Corruption to stay the issue number one for sometime to come

In the last few years, India has indeed changed. At a very basic level, the retrospective impropriety scandal which hit Vasundhara Raje and Sushma Swaraj as a result of Lalit Modi’s revelations is nothing more than a person misusing his access to a powerful politician. Lalit Modi had access to these ladies which he used to get favours of them – and maybe the ladies received something in return which my or mayn’t be establish-able. In other words, it’s a person misusing his access to power and the powerful obliging.  Isn’t it something we in India have grown up hearing and seeing happen around us?

10 years back no one would have bothered about it. We have always lived with the knowledge that politicians are corrupt, that businessmen bend rules to make it etc. And this general awareness about their impropriety never kicked up a public storm or dented their popularity. In fact, there was admiration for their ability to con and prosper expressed in private quarters. Many said why complain about the means as long as the end is good. No one grudged them their ill-gotten wealth.

Then what has changed us so much in last four to five years? Why are political parties fighting elections with corruption as their central issue? Why are the channels going bonkers over what would have been dismissed as petty corruption issues a few years ago?

Our tolerance about corruption has shrunk in last few years. We have started asking questions about what we had always taken for granted.

Couple of months ago, when BJP’s land bill had just started being discussed in media, one day I saw an elderly man being interviewed on a TV channel. He spoke with the simplicity of a village elder. He blamed the government for forsaking the welfare of the poor. He threatened to start a movement to raise aware around the land bill. It reminded me of the chaos the elderly man had created only four years back.

It’s been some time I saw the interview and nothing of the sort we had witnessed earlier followed. Maybe Anna Hazare held a meeting or two, following that TV interview, but they never created the nation-wide stir his anti-corruption movement had four years ago.

It’s to that movement four years ago, which never reached any conclusion but brought corruption to the center stage of politics, that Congress owes getting an issue which it can firmly wrap its fist around since the formation of the new government. It’s to that movement four years ago that BJP owes its coming to power at the center on the strength of the popular despair it created against Congress’s corrupt rule.

It’s to that movement four years ago that Delhi owes its unpredictable chief minister Arvind Kejriwal. And many more transformative changes that have taken place in India since that anti-corruption movement spearheaded by the bespectacled elderly man on the TV channel – have their origin in that movement four years ago.   

Whether you think that in an atmosphere where tiniest of misdemeanors by public figures can be orchestrated into an over-blown national hysteria, there is always the possibility of the political establishment misleading us into believing that all scams are same. Or you believe, when it comes to corruption, size or type shouldn’t matter. The politics of propriety as an issue has never had it so good. All earlier movements with a social impact dealt with a bouquet of issues; corruption was just one of them.

So maybe Sushma and Vasundhara will still get away with whatever they have done or not. But corruption as a political issue is not going fall out of favour with the political establishment any time soon. When an opposition dislodges dislodges a ruling party on the basis of corruption charges and after staying in power for some time gets bored of taking about corruption, it’s time for the former ruling party to attack the government on corruption.

What We Missed about Niira Radia

Since the outbreak of the 2G controversy and exposure of the Radia tapes, newspapers and TV channels are busy lambasting the journos, politicians and everybody else found involved in the controversy and heard in the tapes. But amidst this brouhaha, everyone seems to forget what made the scam possible bringing together people from diverse professions - media, politics and industries: Niira Radia's PR skills.


I heard some of the tapes on Youtube where Radia talks to cross sections of society – politicians, journalists and businessmen – and noticed that for each type of person she employs a distinct style of conversation. With media personalities, she is friendly and informal. She mainly speaks in English with occasional Hindi lines and phrases thrown in. She exchanges pleasantries but comes to point very quickly. Generally she is conversational and polite, but she knows when to change gear and be persuasive.

But while talking to Ratan Tata, her client, she follows a totally different style. Her style seems to be attuned to Tata’s personality, which is very reserved. Her tone is not friendly, but strictly formal. She doesn’t lapse into strings of Hindi sentences but sticks to English with polished accent. She explains her points very well and seems to have lot of grasp over the topic.

Any PR guy will tell you that Niira is a dream PR professional. Her networking skills (she seems to have journos at her beck and call), her strong sense of how to deal with whom, her understanding of her clients’ business (evident from her conversation with Tata) are assets for any PR person. No wonder she runs one of the most successful PR agencies in the country whose clientele isn’t just limited to Tata and Mukesh Ambani but includes state governments as well. It’s being said that when Tata was facing stiff resistance at Nandigram over the Nano factory, Radia put him in touch with Narendra Modi and Bengal’s loss became Gujrat’s gain with the factory being moved to the later.

Her network, which spans across multiple professions, would not have come easily and is not easy to maintain either. People with a flair for crudeness will attribute her success to exchange of unsavoury favors (you know what). And some will blame it on absence of integrity among the guys in her network. But painting the whole picture in a broad stroke will only help the essential escape – that there is considerable amount of professional skills involved in her success. Had the 2G scam not come into public glare, someday you would find an article hailing Radia’s success as PR personnel.

I am sure even as whole India heaps derision on Niira Radia, she is being talked about admiringly in the pantries of PR agencies over tea and coffee. No doubt Niira is a fixer but a skilled one. Both the government and media are reeling under her PR impact and I am sure there are many tapes we haven't heard. Sad but true!