especially given the universal recognition of the flux that world cricket is in currently with three formats competing for time and attention and the increasing feeling that something is going to give. At the very least it deserved the BCCI’s fullest consideration. However the BCCI Working Committee, unsurprisingly, viewed the report as a threat to their dominance of the game and rejected it outright without going into which of the proposals it was against, let alone explaining why it took such a stand. This increasing proclivity to play victim while being the bully, epitomised by the BCCI, is a curious and defining trait of 21^st Century, post-liberalisation India.

Again, take a look at how the Indian media discusses success stories of Indians abroad. Particularly striking in recent memory was the euphoric coverage in sections of the Indian media regarding the appointmnet of Nikki Haley as Governor of South Carolina. The fact that a person of Asian origin, that too a woman, became Governor of a state in the deep South is certainly news anywhere. But in India it was not just news; it was a cause for celebration because Nikki Haley, originally Nimrata Randhawa was born to Sikh parents, and thus her victory was India’s victory. Never mind that she is as Indian as Barack Obama is Muslim and is constantly at pains to point out her Americanness, exemplified by her unimaginative and convenient change of name. The Indian media’s desire to seek out such success stories, to crave for the world’s attention through imagined notions of achievement is not its sole doing: it’s rather an incident of the operation of the market, reflective of what the middle-class Indian consumer wants to read, and the sort of stories that make him happy.

Underlying this new India, like the new Anil Kapoor is an excessive desire to be accepted on the world stage. Otherwise why would Kapoor agree to an unchallenging role of a lecherous, skirt-chasing Indian millionaire who appeared on screen for a sum total of four minutes only to be made a fool of ultimately, in Mission Impossible 4, one of the most mindless action films to be made in the history of cinema? Clearly, Kapoor himself or the Indian film fraternity didn’t think the same way since post-MI4 he became the toast of tinseltown, celebrated as India’s first real crossover star. Key to this ‘new and improved’ Kapoor and the new India, is a pervading sense of falsity, a pretence of being something or someone that one is not. Much like India’s standard story to the world today of being a country of exceptional growth whose teeming poor, despite leading desperately woeful existences are suffused by the hope of a better, brighter tomorrow.  Nothing could be further from the truth. And unlike Kapoor’s wrinkles, there’s no botox to cure this one.

This is not to suggest that pre-liberalisation India was a beautiful place where everyone was poor but happy, innocent and contented. There is a natural tendency to look at history with rose-tinted glasses, harking back to the past as a ‘golden age’ where everything was perfect. Pre-liberalisation India was anything but. Like Anil Kapoor in 1985, it was all over the place, a trifle cheesy, unambitious and easily satisfied. But its one redeeming feature though was that it was comfortable with its own identity, not chasing false hopes and basking in global encomiums that are clever disguises to tap into India’s ever bulging middle class wallets.

So what should we do about it? Well, nothing except hope that soon Anil Kapoor realises in real life, like he did on screen 25 years ago, that it’s best for India if he becomes invisible.

The Invisible Mr. India

[Photo sources: Here and Here]

Human girl child, 2 years old, head bashed in, with human bite marks.

Bitten. By another being, a human being.

Indeed, it was shocking. Dogs bite people. Dogs biting children are stories which will always get pride of place in newspapers. But, do people bite babies? From one newspaper’s pride of place in the ‘flyer’ position, the tragic story spread, swiftly, like a vampire’s bite, to garner massive, daily press coverage.

Since then, many facets of the story have been reported, stressed and re-enacted. The baby was a victim- bitten by, and bashed by, a teenage mother. The teenage mother herself was a victim of a purported trafficking racket. The child has siblings, also victims of an awful, exploitative adult world.

Which we learn in high-resolution photographic detail, day after day.

Each story of this baby- called Falak, and ‘battered baby’ in equitable alternates, is accompanied with a high-resolution picture. You can see the baby has been bitten, each welt lovingly captured. You can see the pathetic size of the victim, as the pictures capture the length of a body that is mostly uncovered, almost naked. You see the eyes tightly, painfully scrunched up. What you probably can’t see are her eyes wincing as cameras go off, or grimacing over a fresh photo shoot she has not sanctioned.

