Disgrace in the name of sports

Miracles happen, so the Commonwealth Games may take place without some stadium roof collapsing. But that is not the issue. What we should really be worried about is: How do dunderheads, frauds and double-dealing fixers come to represent this great country? How do humbuggers, thimbleriggers and pettifogging pretenders get the power to humiliate us before the world?

It is possible to see thugs in leadership positions when the Government itself loses its legitimacy and is artificially propped up. This happened during the Emergency. Parliament saw an influx of ruffians and hooligans whose assignment was to shout down opponents. Cabinet positions went to odious men. When Jayaprakash Narayan was arrested in Chandigarh and district authorities there were worried about his deteriorating health, Defence Minister Bansi Lal’s response was: Let the swine die.

Emergency produced a culture favourable to swine. But what about today? India is breaking new ground on the business/industrial front, Britain is relaxing visa rules to attract high-spending Indian tourists, and our government is headed by an internationally respected economist. We build the most modern airports and ports for the countries of the world, take over an ailing icon like Jaguar automobiles in UK and make it profitable, and become a world leader in steel. Surely we should be able to handle a project like commonwealth games with a smartness and flair that is at our beck and call?

Instead, we have a mess on our hands. What we have put on display is not the smartness and flair we are capable of, but the ease with which slimy careerists can worm their way into positions of power in our country. And stay there. We wouldn’t have minded if they made a lot of money in the bargain; we are a traditionally generous people. But to bring such international shame to India is inexcusable. Suresh Kalmadi and company has been bad for India. Period.

Obviously the man is a consummate politician. The Indian politician’s penchant to head one sports organisation or another was taken to dizzy heights by Kalmadi. He became chairman of the Indian Olympic Association (fourth time now), Asian Athletic Association, Athletic Federation of India and a half dozen other organisations. Every move of his has been controversial, to put it mildly. Former Indian Hockey captain Pargat Singh is one man who did not care to put it mildly. He accused Kalmadi of being India’s “sports mafia”.

The dirt that has come out in the current games scandal does point to a great deal of inexplicable things. Congressmen and amateur ministers like M. S. Gill made it worse by trying to defend Kalmadi and failing to find one convincing argument to make the defence credible.

The big question persists: Was this the only man the establishment could find to hold the Indian flag in international sports bodies? With neither qualifications nor a decent track record, how did Kalmadi get the political backing he needed? Are there key politicians also having a stake from behind the scenes in making a sham of our sports organisation?

Kalmadi is also the chairman of the Olympics 2016 Bid Committee on behalf of India. We may think that after the present disaster, India would not dare make a bid for the 2016 Olympics. But nothing is beyond our political manipulators. Imagine what our schemers can do if they get the Olympics to play with.

But the world will save us. After having watched the horrors of the Commonwealth Games preparation, other countries will keep India firmly out. Already many athletes of distinction have announced their decision not to attend the Delhi Games. We are a butt of ridicule already. Kalmadi, his party and his backers will have the satisfaction of knowing that they have disgraced India in the eyes of the world. For someone’s private ego? For thirty pieces of silver?

The importance of being Mathew

Being famous is different from being important. The trimurtis of English journalism in India – Pothan Joseph, Frank Moraes, M. Chalapathi Rao – are still unequalled in their star value and brilliance of writing. But historically they mattered little because they introduced no movement that transformed their profession.

Devdas Gandhi of Hindustan Times and Kasturi Srinivasan of The Hindu were not celebrities, but they were historically important personages because they helped convert pre-1947 missionary journalism into an organised industry, lending it strength and direction. Ramnath Goenka was both celebrated (for his king-maker role in politics and his daring in opposing the Emergency) and important (for launching the then-original concept of a newspaper chain covering the vastness of India).

C.P Adityanar of the Daily Thanthi and Ashok Sircar of Ananda Bazar Patrika are other print media leaders who carved a niche for themselves in the history books. Both encouraged innovations to turn newspaper language from scholarly “written” style to accessible “popular” style. This was a major step towards the era of mass readership in India.

