The Indian Express carried an editorial "The 10,000 hour rule" (Friday, May 27, 2011) about the Indian Institutes of Technology Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE) and the throbbing, humming coaching industry in Kota, Rajasthan.
I write this as a person who was once "world-class" (whatever that means) but is now mediocre. That is, I am a computer science graduate from an IIT (26 years ago) and now teach at one (for the last 17 years).
For the IIT system, the enormous mind space that the IITs and the JEE occupy in the consciousness and aspirations of children (and their parents) across the country is good news, for it ensures that the brightest minds aspire to study at these institutions. What we do with these bright minds is a matter currently being hotly debated (but is certainly a matter of great concern to the more thoughtful of my colleagues).
The editorial is correct in stating that there are several heart-warming stories about children from small towns making good on their dreams of getting into an IIT. They have been able to prove themselves at the national level by excelling in an exam that has (so far) avoided being compromised by the worst that ails the country. (I am not however stating that the JEE is a terrific, infallible examination.) Indeed, one of the strengths of the IITs (perhaps due to the entrance test) is that they are remarkably egalitarian, and have been successful in bringing together a very diverse (by almost all social measures) set of students. Further, the institutes are able to treat all their students as equals, and have been instrumental in admitting people who may have had several social disadvantages into an elite, without falling prey to the follies of elitism.
However, this obsession with getting into an IIT comes with a fair share of curses. Some of them have serious social implications which need addressing, but I do not discuss here the despair that afflicts those who do not make the cut in the IIT-JEE.
Let us look instead at what this obsession does to the IITs and the JEE itself. To cater to the large number of aspirants, the examination has become one with Multiple Choice Questions, a format mistakenly called "objective". What such an examination cannot measure is a deep understanding of concepts and how to apply them creatively; nor can it test students on formal proofs and rigorous mathematical/scientific communication. It tends to favour formulaic questions, for which there can be coaching. And this is the real bane of our education systems. Coaching students to "crack an exam" has become a substitute for teaching and learning. It is perhaps worthwhile being reminded that one cannot get coached for creativity, innovation and the generation of knowledge (or even what is described by that abominable phrase "intellectual property"), since these aspects of life do not come with "cheat codes" that can be perfected. And these are precisely the capabilities we expect of the products of our top educational institutions. I'm tempted to guess that the alumni who have made the IITs proud would have gotten in, excelled and gone on to excel in their professions without any coaching.
The Kota phenomenon, where 50,000 students migrate there for two or more years, often with one or both parents, may be sociologically interesting, but is at the expense of the school system. Have the editorial writers of The Indian Express closely looked at what transpires at schools in that city? Moreover, this kind of intense coaching severely distorts the lives of these young people, robbing them of their adolescent years, and of other facets of life. Students who spend 10-12 hours a day, sinking in Rs 200,000-300,000 on tuitions turn out to be not well rounded, not well read, rather sedentary and with poor social skills and graces. They have been brainwashed into a phony notion of their excellence based on a one-time performance in an examination which they have "gamed", not by virtue of their innate abilities and creativity at solving problems. Some years ago, when the issue of caste-based quotas came up, I was not sure whether Quota posed any harder challenges to our pedagogical methods and standards than the Kota phenomenon did.
I have not conducted a scientific study on this matter, and my information is informal and anecdotal, gleaned from conversations with students. Of the approximately 100 computer science majors at IIT Delhi whom I teach in each batch (all drawn from the top 0.1 percent of JEE aspirants) relatively few are from Kota; moreover, if one considers those who have performed extremely well up till their senior year ("the A grade students"), those from Kota form a negligible number. This is perhaps not very surprising, since a good computer scientist requires abstraction and analytic abilities as well as the capacity to synthesize, and moreover should be able to work with rigorous formalisms and express himself or herself in precise formal language. I am not sure the so-called objective entrance examination for which students have been coached correlates well with these abilities.
May I also remind the editorial writers that the "10,000 hour rule", articulated in Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers" and to which the title of the editorial alludes, is a necessary condition for genius, not a sufficient one? Indeed, when teaching Logic, I find that this distinction between necessary and sufficient conditions, which was so obvious to my class some years back, is increasingly difficult to convey to this class of hyper-coached supposed geniuses. Perhaps there is a simple explanation --- Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule applies to obsessive practice at something constructive, not "cracking exams".
