Walking The Dog

By now ‘Weapons of mass distraction’ (WMD) is a very commonly used phrase. Urban dictionaries define it quite accurately as politically charged non-issues used to distract those who live in a faith-based reality from the catastrophic failings of a political party, regime or ideology. Very often this means using scapegoats. I would use ‘faith’ here to mean MSM as against religion. ‘Weapons of mass distraction’ is also a movie where two filthy media moguls with the dirtiest secrets wage a war to own a football team. In their dirty battle they destroy the lives of many ordinary people. Sounds very much like our own corporations, political parties and media, doesn’t it? Even the innocent looking mobile or smart-phone is a WMD. Look around anywhere or even on TV screens, you will always find a lot people staring at their devices even when it’s not ringing or vibrating.

After Grammar specialist Ashwani Kumar and “innocent” scape-GOAT Pawan Kumar Bansal resigned on May 10 the Tiwaris and Singhvis had disappeared from the media. Fortunately for the Congress party the Pakistan elections were around and their best friends at NDTV and CNN-IBN kept their channels busy with non-stop coverage of Imran Khan and when they found time they covered the rest of Pakistan. A day earlier Barkha Dutt was already in Pakistan at the hospital where Imran Khan was being treated and, with Musharraf in jail too, she found the only interesting person in Pakistan to interview was one Aleema Khan. This Aleema is the sister of Imran. This was a lot like the Priyanka Gandhi interview of April 2009 except in more tragic circumstances. This art of distraction is also called “Wag the dog” which means to purposely divert attention from what would otherwise be of greater importance, to something else of lesser significance. By doing so, the lesser-significant event is catapulted into the limelight, drowning proper attention to what was originally the more important issue. The expression comes from the saying that 'a dog is smarter than its tail', but if the tail were smarter, then the tail would 'wag the dog'.

On Sunday, May 19 N. Srinivasan held a press conference over the latest IPL spot-fixing scam. For a scam which the media has been on and on for the last 4 days the meeting concluded in about an hour and his presser lasted longer. One reporter (probably from one our doggy channels) asked Srinivasan if legalising betting would solve the huge problem. You see, this is where the tail is smarter than the dog. Srinivasan answered the question ambiguously enough to make no sense. But it doesn’t occur to the reporter or our MSM in general that even if betting is legalised, match-fixing and spot-fixing cannot be legalised (Thanks for the wisdom, Rahul Kanwal). Both are two different things. Betting is legal in many countries, match-fixing is not. This nonsensical presser followed by Rajasthan Royals’ management stating they will file an FIR against the erring players was one more instalment of mass distraction. Let’s take a look at the chain of events.

Sreesanth and others were arrested late night on May 15. The spot-fixing incidents as claimed by Delhi police occurred on May 9 or earlier. So why did they wait till May 15 to arrest the accused especially when they had flown to different hotels away from their HQ? Interesting, eh? It so happens that on May 15 Sreesanth was sacked from the RR team by the management (see TOI report). A mere co-incidence? Okay! So on May 16 the story explodes and the Delhi PC, Neeraj Kumar, is all over the place on all channels beaming like a “dulha” on the major catch he had made (The pic is from his interview with Sunetra Choudhury on NDTV). And what does Delhi police do? Every hour they release juicy titbits to the media on how Sreesanth cried, there was a confession, there was no confession, how many bookies were involved, Dubai was involved, Pakistan was involved, Dawood was involved and blah blah. So like the box of parrots they are, our media were waiting to relay every bit of scrap being thrown at them. TimesNow even interviewed Himanshu Roy, the JCP of Mumbai who made no significant comments on the episode. Splendid!

The very next day (May 18) Himanshu Roy holds a press conference of his own in Mumbai to tell the world that they had seized a laptop computer, an ipad, and a mobile phone of Sreesanth. You know, the Delhi police went to Mumbai and arrested Sreesanth but the Mumbai police must have told them “please leave something for us”. So our very considerate Delhi police left these items for their Mumbai friends to mop up. So after the Delhi police left, the next day Mumbai police grabbed all these belongings of Sreesanth. This is truly inter-state police cooperation at its best, isn’t it? So after May 16 and 17 were dominated by the grinning Neeraj Kumar, his PR guys they said “over to Mumbai” and on May 18 Mumbai police hogged the limelight. Three days over a spot-fixing scam?