When we look at the media scene in this wide perspective, we see one man standing out as historically more significant than most others. The importance of K.M.Mathew rests not so much on the growth rate and acceptance level he achieved for Malayala Manorama as on how he achieved them. First, he had a visionary outlook. Secondly, he had that rare ability to change with the times.

When he became chief of the family-owned newspaper in 1973, it was selling 30,000 copies. He told a circulation department functionary: “If we can somehow reach 50,000, we can have an all-India presence, right?” What was noteworthy was not the figure mentioned, but the vision of an all-India presence for a language paper from a small town in Kerala. A few days before Mathew’s death last week at age 93, his paper crossed a record print order of 18 lakhs.

He worked the magic by becoming an innovator. Eager to learn from others, he was instrumental in bringing the International Press Institute’s Tarzie Vittachi to India. Mathew helped Vittachi visit other newspaper establishments as well, often making the arrangements himself. Seminars and workshops followed. Several newspapers benefited, but none more than Mathew who built a team of young journalists and managers, giving them training in India and abroad and professionalising management practices as well as journalism.

Mathew’s innovations were effective because he was a modernist who changed as ideas around him changed. Especially in the 1980s and 1990s, the world changed in revolutionary ways, I T and mobile phone leading the way. Mathew was ready with new inroads into television, FM radio, on-line editions. He even devised ways to reorient print journalism so that it could rise above television’s 24-hour breaking-news advantage.

Only in political orientation, he remained old-fashioned. Anti-communism sat as heavily on his paper as the position that the Congress could do no wrong. But Mathew’s personal warmth towards ranking communist leaders helped keep bitterness away.

Besides, his paper’s social involvement was too deep for anyone, including political critics, in ignore. Special teams were commissioned to propagate one movement after another – water conservation, environment protection, garbage disposal. Large funds were spent to provide free heart surgery for children and housing for victims of earthquakes and tsunami. On development issues he spent company money to convene meetings of experts so that constructive ideas would emerge for the authorities to act upon. He never cheapened these projects by using them as publicity gimmicks. He was a corporate citizen in the truest sense.

The greatest lesson Mathew left behind was that a newspaper could achieve commercial success and simultaneously fulfil its social responsibilities in a big way. This is a timely lesson because some very successful papers today have adopted the philosophy that they have no social responsibility whatever. That is selfish, ignorant bunkum, and the proof is K. M. Mathew.

US trapped by ISI; advantage Taliban

The leakage of 92,000 secret military intelligence documents is sensational anywhere any time. When the documents pertain to the war against Taliban-Al-Quaida, it is also disturbing because it shows (a) that America is in a trap and is unlikely to win this war, and (b) that India is in for trouble, big trouble.

Let's not forget that the information now leaked is new only to us, the lay public. To the top echelons of leadership in America, the facts were known all along. They also knew that the records had leaked. Two months ago, in May, the US Army Criminal Investigation Command had arrested an intelligence analyst in the army and charges were filed against him early this month, well before the leaked documents hit world headlines.

The arrested man, Bradley Manning, is 22 years old. If he is indeed the man who leaked the secrets, he must have done so as a matter of conscience, appalled by the atrocities American troops were committing. This is a “problem” with American democracy. One man with conscience will always be around to do the unexpected. Remember those pictures of Iraqi citizens being humiliated and tortured by fun-loving American soldiers? Earlier Vietnam war secrets were published by Daniel Ellsberg, another military analyst then working for the Rand Corporation.

The latest documents had much to reveal about Pakistan's complicity in terror network in the region. This led to some patriotic drum-beating in India – as if Pakistan had been caught with its pants down and now America would be forced to act.

Nothing of the kind will happen. America has been seeing Pakistan with its pants down for quite a while. For example, it said more than once in recent weeks that Osama bin Laden was living in Pakistan. Blandly Pakistan denied it. And America let it rest at that. Pakistan is for America a pill that is too bitter to swallow and too sweet to spit out, a classic diplomatic trap.

