Why I think the PM should go.

Let me make a disclosure first before I write anything on this subject. I am not a congress-hating-Modi-supporting-hindutva-fan-boy. Okay? okay.

There has been a lot of admiration for Manmohan Singh in India. He is a soft-spoken, erudite, oxford educated, polite old man of impeccable integrity, exactly the kind of man we love to be our PM in India as opposed to brash in-your-face style of US presidency. It doesn't matter to us that he is a terrible public speaker. That is why even after scam after scam and many disastrous examples of incompetent governance nobody has raised finger towards the PM. In any other country by now the PM who presided over disastrous and humiliating commonwealth games and a multitude of scams would have become a butt of all jokes and on his way out. While in India even opposition fears making any negative comments about PM. From press to common man to our teeming netizens, who express outrage at everybody for every silly little things, do not seem to be frustrated or angry with PM. Its like there is an unwritten rule in India that PM is above everything and must not be criticized. This kind of attitude goes beyond our current PM. Even Vajpayee was given way too much leeway and not criticized enough for succumbing to party pressure every time. Probably this kind of respect I think comes from our respect for old people and that is why we have always chosen old PMs.

Naturally I think we are giving our PM way too much leeway and are way too much soft on him. I believe this not just because of recent scams that have come into news or for price rise or terrorism, which are global events out of his control, but because of general incompetency and inaction throughout his tenure. My problem with PM goes long back to the start of his first tenure as a PM. After winning election in 2004 when congress chose MMS as our PM the first disappointment came in choosing the cabinet. He made a series of compromises even for crucial ministries like education (HRD) (Arjun Singh), highways and transport (T.R. Baalu), and telecom (A. Raja). And because of this we lost crucial 5 years where virtually no road was built, no education reform took place, and telecom minister was busy making money for himself.I know that there are some coalition compulsions but it didn't really feel like PM put his foot down and saved crucial ministries important for the development of India. He could have at least held a midterm review of these ministries and fired them then for nonperformance. But it was clear that priority for congress and PM was to stay in power anyway possible. Only time PM showed his spine and appear to be doing anything was during nuclear deal with the US under pressure from the US and to save embarrassment as we had already done deal in the US without ensuring support back at home.

In the current term one might not agree with everything that Kapil Sibal is doing for education or what Kamal Nath is doing for roads and highways but you can clearly see that progress is being made and they are trying that is quite visible by the amount of news coming out of both these ministries. But sadly again in the second term many other ministries were given to incompetent and corrupt people and by this time PM must have known who is capable of what. At least after PM knew that A. Raja had given away spectrum without auction against his wishes you would think PM would act against him and remove him but rather he gives A. Raja the same ministry again. Not only that, for 3 years he just sat and didn't do anything despite various reports in media pointing out corruption in allocation of spectrum. Not only did MMS not initiate any inquiry or action against A. Raja on his own, he did not even allow inquiry to be conducted by others as he sat on Mr. Swamy's request to prosecute A. Raja deliberately. So if there was no intense media pressure 24 x 7 for days Raja might well have gone away with a brazen open corruption case despite everybody's knowledge.

Even in CWG forget about corruption everybody knew that there are going to be many challenges and problems in hosting such a large scale event. A proactive and smart PM would have been keeping eye on the preparation from the beginning, but at least after stories started coming out in the media as much as 6 months to 1 year ago at least then he should have taken over the preparation or asked for reports. How difficult it is to send somebody to personally visit all venues and give status report. PM could have called in army men earlier or shown same urgency to clean up and finish work that was shown after we were embarrassed in front of the world.

Again the same way after Bhopal verdict came out and there was an outcry the PM was surprised at the public anger as if to say what is the big deal? Not only did he not act earlier, he was almost reluctant to do anything later. So the PM needs to be pushed at every step by public outrage before anything gets done. And that outrage has to be sustained media campaign for days before anything gets done. For example media keeps pointing out again and again that food grains are rotting out in the open but it seems like PM just shows a mild annoyance to such news but nothing gets done. For instance a recent RTI application revealed that 67000 metric tonnes of grains were lost due to rotting. The rotted grains were almost one third of India's food reserves. They were dumped in the open and wasted. But the government called it the "indigenous" method of storing foodgrains. and they actually spent Rs 14 crores to build that open storage. Such maddeningly stupid news of incompetency keeps coming out while food and agricultural minister Sharad Pawar is busy with ICC or looting real estate in Maharashtra. And what has PM done about it? absolutely nothing. One might think that PM is quietly addressing the problems, may be he made a call to Sharad Pawar, but really media would pick up on such things at least once in his long tenure. And anyway it is his job to communicate and tell everybody what steps govt. took to solve a particular problem; there is no need to be super secretive about it.

So while the media and everybody keeps on praising the man with 'impeccable integrity' I guess all we expect from our PM is that he is personally not corrupt. Never mind that he presides over all the corruption and does not take action and never mind that he has proven himself to be utterly incompetent doing nothing till now.

Why we should be concerned about Nira Radia tapes.

As I first got to know about the Nira Radia tapes through twitter with descriptions like 'Wow this is huge', 'this is going to change the whole media scene in India' I opened the link and read the transcripts with weary excitement. As I first read the whole transcript of Barkha tape my first reaction was so what is all the noise about? I mean sure her closeness with the politicians is a little unnerving and from the tape it didn't sound like it was just simple news gathering and gossiping and chitchat with the high and the powerful to get a scoop but it was a purposeful conversation aimed at achieving something. However in the end I gave Ms. Barkha the benefit of the doubt. She could have been going to the government quarters for interviews and was just passing along a message to help out an important news source. In the days just after the election and hectic days of govt formation it is possible that she got involved in just more than news gathering and reporting and also helped create the news by passing on info. This is uncomfortable development and it raises questions when journos get so close to the power that they have the influence to change the course of events and create news rather than report it but I passed it off as an aberration and just hectic days of govt. formation and probably harmless.

However, the tapes of Vir Sanghavi appear a little bit more disconcerting as he almost appears to be setting up interview with the Mukesh Ambani in the way that Mr. Ambani wants to and what we see as an honest interview where an interviewer is asking hard hitting questions trying to get the truth out was just a PR exercise. It raises larger questions of ethics. Again, it could be argued that many times before an interview (especially with a big personality be it from film industry or business field) is held there is a preinterview discussion with the agent or secretary to discuss the main points and to better prepare the interviewer so that the discussions are coherent and the interviewer comes prepared so the viewer time is not wasted. However, here Vir is discussing what kind of spin they want to put on the interview and seems more concerned about the image of Mukesh Ambani and the outcome of his case. It could be just polite nodding with the PR of Mr. Ambani just to land the interview but that we can never be sure of.

However, the most disconcerting part about this whole thing is how close Nira Radia is to the politicians when she is working as PR agent for big businesses like Ambani and Tata. In the old license raj days this probably was a norm and a necessity but it is disconcerting to know that it is still the same. It is true that such kind of lobbying is nothing new and it is common to hear stories about big business in the US spending billions for lobbying, though I don't think it is ever done by such high profile journalists, and it is no reason for us to make the same mistake just because the US of A is making it and as we see the result of fossil fuel lobbyists making sure to block every new environmental legislation we need to make sure that we do not go down that road and keep the good of the nation in mind rather than the good of a few industrialists.