Friday, May 27, 2011
Friday, April 15, 2011
Lodi
Let us chat then of thee and me.
Two states. (Not that book, hawked at crossroads)
Two different worlds.
Eigenstates: all of you
And all of me
And all of thee-and-me
In Superposition.
Which leads to that ineluctable question:
Why didn't they teach us about entanglement?
When one cannot be described fully without the other.
Verschränkung.
Spukhafte Fernwirkung,
Action at a distance.
But how far apart? One foot
Or two continents?
Das Rätsel dieser Welt löst weder Du noch ich,
Jene geheime Schrift liest weder Du noch ich.
Wir wüssten beide gern, was jener Schleier birgt,
Doch wenn der Schleier fällt, bist weder Du noch ich.
Me for you and euphemism.
Specular thoughts from a prism.
Let us go then from this place
Lest we collapse back into our eigenstates
On being measured.
{It will be a good half hour if the Czarina summons me.}
Let us then to the thee-me park.
The Flower Garden of my Hart.
I wonder how you feel today.
Are you just a ray of sunshine in a Hilbert Space?
Schroedinger's ket?
Do we seek coherence or decoherence?
{Can there be a conjugal Hermitian existence?}
I have known this place better than the back of my hand.
I have squelched through its marshes and ponds,
And hidden my cigarettes in the crevices of its walls.
I have seen the mists rising from the tombs,
The ghosts from under the vaults.
I have climbed the bat-smelly stairways
With dog, bottle and pack
To do what the young are wont to.
I have scuffed out scrawled protestations of eternal love.
I have leapt from turret to turret
Without a thought of "Do I dare"
I have traced the trellis work with my fingers
Like a lover would trace her beloved's face.
The tomb sits like a Pharaoh,
Its eastern arm a modest serai,
The more ornate western arm a mosque,
The grave torso cradled an amorphous lump.
Brave the bats and their stench
And we had a vertiginous perch (now off limits).
In front, sits an attendant tomb bejewelled in blue.
The sun beats down in its afternoon glory
Feeding the plants while drying them the same.
The stone walls stall its triumphant path
And shelter mustiness from its glare.
And all the infections that it would suck up,
Let us go then through these tombs
Where dead beats deaden their senses.
Let us O my dove.
Let's do it.
Let's do it again.
How say you?
Ma Muse M'amuse
This is not the time, this is not the place.
But there will be a time and place,
Always, where we can.
Where we dip into and cross the linear demarcation.
Breathless? Breathe in deep,
The art of loving.
ars amandi
Free home delivery.
The dome echoes.
This is not the place.
Not the place.
How long has this been going on?
The fading calendula look like
The ghosts of olden daffodils.
I can hear the birds chirping
Babblers babbling, koels kooh-ing
I can smell the roses over the stench of the water.
But where are the dogs?
(I liked it when this park went to the dogs.)
Sam the collie and Piloo's brace of Irish
(Which looked like his wife).
There was a Rottweiler, you say,
And your Tibetan who got away.
I led you not up the garden path.
But garden paths on which sandals
Took us past a thousand scandals;
The first and the rest, the lesser loves,
Created how much by imagination.
Canoodling couples twisted like helices
A to T, C to G.
The first circle of blooming hell.
The second circle, we did not cross.
Was it timidity, that I took you by the wrist?
Awkwardly, not by arm or hand.
Was I thinking "Do I dare"?
Naa cheyyi patti viduvaka
As we danced through the treacherous traffic.
This is the house that Jack built.
This is the room in the house that Jack built.
That is the window, the door, in the room of the
House that Jack built.
No habrá nunca una puerta. Estás adentro
y el alcázar abarca el universo
y no tiene ni anverso ni reverso
ni externo muro ni secreto centro.
A door which has no key
Blocks the stairway to the heavens
A walled up arch.
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate
Was not written on the keystone.
Enjoy the view.
Dante saw Beatrice but twice.
And yet, he mused.
Would they have texted each other
As teenagers do,
If they could have?
The fortification has always embraced weeds
With the grave of the Sultan.
The ornamentation is spare.
These were no Moguls.