Since the spot-fixing scam goes beyond borders and indicates Hawala transactions there must be room for some more to join the fun. Enter the Enforcement Directorate! What do they say… “maan na maan me tera mehmaan”! So the ED jumps in and says they will now start a money laundering probe (Outlook). So in a couple of days you might find some ED guys on TV telling us what they are going to do, when they are going to do and how they are going to do it. That reminds me. The original IPL guy that the ED is still chasing, Lalit Modi, is happily settled in London and is on TV every time something happens in IPL. And Modi lectures everyone on the chastity of IPL when he was in charge. Talking about ED reminds me of another one. This Rajasthan Royals, the focus of all attention, was slapped a 100 crore fine by the ED for foreign exchange violations. Did they pay up? What happened to that? If you go the Telegraph article I challenge you to decipher who the owners of RR really are although the face being shown to us is that of Shilpa Shetty. There are names of so many finance companies and even Lalit Modi’s ‘jiju’ Suresh Chellaram is mentioned. All pretty complex as most IPL owners appear to be. And Shilpa Shetty says “Zero tolerance”. I believe her.

Maybe the IT and ED should first scrutinise funding of the owners of each IPL team with a fine tooth-comb before they venture into the spot-fixing scam which is of much lower value. But why should the news media be so carried away with this for over 4 days and still be going on and on about it. Surely, even if they are parrots they can’t be that dumb, can they? Or may they are wilfully so. All other issues of national interest have been pushed aside as former diplomat KC Singh laments. In the last 4 days other issues are covered only as a “break” like the Chinese PM’s visit or the resignation of two corruption-tainted ministers in Andhra Pradesh. Throughout this period there is a massive “Bharat Nirman” campaign running on all the channels. Mind you, these are not small 5-10 seconds ads, these are mostly full 90 seconds ads or even more.

The APCL (Andhra Pradesh Corruption League) has been covered up and pushed into to a corner of news items for over 4 years now. Even that “Truth V Tripe” guy didn’t have time to pay any attention to it. Propaganda channels like NDTV, CNN-IBN and lately Headlines Today simply refuse to do a complete story on the APCL. As high a minister as Home Minister Sabitha Indira Reddy and Roads & Buildings Minister D. Prasada Rao have been forced to resign because of corruption. It’s not just these two, there’s a whole team of people who are accused and I quote from The Hindu:

Other accused in the case include Jagan, V. Vijay Sai Reddy, Puneet Dalmia, Y. Srilakshmi, V.D. Rajagopal, Sajjala Diwakar Reddy, Sanjay S. Mittra, Neel Kamal Beri, Joy Deep Basu, Raghuram Cements (presently Bharati Cements), Dalmia Cement and Eswar Cements (now merged into Dalmia Cement) in that order.

The continuous coverage of the IPL spot-fixing, with mostly nothing new to add, is simply mind-boggling. I don’t believe that media houses have only now realised that the late YSR was running the most corrupt State govt in the country. The corruption loot could well match the 2G levels. Jagan Reddy, YSR’s son who is currently in jail under CBI cases, alone is reported to have acquired assets worth over 40000 crores. Amazing for a guy who had nothing much to start with! The Congress corruption in AP is not even debateable. No channel is demanding resignations and no channel is even talking about it. Even the UP Lokayukta decision to recover 1400 crores from Mayawati & Co. is blaring on all channels. Lately, NDTV is obsessed with Afghanistan. Understandable! WMD apart, someone is clearly walking the dog. I wonder who.

Welcome To Hunting Season

Since the present-day FBI was founded in 1935 J.Edgar Hoover was its life-time Director. He headed the FBI all of 37 years till his death in 1972. This is quite unheard of in the US; one man holding the same office for 37 years. Hoover became the most powerful man in the country and had dossiers on every politician and public figure of his time. He had enough dirt on Presidents, Presidential candidates, Senators, Congressmen, film stars, celebrities, sportsmen and activists. Every one! It’s not a surprise no one could unseat him except death. Since then FBI directors can hold only a single 10-year term in office. In contrast, the Supreme Court called our very own CBI a “caged parrot”. The Congress party has reduced it to not just a parrot but a puppet. It has used CBI to do hatchet jobs on its opponents at will, especially in the last 9 years of the UPA. Make a wild guess on who now plays the role of Hoover in India. Elections are less than a year away and the CBI is one of the key players in the operation to neutralise enemies. No, not enemies of the nation but enemies of the Congress party. The other key players who will now do the hit jobs on opponents of Congress are from the media.

