The internet is full of blogs, comments and articles castigating Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi for their conversations with Radia that seem to border on the unethical. While all the criticism may be warranted, I am personally appalled at how misplaced it is! The whole episode may showstreaks of substandard journalism, but it pales in comparison to the actual scam and the focus of the tapes: the conversations and horsetrading of politicians.
So after a democratic election, one party tries to browbeat the other by demanding juicy portfolios for its kith and kin, many of which have been at least suspected of corruption before. The other party entertains this notion merely because it wishes to come to power. One might say "what's new in that, we always knew politicians were scum". Exactly! How can journalists evoke so much outrage while politicians are treated with an almost defeatist pithy!
Neither Niira Radia nor Barkha Dutt make utter fools out of us. We didn't elect them. We didn't elect their bosses. So we neither employ them, nor do we pay them. Nor do we trust them with our own money. One can be safely removed from one's everyday life, while the other can be easily switched off. So why so much outrage over someone else's employee when our own government employees are so inept, corrupt and incorrigible? What about these leeches--politicians? Such is their shamelessness that they will garner our votes on the names of such non-issues as caste, religion, community, or a simple claim that they are the least of all evils. And then they will loot our money (yes ours, we don't just print crores of rupees), in effect making us seem foolish, and then be right back to get our votes four years later (if we are lucky). Why no public outcry for them?
If Barkha Dutt is forced to resign, will we be satisfied or will we demand a possible ethical investigation against her? Since when is resigning from a plum post any punishment? Day in and day out politicians thump their chests and claim that while their party forced their chief ministers to resign, the opposition did no such thing. Since when is that punishment?
If Dutt and Sanghvi wish to clear their name, let them follow these politicians like hawks and refuse to kill this story with time. If it takes a year to finally file charges and prosecute, so be it. I fail to understand how there cannot be enough TV time with 24x7 news channels. There is plenty of room, if you're looking to fill it meaningfully. Please don't claim esoteric discussions in a cosy studio as the only contribution that you can make. You can do much more: you have important lobbyists and politicians talking to you. If they think you're that important, its time to capitalize it instead of protecting it. I promise them--that will satisfy their TRP hunger more than anything.
What can the public do? I really think we should shun elections once. There has to be a law about election quorum. We will lose crores of rupees in a wasted election, but that can be gained back by preventing a single scandal that any of our elected representatives will incorrigibly cause.