Parapets cracked by the usury of the days,
Here dwelt the num'rous Afghan tribes of old.
And ruled this land, with murdering arms,
Led it in horrid wars accurs'd.
'किस पथ से जाऊँ?'
अलग-अलग पथ बतलाते सब
But we cross the walled-in pond
{Where did that zig-zag bridge go?}
Archways of sweet-peas cover the slope
Is there hope? Is there hope?
Nannu broche.
Me for you and euphemism
Refracted rays from the prism.
An Indian summer follows Spring
Estoy muy caliente y que estan sudorosas,
Or was it the other way.
And what is that I have under my skin? Or on it?
Or was it you who had it under yours? Or on it?
We are seeking each other.
Would today be the last of this waiting.
We're thirsty for frothy and trite:
मैं तेरा प्यासा प्याला
I have seen the tourists smile,
You think she smiles at me.
Thank you for air conditioning,
Shampoo for hair conditioning.
Half step down to freshen up
Or half step up, to dress down?
There is time for tea
And coffee, or not coffee.
Cold, Thank you.
Tea for two and two for tea.
Shall I play mummy?
{She may think I am a dummy,
Or call your bluff, or some such stuff}
Am I being too sarky?
You can pour too.
One lump or two? None for me
I have no equal.
Why do you gaze at me? Are you thinking
Can one small head carry all that balderdash?
(But past is my fame. My fifteen minutes.)
Or that the boy was right, the belly is jelly
The hair nearly not there.
You go to my head with your eyes.
Or are you perplexed by a callous insistence?
A strange persistence. Resistance.
Two lives, a first, a second.
And if they're crossed, where does the normal lie?
When they collide, if they do,
Will they be two tectonic plates
An upheaval, or will they
Quietly slip into familiar imposition?
Eppur si muove.
I see my father's editor holding court.
{Did she pay him for his last few reviews?}
What was that phrase amour courtois?
Nirvana's partner. No, no. That's not it, of course.
There is talk of Hair, thick (yours) and thin (mine)
And the eternal braid.
{Not Goedel, Escher, Bach,
though I have my Escher map in my car}
The braid that twists back meanings,
Turning words into themselves in a hairy pun.
A remark you made.
Of all the things you are.
Or was that me?
Of what do we talk?
It matters little, for we swirl away
Into our eigenstates, disentangled,
Were you disconcerted or worse, dispirited?
Are we someplace else? Here there and nowhere?
A baby chil's shriek rends the air.
The birds steal March from us.
The thee-me park has lost its magic,
It dies a little with each goodbye.
What do those grey-blue circles cover?
The eternal driver summons
Or was he summoned?
What knows he of the pain
Of finite yearning hearts?
Two states. (Not that book, hawked at crossroads)
Two different worlds.
Eigenstates: all of you
And all of me
And all of thee-and-me
In Superposition.
Which leads to that ineluctable question:
Why didn't they teach us about entanglement?
When one cannot be described fully without the other.
Verschränkung.
Spukhafte Fernwirkung,
Action at a distance.
But how far apart? One foot
Or two continents?
Das Rätsel dieser Welt löst weder Du noch ich,
Jene geheime Schrift liest weder Du noch ich.
Wir wüssten beide gern, was jener Schleier birgt,
Doch wenn der Schleier fällt, bist weder Du noch ich.
Me for you and euphemism.
Specular thoughts from a prism.
Let us go then from this place
Lest we collapse back into our eigenstates
On being measured.
{It will be a good half hour if the Czarina summons me.}
Let us then to the thee-me park.
The Flower Garden of my Hart.
I wonder how you feel today.
Are you just a ray of sunshine in a Hilbert Space?
Schroedinger's ket?
Do we seek coherence or decoherence?
{Can there be a conjugal Hermitian existence?}
I have known this place better than the back of my hand.
I have squelched through its marshes and ponds,
And hidden my cigarettes in the crevices of its walls.
I have seen the mists rising from the tombs,
The ghosts from under the vaults.
I have climbed the bat-smelly stairways
With dog, bottle and pack
To do what the young are wont to.
I have scuffed out scrawled protestations of eternal love.
I have leapt from turret to turret
Without a thought of "Do I dare"
I have traced the trellis work with my fingers
Like a lover would trace her beloved's face.