Who are these targets? They’re mostly from the major Opposition party, BJP. Of course, I didn’t forget, they have their permanent target in Narendra Modi, the greatest threat to the Congress. In some states regional politicians will be targeted, like Mamata Banerjee, J. Jayalalitha, Mayawati and partly the Samajwadi party in UP. The CPM, CPI will be spared because they are the ideological bosses of the media and a Congress partner at large. The courtesans of the Congress party in the media will assist in tarnishing reputations, bring out fake reports, rehash old issues with new meaningless sting ops and they will get lucky if the Congress, through its many “funded” NGOs, manages an FIR or two against Modi. Times Now is already on its way running a documentary questioning the success of the nuclear tests of 1998 under AB Vajpayee. This is because one scientist claims it was a partial success but the intended perception is that the “test was a failure” and BJP fooled the nation. Make no mistake about this attempt.

Lately some voices in the print media are talking about it a bit more openly. Firstpost calls it “The ‘incestuous relationship’ between Congress and media” and in another it asks “Why this secrecy over Sonia Gandhi”? These shameless morons are like a bunch of blind men who suddenly discovered coal. It was evident to even a mild observer that the media was not just incestuous but actually a security guard that protected the Congress and SoniaG all this while. This blog has written about for over three years. There is even a post on this site asking “Why is Indian media scared of Sonia Gandhi”? way back in 2011. So it’s not as if these media folks have suddenly discovered their impotence. I believe they must have suddenly discovered some temporary herbal cure for it before they go back to being themselves.

On May 15 one of the born-again Congress cronies, HeadlinesToday, started to air a sting on Varun Gandhi’s ‘hate-speech’ case of 2009 in partnership with Tehelka (the specialist in stings on Congress opponents and which uses call-girls for journalism). If not for the IPL spot fixing disclosures this spurious sting claiming judiciary was duped by VarunG would have aired the whole week. Bad luck! But nothing to worry, just like HeadlinesToday brought back some spurious Gujarat 2002 sting op a few weeks back this orchestrated sting on VarunG will come back at the right time. And to aid their operations in targeting Congress opponents HT has even purchased a ‘transfer’ of Ashish Khetan, the stinger of Tehelka. Sometime back HT claimed to have exposed a major scam in Salman Khurshid’s NGO for the handicapped. It is now all forgiven and forgotten. HT is back in the good books of Congress and you can tell by the number of ‘Bharat Nirman’ and NREGA ads on the channel. HT is not the only beneficiary though. The other media courtesans aren’t missing out on the dole. I doubt anyone misses the irony of a scam-infested govt and party claiming “Bharat Nirman”. Some people jokingly call it “Bharat Nilaam”.

No reporter from Open Magazine or Outlook will likely be ever invited to any panel on NDTV. On the other hand Shoma Chaudhary, the so-called editor of Tehelka, is a frequent flyer on the channel. Both these magazines exposed the Radiagate and the involvement of Barkha Dutt and NDTV in the related scam. Calling NDTV and Tehelka as incestuous partners of the Congress would be an understatement. Here’s what Hartosh Bal of Open Mag recently wrote about the two:

“As far as some media organisations such as NDTV and Tehelka are concerned, their closeness to the Congress is no secret. Barkha Dutt’s role in the Radia Tapes did not seem to point to an individual act but an institutional malaise. It is only illustrative that today a Sanjay Jha of Hamara Congress as Executive Director of Dale Carnegie Training operations can hold a workshop at NDTV for those very people who could be asking him questions on a prime-time evening show. But beyond institutional closeness is the issue of individual reporters who have covered this government over the past nine years. Access requires give-and-take, and several reporters have developed an unhealthy proximity to a number of Congress leaders. In the durbar politics of the party, where it is necessary to strike down potential competitors, the media has played a vital role”.