I want to fervently stress at this point that I am happy the press has taken up the issue of Falak with the gusto, and the outrage, it deserves. Undoubtedly, this has inflamed the police into taking action that spans many states and requires differing levels of investigation and intervention.

But surely coverage with the particular brand of moral outrage this case calls for, can be accomplished without an accompanying, high-res picture of the incapacitated victim?

If you look at your childhood pictures, you will most probably find a black and white shot of you as a baby or toddler: dimpled cheeks, dimpled arms and legs, wearing, for all purposes, nothing. That’s because we have been taught to believe that notions of privacy differ for toddlers and adults, and for toddlers and children. After a certain age, pictures of children appear in sepia tones, usually covered up in embarrassing costumes- bow ties for boys, poofy tutus for girls; but covered up all the same. There is, in the middle-class psyche, an unspoken cut-off date which dictates collectively- now is when the child needs to be covered up in all photos, and more significantly, now is when the child needs some privacy.

Possibly, this middle class cut-off line can explain why it seems to be permissible to publish pictures in high-resolution, different on most days, of a battered baby, daily. Unfortunately for Falak, she doesn’t seem to be at the magic cut-off date yet.

And then, I have to pause.

This is the same nation which gushes over the Bachchan family, which decides not to publish, sell, or otherwise ‘expose’ pictures of a new baby in their family.  This is seen as virtuous and wholesome. In the international columns, accolades have been given to the French media for not publishing pictures of celebrity children.

Why is Falak different?
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Today, there is no doubt that Falak is a celebrity, whether of her choosing or not. Undoubtedly too, her celebrityhood has been decided by reporters covering her, and the media has become her spokesperson. Does it stand to follow then, that there is to be no moderation in the particular tone adopted by the spokesperson?

It is not merely a question of the personal and private space of an abandoned child. It is also not a question of the privacy accorded to adulthood and infancy.  It is simply a case of what should be acceptable or not.  Clearly, Falak’s case stands for many why’s- underage rape, violence against women, unwanted pregnancy, trafficking. But why is it acceptable to publish invasive, aggressively taken pictures of Falak to drive home all those points- problems of which Falak is a symptom?

Even if the pictures were all taken in one day, I do not believe her now too familiar face and her battered body need to stand daily as an accurate, all-consuming representation of the violence against women.

I have searched for a moderation of view: a long shot, a blurry image, even an arty picture of a tiny hand on a pillow. And yet all I find are detailed, gruesome closeups of the tiny face and the unfortunate body. I have to wonder- what life will this girl grow up to lead, after this proprietary, unflinching watch?

I want to end on this thought: Nigella Lawson, food connoisseur, has refuted claims that photos of her with food trickling down her face, in high-res, multicolour detail, are pornographic. I wonder if Falak, and those defending her, will stop to ponder on similar questions.

Image: from bumptobaby.blogspot.in

When the whole world is watching, there’s a lot to be said for the words you use. Undeniably, international negotiations in a forum as lofty as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is a call for words even more discombobulated than the normal.
At most times, you would be lucky if you find the right word for the right moment. In the world of bracketed texts, disclaimers and jargon-heavy negotiations under international protocol however, much is said through ambiguity. UNFCCC’s 17th Conference of Parties is presently ongoing in Durban. Fitting then, to take a look at some of the words in international arsenal:

Ambition. Faustian allegories apart, the connotations of ‘ambitious’ are, well, ambitious. On Monday’s session on the Long Term Action, EU called for ‘bridging’ the ambition gap. Separately, Venezuela has said that options put forward by the developed world (including ideas on having a treaty outside of the Kyoto Protocol) display a lack of ambition. The negotiating bedrock in this year’s climate change summit is an ‘amalgamation document’ which combines positions from different countries. Bolivia, in a meeting to discuss this document, remarked sadly that there was a general lack of ambition being shown. Most generally, ambition would refer to a country engaging in mitigation action, which is quantifiable, and under several degrees of international scrutiny. But what is ‘ambitious’ for India? India’s interpretation would refer to actions, on climate mitigation or adaptation, which are domestically ambitious, but not internationally reviewed. Ambitious is ambiguous. It’s a word used to denote interpretations of ambition, and as one can tell, often a marked shift by countries from actually being ambitious.
Sustainable. A lot has been written on what sustainable means. Justifiably so. It’s been prefixed for life to development, officially born in the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development. Everything ought to be sustainably developing, from a corporate’s CSR initiatives, to community outreach for women’s self-help groups to Fairtrade coffee, to World Bank funded conservation plans which in the past have been more development than conservation, to United Nation’s recognised Biosphere Reserves. The bad joke is whether sustainable is sustainable. Little surprise then that sustainable development is a mainstay of the leverage sought by the developing world. At last year’s Cancun summit, India patted itself on the back for inserting the phrase ‘equitable access to sustainable development’ in the negotiating text. At Durban too, these four magic words make an appearance in the provisional agenda of COP-17. Equity, of course, is another expansive word open to interpretation. As India’s Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan said on Tuesday in a side event in Durban, “equity is central to the debate on climate change.” The BASIC countries (Brazil, India, South Africa, China) emblazon equity over most of their positions, though it can refer to different things. It has meant access with equity to sustainable development, and also equity in carbon space. Equity in interpretation by the developed and developing world? Hard to come by.

Evolving applicability. A new entrant on the block, this powerhouse phrase has been offered by the the biggest Kyoto-blocker, the United States. US believes that the concept of common but differentiated responsibility, a mainstay of the Kyoto Protocol, has ‘evolving applicability’. What this means could be anybody’s guess. But an educated guess would beckon at the US’s old habit of blaming India and China for the deadlock in climate negotiations. In the spirit of its old stance, the application of evolving applicability would indicate mitigation commitments from the BASIC group (who ostensibly have evolved from being part of a paltry developing country bloc), in the absence of which the US will not commit. In the same breath, it would be interesting to see what applications ‘evolving applicability’ would entail for the other real blockers of Kyoto, the JUSCANZ group of Japan, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. (Canada has declared even before the Durban summit that it is unlikely to participate in a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol.) How should JUSCANZ evolve? A question that needs answering, and in the spirit of international jargon, a question that needs to be answered ‘urgently’ and ‘ambitiously’, in the interest of ‘sustainable equity’ and saving the planet, within, of course, the principles of common but differentiated responsibility.

A word on the media.
On the issue of words, adjectives for India are changing. Long called a deal breaker, international press has this year called India a giant (economy). In more uncharitable terms, and not far from US insinuations on India’s role, The Guardian calls India a climate ‘delayer’, unarguably a term which is likely to gain currency by the end of the summit. This is phonetically not so far from climate ‘denier’, though that term, with all its baggage, hasn’t been used for India yet; in fact it has been used by developing country activists for the likes of JUSCANZ.
But what of the National press in India and climate jargon? A quick look reveals that mainstream media has for most part echoed faithfully India’s official positions on climate change negotiations  . Notably, these are demands from the global North in being ambitious in its mitigation, the need for equity in climate talks, and carbon space for allowing India’s national growth. The English media has passionately defended these positions since 2009’s Copenhagen climate change summit, putting forward India’s own interpretations of climate jargon. This is an interesting position, as the press has also been largely homogenous in reporting the real environmental, ecological, and social ramifications (read dangers) of climate change. Yet, its continuing passionate cries for growth, shaking off pressure from the rich, developed world, and that shining panacea- sustainable development. One issue at least, where a constructed perception of national interest has been paramount over editorial differences. Critics in the Press Council, take note.