Pakistan's military leaders, especially the smart strategists of the ISI, know this very well, hence their audacious policy of helping al-Quaida and the Taliban. Some of the terror outfits the ISI trains and equips are fighting America. Knowing this, America goes on giving Pakistan one billion dollars in aid every year. That is how smart the ISI is.

By contrast, India gives America everything America wants – nuclear treaty clauses as stipulated by the American Congress, favouritism to companies like Union Carbide, virtual immunity clauses in the event of future industrial accidents, even a false declaration to ex-President Bush that the people of India loved him. What does India get in return? Repeated verbal declarations that Pakistan must do more to contain terrorism. Why doesn’t America do more to contain Pakistan?

The fact is that today's political dispensation in India has no clearcut strategy about countering Pakistan's known terror tactics. It does not know how to call Pakistan's bluff or how to tell America and its allies that enough is enough.

There are unofficial strategic experts in India who have been proposing covert action to counter Pakistan's covert action. This makes sense in a volatile theatre where everyone is engaged in shadow-boxing. If India can mobilise the kind of strategic brilliance the ISI displays, it can hit Pakistan where it hurts. It may even get the tacit support of the CIA and M16. What is required is an iron will on the part of policy makers. Perhaps Indira Gandhi would have found that will.

If softness and diffidence continue in Delhi, eventually the Taliban will replace the Americans in Afghanistan, then the Taliban will have a say in the running of Pakistan, then Pakistan will become the operational headquarters of al-Quaida and all allied groupings. When someone finally scores a hit in New York or London, the West will wake up – too late of course. What of Mumbai and Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad? The ISI’s singleminded focus is India and that’s where the maximum danger lies.

Railways: Conspiring against the people ?

Even human lives are but an item for our politicians to fight over. The first lot of 62 bodies had hardly been taken out of the collided trains in Sainthia station when Mamata Bannerji and the West Bengal CPM came out with their blood feud. We are used to our politicians being unconcerned about the public good. But such open cynicism in front of human body parts was something new.

Neither side had the patience, let alone the decency, to wait for some indications of what actually happened. Before any evidence was collected and before any expert spoke, Mamata B. came out with the proclamation: “We have some doubt in our mind”. CPM publications came out with editorials squarely blaming the Railway Minister for neglecting her portfolio and condemning her obsession with “conspiracy theories”.

Given the levels of political hatreds between opposing groups in West Bengal, conspiracies are entirely plausible – from both sides. But the safety of the travelling public cannot be something for conspirators to play with. There have been 161 accidents since Mamata B. became Railway Minister and 16 of them were major ones costing the lives of 269 people. This is an inexcusable record, with or without conspiracies. The real conspiracy is against the people.

It is too late in the day for Mamata B. to pretend that she pays due attention to her portfolio. She certainly does not She is a fulltime Kolkata politician, fighting Kolkata politics, her eyes fixed firmly on Kolkata seats of power. A key and complex ministry like Railways is functioning without a minister and that is no CPM conspiracy.

In fact this is a feature of the Manmohan Singh Government. The so-called coalition dharma allows some rajahs of corruption to ply their trade from the chambers of the cabinet. In more than one instance it allows ministers to make a mockery of their portfolios while putting their hearts and minds in their “side business”.

Sharad Pawar has been doing this with impunity for a long time. The result is that the Food and Agriculture Ministry has become one of the most ineffective and badly managed ministries in the Government. Farmers’ suicides have been maximum in Vidarbha, lakhs of tons of stored foodgrain have perished, the distribution system is in tatters – but the Food Minister has hardly any time to notice such small things as he is busy running world cricket with headquarters in Dubai.

Mamata B. has been neglecting her portfolio with a hauteur only she is capable of. Asked about her not attending cabinet meetings in Delhi, her reply was that her home was not in Delhi. If this arrogance persists after she becomes chief minister of Bengal, the long-suffering people of Bengal will have gained nothing from the change of government they seek so badly.