The last line in the above quote is really the key: “striking down political competitors”. Let me just say: Hunting season has just begun. We are headed into an election year. NDTV, Tehelka, Headlines Today, Hindustan Times, CNN-IBN, Indian Express, Times of India, Aaj Tak, ABPNews will all be already preparing their spurious attack schedules. Every Opposition leader will be targeted, except Arun Jaitley. I guess Arun Jaitley will be spared because he is quite “friendly” with Barkha Dutt and heeded her request not to bring up Radiagate in the parliament committee. Apart from running the VarunG video of the hate-speech case over a 1000 times during the election campaign of 2009 NDTV went a step further. In April 2009 Barkha Dutt conducted an interview with Priyanka Vadra sitting on the lawns. If you ever wanted to know what a “suck-up” interview is just search and look it up. Oh yes, during election times Priyanka V also becomes Priyanka Gandhi. Barkha gloated then that PG could even use words like “epiphany”. I swear some school the lady must have attended.

And Sanjay Jha is giving management lessons to the propaganda artists at NDTV? Nothing can be more laughable. The man himself is the Congress whipping boy on media panels when things go bad for the party so why would people at NDTV need lessons from him? People at NDTV are bigger masters at cover-ups, distractions, reactionary mud-slinging whenever Congress is in trouble and, of course, “saving the tigers”. It should be Jha who should be taking more lessons from NDTV on improving his cronyism and propaganda management skills. Hartosh Bal wonders how these people could be taking lessons from a man they could be questioning on prime-time. He is wrong! They are all “durbaris” and the workshop probably relates to preparation for hunting season.

Hoover had a principle of going after bigger criminals and making a big show and point of it. He disliked going after petty gamblers and liquor smugglers. In contrast, the Delhi police chief, his deputy were on all channels beaming over the IPL betting racket. Betting and match-fixing are two different crimes. Betting is legal in many countries but match-fixing is not legal anywhere. While bigger criminals are getting away in Delhi the PC and his deputies seem to spend a huge amount of energy on the betting racket over multiple state jurisdictions. I am confident that except for the players being banned nothing much will come of it. But when it does come to chasing others the CBI typically spends a lot of energy on opposition party members. The best example is the case against Amit Shah. He has been given bail in a case where he has been accused of murder and in every hearing the CBI case and claim has been torn to shred by the courts. Arun Jaitley also pointed out that the case against Shah was meant to lead to Narendra Modi. Consider that with the case of Pawan Bansal where the CBI was quick to give him a clean-chit immediately after his resignation. Your guess is as good as mine on how many cases may be filed against Opposition leaders in the run up to the elections. Hunting season is ripe.

Shockingly, channels like NDTV, CNN-IBN, Aaj Tak, Headlines Today, ABPNews who scream their heads off over corruption never had one word to say about the most corrupt state govt in India. Andhra Pradesh is being looted for a decade and is in shambles. Not once have Rahul Kanwal, Barkha Dutt, Rajdeep Sardesai, Arnab Goswami and their poor cousins in Hindi channels ever shown the guts to talk about the massive corruption of the YSR govt. In chasing Jagan Reddy with CBI for breaking away from Congress what turned up was that over a dozen ministers in AP are corrupt and should be prosecuted. This report says it all. By the standards of our TV channels, all these ministers are angels. Is it any surprise than that our media is the defender of the corrupt and corruption? There is a massive incentive and reward for all this as Kanchan Gupta tells us. Even in 2009 Swapan Dasgupta mentioned a 400-crore bail out for certain media channels.

In the near future we are likely to more “manufactured” stories constantly being played out on TV and in print. Rift in a practically non-existent NDA. Few more attempts at filing FIRs against Modi funded by none other than his detractors. More Gandhi propaganda from NDTV and tears from Sheila Dikshit on some channels. The little sidekicks like Ashutosh and Wagle will heap mindless abuse on Modi. The documentary on Sonia Gandhi which portrays her as a widow and saviour of India will be played endless on your screens. Like before every election someone will release a new book on the great life of Rahul Gandhi. NDTV’s “sources” will multiply in peddling unverifiable reports. There will be endless stories of infighting in BJP over PM candidate. CBI may come up with some more cases. SC will be littered with petitions against certain political leaders. And most of all, there will be huge chorus of “communal” in most of the TV channels and newspapers as will that of “saffron terror”. If by accident the shoe is on the other foot, time out will be called, some joker will come up with some betting scam for entertainment. Elections are around the corner; Delhi, Rajasthan, MP, AP and India. Welcome to hunting season. 