Kumar Ketkar thought the Prime Minister was ‘amazingly relaxed’ and ‘extraordinarily confident’. Alok Mehta said that he was ‘not a puppet’. We will have to wait till the papers tomorrow morning to read about the impression that the three remaining editors, selected by the Prime Minister for his press conference today, had of Dr. Singh and his responses. But the question that is uppermost on my mind, as I hear second-hand accounts of views of the Prime Minister on the most contentious issues of the day, expressed publicly for the first time, and read a poorly transcribed report of his initial comments and the Q&A session, pasted inconspicuously on the PMO website, is: Why was this strange method of speaking to the nation through five newspaper editors chosen? Surely, if it were regular questions of government policy, a spokesperson in the PMO could have done the job; if it were something more urgent which necessitated a personal intervention by the Prime Minister, would a more directly accessible medium not have been preferable? By choosing neither, and instead adopting this curious halfway house approach, the Prime Minister today, despite the candour of his answers and forthrightness in taking on diverse questions, has only reinforced the Opposition’s diatribe of a weak Prime Minister, irrespective of what Ketkar may have said. As a result, the attention of the country, instead of being centred on judging the effectiveness of governmental action in dealing with existing problems, is firmly focused on the personal charisma or lack thereof of the Prime Minister, a pointless discussion that has been repeated ad nauseum such that today it only matters only to the BJP.

Confusion Prevails

This is not the first time that the Prime Minister has chosen a press conference to clear the air on issues where his silence had become conspicuous. In February this year, following a spate of scandals, the Prime Minister held a televised conference with senior television editors, where he came clean on corruption scandals, price rise, Telengana and a number of similar thorny issues. He came across as frank and forthright though questions lingered regarding the content of what he said and specifically whether he could have personally done more to prevent or at any rate take action against the corrupt. Contrast that with today’s interaction—a few editors were handpicked by the PMO; the interaction was not televised; the transcript does not read like a verbatim transcript and news items across the electronic media are abuzz with the PM’s demeanour rather than the content of what he said. By choosing this curious medium, the PM has asked more questions than he answered: Why was he reluctant to face the nation? If he was so confident, as media reports of the interaction would have us believe, then why not let the people, including the Opposition see it? Do his own media managers not have confidence in his public speaking ability? In this time of crisis, is the PM hesitant on taking a leadership role and addressing the nation?

A plausible, albeit Machiavellian justification for the press conference could be that this is a deliberate ploy by the government strategists to keep Manmohan Singh, the man, rather than Manmohan Singh as the Prime Minister of an UPA government in the spotlight. Anyhow, being a political lightweight on his way out, makes him an ideal candidate to take the blame for, and consequently have to justify, the government’s bungling of several issues. This way, the fact that the government has not really tackled the issues themselves, ranging from the Lokpal Bill to black money abroad, becomes secondary to the purported weakness of the PM, a point that the BJP is particularly happy to debate.

If this is the underlying strategy, I believe it is a political masterstroke. The electronic media, as if running to a script, have carried stories on how the PM is not a lame-duck PM and how he has confidently and self-assuredly fielded questions on his domestic and foreign policies. Little has been reported or discussed about the content of what he actually said. For example, on the Lokpal Bill, the PM controversially said that he supported the inclusion of his own office under the ambit of the Lokpal but would go along with members of his Cabinet who said it would create instability; on FDI in retail, he clearly and purposively said a beginning would have to be made and fears expressed by small traders would have to be challenged head on; on the 2G scam that despite personally deeming an auction as the appropriate means of allocating spectrum and misgivings about the proposed system, he went on Raja’s assurance of utmost transparency and a similar TRAI recommendation. These are issues vital to the governance of the country, where either the PMO has bungled, as in the 2G controversy or the Lokpal drama, or where the government has not clearly a charted a discernible policy course, as on the question of FDI in retail. However, these have been lost in a media frenzy to uncover how the PM came across in his interaction and whether he was feeling confident and self-assured. We might as well be next asking what he had for lunch and what diet he is on. I wouldn’t be surprised if that is the direction in which our media questioning is headed.

