The Others

I am not one of the greatest admirer of NDTV 24X7, despite "showing the truth". Considering their past performances, a more honest tagline will be "We think that public is idiot, so we will shove our biases , all the while pretending that we are doing a favour", but that is besides the point. At any rate I have become used to taking reportage of NDTV with pinches buckets of salt and I have limited my watching of NDTV to mainly the segments where possibility of spin is minimal (weather report and Page 3 Gala for example, but with their talents they could put a spin, somehow).

Anyway yesterday I had the occasion to see that all too familiar pomposity segment , We The People, presented by Humbug Barkha Dutt, the topic being
"Do Politicians have a right to Privacy" (in my view the answer is yes and some one who can't see it is either naive or knave), what took the cake however was her opening statement referring to taping of Amar Singh's phone.

Frankly speaking, I feel stupified that anyone with a single neuron present can fail to see the evil such things represent. Taping the phone, to record conversations only in order to blackmail later is a abhorrent idea, and it does not matter whether you are a public figure or not.

Imagine what does this leads to , "elimination of privacy", but that is not the worst of it.
The worst part will be a society which lives in fear of other, for who knows what new oppression is being planned by the powers that be against people it considers to be it's opponent, surely the result will be a diseased populace, a hell of intrigue and treachery, where even shadow is not trusted.

In other words Type 1984 World.

Yet people are indifferent to this outrage or what is worse perversely elated. The reason Amar Singh is a politician , he is a humbug and given to power politics. What is generally not realized that powers which are subverting the basic tenets of constitution for their gains may well do this to the others, who are not politicians and who are honest, the only crime being their opposition.

I can understand the mechanism, it is the notion of other. The logic is that other (politician, Hindus, Muslims, ShankraCharya,Baba Ramdev, KarSevak), had it coming, the other is a burden on nation and it is a good riddance. When it is our turn , as it invariably is, we are shocked and spluttering "How can this happen to us", or self - righteously proclaiming that "India is a wretched place".

And I am not taking about a hypothetical scenario, remember Emergency ? Even at that time quite a few educated cheered the Gandhis. The reason , "Trains are running on time, and those pesky trade unions, and not to talk of bloody nikkers" . That was ofcourse the epitome, if it can be said of what Gandhi Dynasty has been doing all along the years.
Using CBI, RAW to spy on it's opponents , fix opponent and serve patisan interest has been internalized by our political system. It is one of the most urgent malice crying for attention.

And yet we remain cocky because we are not "others" .

Meanwhile Swanpan Dasgupta & TVR Shenoy weigh in, I agree with them whole heartedly.