The IPL Farce

It’s just about a week since Pawan Kumar Bansal resigned as Rail Minister under the cloud of bribery charges involving his nephew and a few more people. Like I said in my previous post Bansal was the unfortunate victim of the phone-tapping when the CBI’s target seemed to Mahesh Kumar. So the CBI director now says there is no evidence of any wrong-doing against Bansal. PKB must be wondering now why he was forced to resign. Signs are the investigation against him will go cold and he may not be prosecuted for anything at all. The CBI after turning ‘Namak Haraam’ for a week will now go back to being a ‘Caged parrot’ as the SC called it. Someone doesn’t seem to like that name at all. It is therefore reasonable to believe that nobody would be happier than the Congress party that the IPL spot-fixing scandal broke yesterday and served as a great distraction from everything else.

It must have come as a big blow for our media that the IPL betting scam broke. HeadlinesToday had just about started a campaign on Varun Gandhi with another sting in partnership with Tehelka. It’s survival. And suddenly there’s also a spate of ‘Bharat Nirman’ and NREGA ads on all channels. Elections are around the corner, the boom-time has started.  Now they have come up with a new sting. This one is dedicated to Varun Gandhi and his so-called hate speech. HT aired it on May 15 and again in the morning of May 16. But sometimes worse news disturbs bad news. Out of the blue there was a case of spot-fixing in an IPL match with the arrest of S. Sreesanth and 2 more players of the Rajasthan Royal team. It now seems the entire IPL betting scam runs into 40,000 Crores as reported by HT themselves.

The Delhi police couldn’t have asked for such a good PR break. 3 players and 11 bookies were arrested and more are likely. There was worse news. The betting scam is reported to be connected to the Dawood gang with the masters controlling the game in India. There has always been something funny and suspicious about IPL; the format, the auction, strange appearance and disappearance of teams. The founding commissioner of the tournament, Lalit Modi, is himself wanted to for questioning by IT and ED and he is happily residing in England and avoiding questioning in India. It is possible that he is being politically hounded for exposing Shashi Tharoor and his “sweat deal” of 70 crores. In a country with so much poverty the extreme flaunting of money in the IPL does leave a bad taste with many viewers. I had written earlier that IPL is nothing more than toys for grown-ups with most teams being owned by wives, sons or daughters of rich families.

The news media completed the circus by each channel carrying 3-4 programmes everyday on the IPL with farcical analysis, reports and debates. Mostly mindless nonsense! What should constitute no more than a 5-minute report after a match or in the evening was turned into half hour programmes every morning, afternoon and night. While they now scream about the betting scam they are equally responsible for promoting the circus. I am sure such promotions were not free of cost. Times Now immediately started calling the latest scam “cheating a billion people”. Who makes these people believe that all the billion+ people in the country are crazy about the game? Cricket may be the most popular game but to suggest the entire population is crazy about it or follows IPL closely is as disingenuous as claiming Sachin always carried the burden of a billion people. Such exaggeration is what leads to more bad behaviour and crimes in the game.

The BCCI president himself has a lot to answer for. He’s the president, owns an IPL team and his conflict of interest doesn’t seem to stop anywhere. On the other front why shouldn’t we believe that the whole IPL itself is somewhat like a Bollywood industry organisation where black money is the artery of the business? Underworld money is known to flow in Bollywood and why shouldn’t it be possible for Hawala transactions in IPL too. And remember, this BCCI is still a “Charitable organisation” and exempted from income tax. Since February 2013 the BCCI is still dealing with 2300 crore IT demand for its commercial activities.The first step in bringing some accountability to the BCCI would be to change its status from a Charitable to a Commercial organisation. This is especially necessary considering so many politicians and big businessmen are managing the organisation. On what basis does such a filthy-rich organisation deserve monetary exemptions?

Former Sports Minister Ajay Maken did make efforts to rein in the BCCI and even bring it under RTI but the politicians would have nothing of it. The richer an organisation is, the more corrupt it tends to become in India is what it seems. The richer the players get they seem to be more tempted to commit crimes. It is also possible that once players are targeted by the underworld it may not be easy to get out of the trap as there may be other threats that we may not even come to know. And why is IPL such a farce? Simply because with about 9-10 teams playing how can a tournament possibly drag on for 2 months? Even the Olympics and World Cup football don’t go beyond a month with so many participants. All this in the height of Indian summers? And then with cheergirls and comic “strategic time-outs” (which are meant to merely squeeze in 5 more minutes of commercials) the game has been turned into a mere money-making circus. Some of the players have been reported to have attended rave parties in the past. Some have been accused of molestation of women. How much more crime will it take for the BCCI to alter this farce?

