OPEN - The Can of Worms

Here we go with the Nira Radia tapes.
I was waiting for the media to break its silence on it and lo... just as I had expected, the ice broke through CNNIbn, arch rival of NDTV, and who spoke vociferously against the two journalists in question in a brilliantly crafted show was none other than N Ram, editor-in-chief of The Hindu, which is to the South, what HT is to North India.

I believe I belong to what in modern times is the sixth estate.
We are all well aware of the first four estates, PR machinery of corporates and business houses slowly becoming the fifth, and because of internet, the people of India, the civil society, emerging as the sixth estate, of which I am a part.
I see with objectivity what every single Indian besides me, who is not a part of the first five estates which might have vested interests in the goings on between each other, is watching.
As the circus unfolds, beginning from the IPLgate conducted by Lalit Modi, moving on to the CWG scam led by Kalmadi, to the telecom scam conducted by A Raja, to the Adarsh Society Scam directed by three ex chief ministers of Maharashtra and a bunch of Generals of the Indian Army, to the Yeddurappa scam executed by his sons and daughters in law, which has finally come and rested upon what is widely being referred to as Barkhagate, I cannot, like the rest of the citizenry of India who is at the recieving end of each of this, help but observe the theater of the absurd taking over our lives in the format of reality TV.
Who says our television borrows from the west?
Who says we're not good enough at developing our own formats?

In IPLgate Tharoors head rolled and Modi is on the run.
Some small fry side kicks of Kalmadi are under arrest and being interrogated by the CBI for CWG.
A Raja resigned for the telecom scam which cost the exchequer over a lakh and seventy five thousand crores of rupees, but actually got a pat on his back from the PM at a recently held DMK function.
Yeddurappa has gone scot free.
And Vir Sanghvi and Barkha Dutt are in the dock.

When the fourth estate got serious about their responsibility and started to expose corruption the way they should have done since the last sixty years of our independence, one by one, the truth about what goes on in the name of development, started to reveal itself.
The true face of the politics of the country began to emerge through the media and political parties started to fight like cats and dogs and accuse the others for being more corrupt than them.
Kalmadi became embarrassing for the ruling party.
He got the axe from his post within the party he belonged to, but continued to retain his post as the Chairman of the OC which is responsible for swindling the people of India of hundreds of crores of rupees.
He was too powerful and knew too much to be pulled off his post.
He roams the Asian Games in China, representing the Indian Government and travels Monaco as such, while the government manipulates the FIR being filed against the corruption of the OC, to see to it that Kalmadi's name doesn't figure in it.
Chavan went, and the Generals involved in the Adarsh Society scam through which they benefited prime property in the name of Kargil war widows, have been charge sheeted.
A Raja was forced to resign because media as well as opposition chased him down in the telecom scam but the pat on his back given to him by the honest PM of India, the only man who has integrity, said it all.
It was an assurance that for what Raja had done, he would be rewarded.
Why?
Because, while Raja was being chased, the party he belonged to, DMK, led by Karunanidhi felt cornered and supported a member of another opposition party, Subramanium Swamy, of the Janata Dal, to drag the PM to the supreme court and embarrass him.
Meanwhile to teach the largest opposition, the BJP, a lesson, the ruling party began to chase them with the media in tow, on Yeddurappa who had misappropriated his position to enable his sons and daughters in law to own acres and acres of land at throwaway prices, thereby causing tax paying citizens of India, hugher losses.
The BJP alongwith all other opposition parties, big and small, have held back the winter session of parliament for days now and while the circus continues, the back rooms were fully in action.
They are all crooks and deals were being fixed between them to save the system which doesn't work from collapsing.
Finally Yeddurappa never had to resign or step down, Karunanidhi is being promised perks for his compliance, Kalmadi is going scot free and to shut the media up a plan was devised to put it in its place and send a warning out which would make the media realize that they are as vulnerable as they make others out to be.
OPEN magazine, which I had never heard of before, found an opportunity to become the most read tabloid overnight, and fell in cahorts with Vinod Mehta of Outlook Magazine and some politicians, who got hold of the tapes of conversations between Nira Radia, Vir Sanghvi, Barkha Dutt and many others and had them released in the most alarming way, much against what the law permits.
While Manu Joseph, never heard of before journalist, now claims to be editor-in-chief of the new one to hit the stands, stammers and stutters to clarify his position on the Karan Thapar show on CNNIbn, and N Ram pontificates about ethics in journalism, I give full marks to the courage Dilip Cherian and Sanjay Baru showed by defending the fall guys, who everyone is taking pot shots at.
Barkha Dutt is one of the most impressive journalists of our times and needs no support to establish her credibility.
I have seen Vir Sanghvi at a collective congregation of all four estates during the launch of one of the documentaries I produced which was released by Mr. Chidambaram in New Delhi a couple of years ago, and I have witnessed how each and everyone was eating out of his hands, men and women both.
How they must have hated doing that, I remember, I had thought.
How powerful he must be, I had wondered.
So now, its the dogs day out.
Those jealous and envious of the positions of the two in question, who have never had the audacity or the courage to pursue the journalism these two have, are out there ranting and raving about good journalism while the above scams are slowly getting buried under the weight of technicalities that all the lawyers who are at work on them are applying, and the focus of the media has shifted from the scams which have cost this nation progress, to the ethics of journalism, 26/11 and Bihar elections.
And they think, we don't see through it.
I haven't even gone to the bureaucracy yet which is shaking with fear, nor to the stench of the split between the North and the South in Indian politics.