Whether intended or not (and I don’t personally believe this was a deliberate strategy by the government to steer the debate elsewhere), it is unfortunate that in the aftermath of the press conference, we are left discussing the manner and method of the PM’s speech and responses rather than their content. While in terms of the former, the PM has undoubtedly come across as weak and unsure, despite (or perhaps because of) his bravado behind closed doors in front of five selected editors, in terms of the latter, I can only hope that a meaningful discussion of governmental action (and inaction) ensues after the initial hullabaloo over the form of the conference subsides.

Halfway across the World

Meanwhile, in Washington, another head of state, facing similar crises at home and abroad, also chose to speak to his people today. Like Dr. Singh, President Obama chose a press conference as his preferred medium. He made opening remarks on the economy, fired a few pointed salvos at the Republicans and then fielded questions from a select group of journalists. All of this was available on live television to the American public. By keeping the interaction simple and the medium traditional, President Obama ensured that the talking points were about the most appropriate means to cut deficits and his views on gay marriage, issues that are at the heart of electoral politics in USA today. History will judge whether the press conference served its ends or not and how the American people react. However by keeping his method simple, and his matter direct, President Obama left no one in any doubt as to what the talking points in the country should be. Now Dr. Singh is no President Obama. Neither does he have the oratory, nor the panache, nor for that matter the age. But what he does have in liberal doses, like President Obama, is the sincerity of a man steering a country through tough times. It is time that he let that sincerity show without hiding behind the counter-productive shrouds of handpicked editors and their ambivalent sound bytes.

This is not to say that the book should not have picked up on these important beliefs but the (misleading) subtitle led me to think that may be Indian science had really taken the strides to leave the discussion of astrology and homeopathy to only a few pages of a book on science. What was I thinking!?

Indian Science?

Here’s a reality check: I searched for ‘science’ on the Times of India website (It’s built such that I can’t even give you a hyperlink to the results of my search. Sorry!). In the first five pages of results there was not a single news article about a discovery or invention. Instead, I found psuedoscientific terms like astrology and spirituality in many of those results (even one where the Bombay HC ruled: Astrology is a Science, but we’ll get to that some other time).

Same with the Hindustan Times. I searched for ‘science’ (fortunately, this time I can give you a link to the search results here.)  No Indian science being referred to till the 19th result (which says lab at Kalina to test bulletproof jackets) and then there is silence on this topic for many pages of results ahead. Psuedoscience seems to have been kept under tighter lids here (and the HT even published a critical review of that book I was talking about!).

Even the Hindu, whose science coverage is the most respectable amongst all Indian newspaper, did not have more than a couple of stories  about Indian science (see link).

The only place I know where you can go to read about recent research findings from India is the Nature India website. Unfortunately, their articles are not written for a general audience. There is Current Science which is, again, not written for the public although some of the articles can easily be published for a wider audience.

There aren’t many Indian science magazines either. Scientific American India started in August 2005 and stopped in June 2007. Down to Earth is probably the only regular magazine which has survived a significant number of years, and despite what it claims in its about section I haven’t met any Indian who knew about its existence.  The most recent entry is Brainwave which is magazine for school children.

Either there is very little science of value being done in India or the media is just not interested in publishing science. What is surprising though is that when an NRI writes a book with a misleading title about Indian science, it gets rave reviews.

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.

]]> http://www.criticaltwenties.in/nationalpolitics/on-wikileaks/feed 7 http://www.criticaltwenties.in/lawthejudiciary/abu-salem-can-face-death-penalty-really http://www.criticaltwenties.in/lawthejudiciary/abu-salem-can-face-death-penalty-really#comments Tue, 21 Sep 2010 18:22:55 +0000 Shantanu http://www.criticaltwenties.in/?p=942 While reading through the newspapers a few days back, I chanced upon several reports (linked below) on how the Indian Supreme Court has allowed Abu Salem to be tried for offences which may be punishable with the death penalty, inspite of a sovereign assurance provided to Portugal by the Indian Government. According to this sovereign assurance, which formed the basis of the extradition, India would not impose the death penalty on Abu Salem. However, these reports suggested that the Court had given the green signal to the Government to renege on this assurance. According to the Times of India,