After the beating they have taken in the last few months the Delhi police can finally claim some PR success with the arrests and disclosures. They may have done a good job but all the evidence may not stand up in a court. There are claims of signals being agreed upon but then such signals weren’t given at all. So it’s a tangle that won’t be easy to test in a court. Regardless of whether the players are guilty or not there is a good reason to tone down the IPL. The tournament must be turned into a crisp 15-day tournament and nothing more than that. Some argue that this 2-month farce is also draining our top players. It’s not just the CBI that has become a “caged parrot”. Some of our cricketers too have become so and unable to speak of the misdeeds of the BCCI which subjects them to punishing schedules. The IPL is currently a farce that needs to be shortened and toned down substantially. If not, expect bigger disasters.

Ranjit Sinha - Namak Haraam

King Henry II of England and Thomas Beckett were good friends. They were even “drinking club” friends. When Beckett was appointed Chancellor he did everything that the King desired, even taxed the Church. The King even had Beckett playing foster-father to his sons. The King was constantly in conflict with the Church and wanted the Royalty be supreme over the Church. To settle the conflict and gain supremacy he appointed his best friend Beckett as the Archbishop of Canterbury. That’s when things went wrong. Once he became Archbishop, Beckett turned pious and refused to oblige and sign any agreements that would establish the supremacy of the King over the Church. Beckett is reported to have started penance for his earlier sins. He refused to break with the Pope in Rome. Beckett was murdered in 1170, presumably under orders of Henry II, and was later bestowed Sainthood by the Pope. Beckett’s story became famous through T.S. Elliot’s “Murder in the cathedral” and partly referenced in Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Canterbury tales”.

When Ranjit Sinha (RS) was appointed CBI Director last year there were protests from the leaders of the Opposition, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley. They had apprehensions that he was another puppet who would do the bidding of Sonia Gandhi & Co. Their suspicion was justified considering RS had a record of being servantile and his record also had some minor blemishes. But when a person assumes a certain office he brings his own story and burden to bear on it. Not many newspapers or TV channels have narrated this story but OpenMagazine has found a genuine explanation for the twin stories that culminated in the destruction of Pawan Kumar Bansal and Ashwani Kumar. We’ll get to that. In the meantime, let’s hear some familiar nonsense about who’s to blame for the last Parliament session washout.

It has been a tradition now in our media to blame the Opposition, in particular the BJP, for the Parliament blockades and washout of sessions. The media morons believe, like they do on their TV channels, that everything can be sorted out with a debate. My answer is a clear NO. You cannot debate obvious crimes. When the Parliament was blocked for the 2G issue the same media cried themselves hoarse blaming the opposition. The end result was a farcical JPC whose chairman was in a rush to distribute clean chits. The tweets of the Numero Uno and Numero Unee are reflective of this culture on TV where they believe parliament sessions are the only way to sort out crimes. This is an argument the Congress offers to gain time and prevent action on crimes. Democracy exists far beyond the walls of parliament and we have seen time and again that parliament is incompetent in dealing with criminals. They can only make laws, nothing more. In this case too CNN-IBN and it’s govt foot-soldiers blamed the BJP only to turn turtle in the next few days.

What Ashwani Kumar did was a serious crime which is being played down by the Congress and the media. His role was one of obstruction of justice and protecting people who may have the potential of being indicted by a court in the massive Coalgate scam. The Opposition is right in stalling the parliament where the Congress sought to divert all the issues by bringing in some bogus Food Security Bill with elections in mind and then accused other parties of being “anti-poor” because they stalled parliament. This dubious conduct by the Congress is now familiar to all. All, except our specialists in the media. The Congress, as usual, claimed the SC had not pronounced any verdict and there was an inquiry against Bansal. Nonsense! The SC observations on the doctored Coalgate affidavit is enough for the PM to be sacked. And Bansal? He wasn’t sacked because Sonia Gandhi had an attack of conscience as we came to learn. But in just over a week, Pallavi Ghosh meekly tweets that Congress was to blame for Parliament washout which ridicules the propaganda of her own bosses.