The tomb sits like a Pharaoh,
Its eastern arm a modest serai,
The more ornate western arm a mosque,
The grave torso cradled an amorphous lump.
Brave the bats and their stench
And we had a vertiginous perch (now off limits).
In front, sits an attendant tomb bejewelled in blue.
The sun beats down in its afternoon glory
Feeding the plants while drying them the same.
The stone walls stall its triumphant path
And shelter mustiness from its glare.
And all the infections that it would suck up,
Let us go then through these tombs
Where dead beats deaden their senses.
Let us O my dove.
Let's do it.
Let's do it again.
How say you?
Ma Muse M'amuse
This is not the time, this is not the place.
But there will be a time and place,
Always, where we can.
Where we dip into and cross the linear demarcation.
Breathless? Breathe in deep,
The art of loving.
ars amandi
Free home delivery.
The dome echoes.
This is not the place.
Not the place.
How long has this been going on?
The fading calendula look like
The ghosts of olden daffodils.
I can hear the birds chirping
Babblers babbling, koels kooh-ing
I can smell the roses over the stench of the water.
But where are the dogs?
(I liked it when this park went to the dogs.)
Sam the collie and Piloo's brace of Irish
(Which looked like his wife).
There was a Rottweiler, you say,
And your Tibetan who got away.
I led you not up the garden path.
But garden paths on which sandals
Took us past a thousand scandals;
The first and the rest, the lesser loves,
Created how much by imagination.
Canoodling couples twisted like helices
A to T, C to G.
The first circle of blooming hell.
The second circle, we did not cross.
Was it timidity, that I took you by the wrist?
Awkwardly, not by arm or hand.
Was I thinking "Do I dare"?
Naa cheyyi patti viduvaka
As we danced through the treacherous traffic.
This is the house that Jack built.
This is the room in the house that Jack built.
That is the window, the door, in the room of the
House that Jack built.
No habrá nunca una puerta. Estás adentro
y el alcázar abarca el universo
y no tiene ni anverso ni reverso
ni externo muro ni secreto centro.
A door which has no key
Blocks the stairway to the heavens
A walled up arch.
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate
Was not written on the keystone.
Enjoy the view.
Dante saw Beatrice but twice.
And yet, he mused.
Would they have texted each other
As teenagers do,
If they could have?
The fortification has always embraced weeds
With the grave of the Sultan.
The ornamentation is spare.
These were no Moguls.
Parapets cracked by the usury of the days,
Here dwelt the num'rous Afghan tribes of old.
And ruled this land, with murdering arms,
Led it in horrid wars accurs'd.
'किस पथ से जाऊँ?'
अलग-अलग पथ बतलाते सब
But we cross the walled-in pond
{Where did that zig-zag bridge go?}
Archways of sweet-peas cover the slope
Is there hope? Is there hope?
Nannu broche.
Me for you and euphemism
Refracted rays from the prism.
An Indian summer follows Spring
Estoy muy caliente y que estan sudorosas,
Or was it the other way.
And what is that I have under my skin? Or on it?
Or was it you who had it under yours? Or on it?
We are seeking each other.
Would today be the last of this waiting.
We're thirsty for frothy and trite:
मैं तेरा प्यासा प्याला
I have seen the tourists smile,
You think she smiles at me.
Thank you for air conditioning,
Shampoo for hair conditioning.
Half step down to freshen up
Or half step up, to dress down?
There is time for tea
And coffee, or not coffee.
Cold, Thank you.
Tea for two and two for tea.
Shall I play mummy?
{She may think I am a dummy,
Or call your bluff, or some such stuff}
Am I being too sarky?
You can pour too.
One lump or two? None for me
I have no equal.
Why do you gaze at me? Are you thinking
Can one small head carry all that balderdash?
(But past is my fame. My fifteen minutes.)
Or that the boy was right, the belly is jelly
The hair nearly not there.
You go to my head with your eyes.
Or are you perplexed by a callous insistence?
A strange persistence. Resistance.
Two lives, a first, a second.
And if they're crossed, where does the normal lie?
When they collide, if they do,
Will they be two tectonic plates
An upheaval, or will they
Quietly slip into familiar imposition?
Eppur si muove.
I see my father's editor holding court.