The Comptroller and Auditor General has come out with a report itemising the areas of importance the Railway Ministry has neglected. Will the Minister say that the CAG also is part of CPM conspiracy? CAG has found that safety plans approved for implementation by 2008 have not been implemented. Safety is perhaps the most basic issue that should get the ministry’s attention. But there is no leadership in the ministry to do the basic things.

A former managing director of Konkan Railway, Rajaram Bojji, had invented an anti-collision system and implemented it in the K R network. Using both radio frequency and GPS technology, the anti-collision device brings a train automatically to a halt if the track ahead is not clear. One excuse for not introducing this system countrywide is that it is expensive. Certainly the Railway Minister can find the money to introduce it at least in and around West Bengal so that the treacherous CPM’s conspiracies can be defeated once and for all?

Mamata Bannerji is like a train that has gone off the rails. It is running on rail-less surface. There is danger ahead.

From Cicero to Sushma (via Bellary)

Cicero was a Roman orator and statesman of the 1^st century BC whose writings deeply influenced modern thought. He was once retained by Sicilians to prosecute the Governor of Sicily, C.Verres, who had become unbearably corrupt and cruel. Cicero prepared the first of what was to be a six-part chargesheet against the Governor, analysing the evils of greedy administrators. That first part was so powerful in its logic that Governor Verres gave up his post and retired into exile.

That was the good news. The bad news was that the same Sicily gave birth to a secret nationalist society called the Mafia which in the 19^th century turned into a collection of hired thugs specialising in blackmail, protection rackets and murder. Marlon Brando etched it into the world's memory with The Godfather.

So why bring it up now? To remind us that good history does not repeat itself. There was a time when people could prosecute the head of their government for corruption. That cannot happen now. There were heads of government who would be shamed into voluntary exile when people filed charges against them. That is unthinkable today. Bad history alone repeats itself. People who once had the power to prosecute their political boss later fell prey to the mafia. This is happening again and again around us.

Consider Karnataka, once one of the best governed states in India and led by some of best political minds in the country. Can that history repeat itself? Far from it. Go into ancient history and we find rajahs losing their right to rule if they violated rajneeti; Sri Rama himself chose to heed public opinion even if it meant losing his wife. How different it is today? A. B. Vajpayee did accuse Narendra Modi of violating rajneeti, but it was Vajpayee who had to swallow his words while Modi went on with his violations.

Karnataka has hit national headlines for the wrong reasons. (Typical headline: Nataka in Karnataka). The Governor donned the battle dress, the Legislature became a war zone. All because of three ministers, the Reddy brothers.

A number of facts have turned public opinion against the Troika.

Fact. In 2008 a minority BJP Government was turned amorally into a majority with money provided by the Reddys.

Fact. In late 2009, under pressure of public opinion, the Chief Minister tried to curb the Reddys' highhandedness; he transferred out of Bellary several officers who had been acting according to the orders of the Reddys and Reddys alone.

Fact. Within a month the Chief Minister cancelled the transfer of officers and withdrew criminal cases filed against the Reddys.

Fact: Under party pressure to placate the Reddy Troika the Chief Minister dropped one of his closest colleagues from the Cabinet, removed his capable and faithful Principal Secretary and withdrew a tax he had imposed on iron-ore trucks.

Fact: In the midst of the ongoing controversy, one of the Troika spends two hours in private conference with notorious criminals in a Bangalore Jail.

What gives the Reddys the power to run a state so haughtily? The obvious answer is their limitless “purchasing power” gained from the exploitation, without heed to laws and regulations, of the natural resources of Karnataka and Andhra. Less obvious is the unstinted support they receive from the BJP top brass in Delhi.

What motivates the BJP top brass when the Reddys are (a) not BJP-wallahs in any ideological sense and (b) an obvious liability to the party? The short answer to that one is: Sushma Swaraj.

The Reddys publicly worship SS as their mother. Sushma Swaraj ignores their sins, ignores their unpopularity and gives them full support because perhaps she sees a day when brazen Reddy money can install a BJP government in Delhi as it did in Bangalore. No prices for guessing who will be the prime minister in such a government. Thus does private ambition carry our country from misfortune to misfortune.