SoniaG reportedly rushed to PM’s residence on May 10 to seek the sacking of Bansal and Kumar. She created all the drama for the media to show how strongly she acts against corruption. Her phones were probably so dead that she had to rush to 7RCR. Nonsense again! It turns out that the tapes in which Bansal was pimping for railway appointments and distributing the loot was out with some in the media and so possibly also with the Congress boss. Kanchan Gupta indicates what exactly could have been the contents of the bribery tapes. It’s like when you’re finally clean-bowled in Cricket and even the third umpire can’t save you if it isn’t a no-ball. That’s when it dawned upon Sonia Gandhi that the damage in retaining Bansal could be far more severe than the Congress anticipated. So while at it, the Congress made both ministers go since AshwaniK would have to go anyway at some point of time. Better hurt now than later. That’s a good choice. But if knowing all this the PM and SoniaG were against sacking Bansal earlier it speaks of monumental dishonesty. All the editors in the media who kept giving MMS a certificate of “honesty” must hang their heads in shame.

In all of this can the lady who is now haunting Pakistan be left out of her own 2 cents of special intelligence? Absolutely not! So there you go, there’s Barkha Dutt telling us about the “Punjabi” conspiracy of some sort. What Open Magazine, which is far more reliable than Barkha, tells us is that an aspirant to the post of Law Minister leaked out information of AshwaniK’s meddling with the CBI affidavit. I don’t think we need the CIA to infer that OpenMag is referring to zero loss. The leak being a done job, there was no way Ranjit Sinha could escape admitting the facts in the SC of the affidavit. He had an added incentive. OpenMag reports AshwaniK was harsh on him and even humiliated him with rude comments on Ranjit’s poor knowledge of English. You see, in India, it is better to be an English Laloo like Salman Khurshid or Shashi Tharoor than a desi CBI director. In short, AshwaniK and the PM’s cohorts gangraped the CBI affidavit and left it a poor survivor to be sent to a hospital.

In the case of Bansal, RS had an old score to settle. It seems Mahesh Kumar, the 10Crore briber who was in the Rail business earlier too, had shunted him out to unattractive posts in the past. So without anyone asking him or any govt advising the CBI, RS started a special watch on Mahesh Kumar and poor Pawan Bansal was caught with his monkey-hand grabbing peanuts from the trap, just like that lady in Radiagate. Conversations were taped over months and even the sacrificial Goat that Bansal used in a puja in the end couldn’t save him. Unwittingly, Ranjit Sinha has become the saviour of CBI and may finally be the man to save it from the evil clutches of the most corrupt govt ever in the history of India. Ranjit Sinha became Thomas Beckett. RS also finally managed to put some fear into the hearts of politicians. He also proved there is no need for the Jokepal, a strong, independent CBI and Judiciary is quite adequate to deal with corruption.

The Congress and some of its allies in the UPA have spawned such a culture of corruption and brazen loot that every joker has started believing he has a “Right To Loot”. Whether it’s Bansal, Ashwani, Marans, Kripashankars or the whole gang of UPA. This doesn’t happen if there is zero tolerance for corruption. This happens only when the whole gang gets a clear signal that looting is okay as long as the Mafia is paid its due. This is what the UPA has been reduced to. And this birthright to corruption doesn’t end with politicians it also extends to the news media who keep lying through their nose to protect their corrupt masters. SoniaG has given a clear signal through Shashi Tharoor and Abhishek Singhvi that if you’re tainted just take a chill-pill, spend some time taking a vacation. You will be back quite soon. If banks are money-laundering as Cobrapost suggests it is surely not without approval and a guarantee of protection.

The Congress appointed Ranjit Sinha with the belief he will be another puppet and be loyal to the Queen and her coterie. The story has gone terribly wrong. The Beckett story was made into a movie. The same movie was adapted and remade in Bollywood – it was called “Namak Haraam” (featuring Rajesh Khanna and Amitabh Bachchan). In both movies the “namak haraam” dies. I have no doubts that Ranjit Sinha is going to be called a ‘namak haraam’ in Congress and media circles. One just hopes he doesn’t meet the same fate.