In a significant ruling, the Supreme Court on Friday said underworld don Abu Salem can be tried for offences inviting death penalty even though the Portugal government had laid a pre-condition that he will not be extradited if he was to be awarded capital punishment.inflatable water slides for sale

Both from the political and legal vantage points, this would be a most remarkable decision. However, given the prevailing judicial attitudes in the United States regarding its war on terrorism, it would not be too surprising a result. Several recent decisions of Courts in the United States have reaffirmed the non-binding nature of international law in domestic legal spheres (and invited some stern criticism), particularly in relation to the war on terror. Thus, it was only natural, that on reading the headlines about this apparently remarkable decision, I eagerly looked forward to examining this radicalism relating to terror from a comparative perspective.

However, on taking a look at the opinion of the Court itself, I was more than a bit disappointed: because fortunately (in law) or unfortunately (for those academically inclined) the Supreme Court in Abu Salem Abdul Qayoom Ansari v. State of Maharashtra, has said nothing of the sort. The assurance provided to Portugal was that Abu Salem would not be sentenced to death or life imprisonment (though he may be tried for offences usually punishable with those sentences). The Court was neither called on to, nor did it cast any doubts on the binding nature of this assurance. What was the real issue then, before the Court? It was rather simple really- can Abu Salem be tried for offences which are not explicitly mentioned in the application for extradition, if they are lesser offences than the ones which have been mentioned? For instance, if a person is extradited for the offence of murder, can he be tried for culpable homicide on a finding that the facts don’t make out an offence of murder? The Court, after a detailed survey of international law and the Indian statutory framework, came to the singularly unremarkable conclusion that the person can be tried for lesser offences.

Thus, the Court held that nothing prohibits Abu Salem’s trial for offences lesser than the ones for which he has been extradited, so long as he is not awarded the death penalty or life imprisonment. In the words of Justice Ganguly, who delivered a concurring opinion, “In the instant case the extradition has been allowed by the requested State on the specific undertaking of the Government of India that the extradited criminal will not be subjected to death penalty or imprisonment beyond 25 years. Therefore, the basic human rights considerations have been taken into account and the guidelines in Soering (supra) have been adhered to. Thus, primacy has been accorded to human right norms in the extradition process”. Thus, far from allowing the Indian Government to renege on its sovereign assurance, the Court allows the trial for lesser offences on the basis of that very assurance.

Now, I understand that the media cannot be expected to understand legal nuances- and minor misunderstandings of what the Court actually said may be pardoned, particularly when they refer to some complex legal issue, or issues of statutory interpretation. What I cannot understand however, is cases of such blatant misreporting- when the judges state in no uncertain terms what their conclusion is. It is even more disappointing that, of the leading newspapers in the country,* all but one (the Hindu) have completely missed the point the Supreme Court was making (the Hindustan Times, it must be admitted, did not impute the radical conclusion to the Supreme Court- but that is only because that report hardly says anything). Only the Hindu report actually seems to have been based on what the judges actually said.

It is interesting that just a couple of days back, Eesvan has also posted on the tendency of the Indian media to ‘tart up’ legal developments. I couldn’t agree with him more. I cannot speak with any authority on the quality of legal news reporting outside India, but here atleast, there is a crying need for newspapers to get their facts (and atleast the basics of the law) right before printing sweeping statements about current legal developments. A layman reading the morning newspaper cannot possibly be expected to refer to the actual decision of the Court every time s/he reads about some ruling of public interest, just to check whether the newspaper got it right. Given the times we live in, (with special emphasis on the much-awaited decision of the Supreme Court on the Ayodhya issue), such instances of misreporting are very likely to cause much more damage than a couple of blog posts flailing the media.

* By that, I mean the online versions of Times of India, DNA, Indian Express, Hindustan Times, and the Hindu. I also checked CNN-IBN.