{Did she pay him for his last few reviews?}
What was that phrase amour courtois?
Nirvana's partner. No, no. That's not it, of course.
There is talk of Hair, thick (yours) and thin (mine)
And the eternal braid.
{Not Goedel, Escher, Bach,
though I have my Escher map in my car}
The braid that twists back meanings,
Turning words into themselves in a hairy pun.
A remark you made.
Of all the things you are.
Or was that me?
Of what do we talk?
It matters little, for we swirl away
Into our eigenstates, disentangled,
Were you disconcerted or worse, dispirited?
Are we someplace else? Here there and nowhere?
A baby chil's shriek rends the air.
The birds steal March from us.
The thee-me park has lost its magic,
It dies a little with each goodbye.
What do those grey-blue circles cover?
The eternal driver summons
Or was he summoned?
What knows he of the pain
Of finite yearning hearts?
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Recollections about Gangubai
[Posted on Facebook, Tuesday, 21 July 2009 at 23:50]
I was perhaps 4 or 5 years old when I was first introduced to Gangubai Hangal's singing. My parents had taken me to listen to her at a concert at the Shankarlal Music Festival. Those days it was held in the grounds of Modern School Barakhamba Road, under a pandal. It was late at night, way past the bedtime of a child, but then I wasn't in school yet, and so was there rolling on the striped dhurries spread on the ground. I can't recall the ragas she sang -- I suppose they may have included Maru Behag and Chandrakauns -- but I couldn't escape the striking impression of a small lady sitting with one hand to her ear being transformed into a powerful roaring lion, a great big voice that brought you face to face with the heart of Hindustani music.
From then on, till I was out of my teens, we unfailingly heard her sing live whenever she came to Delhi. What was remarkable was that my father, who worked long hours for a most demanding boss, would make time to be there for almost every concert of hers. Over the next few years, thanks to their Kannada connection and some common acquaintances, Smt Vijaya Mulay and her sister Ambike for instance, we got to know Gangubai personally. In the 70s and 80s she stayed with us on more than a few occasions when she visited Delhi. She and her troupe lived a frugal austere life, travel by train "sleeper, not fuss class". And their staying arrangements were simple quite unlike the 5 star splurges lesser artists had begun indulging themselves in. I'd be made to move my things out of my room, and we'd move in a couple of extra beds for her, her daughter Krishna and her family to sleep there. In the daytime, the beds would be put together to make a makeshift stage on which she would practice, and my Miraj-made tanpura would be graced by the most illustrious hands that have handled it.
Once, when I was perhaps 13, I had a friend's guitar in the room, and she and Krishna-ji were immediately curious about its sound. They asked me to play and sing -- about the only song I could manage was Belafonte's "Jamaican Farewell". My modest performance was met with an almost childlike wonder that the notes sounded so much like the raga structure they were familiar with, and Krishna-ji immediately started humming a raga that used the same notes.
Gangubai-ji spoke with my parents in a dialect of Kannada which was not entirely familiar to me, so I'd speak with her in Hindi. But the subtlety and charm of her conversation came out so much more brilliantly in her mother tongue. She had a "nibbling wit", sharp but not biting, and often self-deprecating. After she was invested with the Padma Bhushan in 1971, she narrated how she was advised to wear a "sober-coloured sari" for the investiture ceremony. "Here I was fretting and worrying about what this 'sober' colour was, until someone told me that my sari was `sober' enough. And then when we got to Rashtrapati Bhawan, there was Mrs Saraswathi Giri wearing a yard of Zari, practically to her waist!"
She and Krishna-ji never failed to bring for us the very special Peda from Dharwar that they knew I was particularly fond of. I also had the wonderful experience of visiting them in their Hubli home in 1980, and was treated to her warm hospitality, and a complete tour of her modest house. Apart from introductions to members of the family whom I had only heard of but not met, the experience was special. To me, every nook seemed to carry a unique musical significance, as if a pakad from a raag had lodged itself behind a photo frame, or in the arm of a chair.
Over twenty years later, when she was in Delhi for a SPICMACAY event, she sang through the night, and I was sitting quietly in a corner, bleary-eyed but exhilarated, when Kiran Seth asked me to felicitate her with flowers at the end of the concert. Krishna-ji recognized me (after all the years), and told her mother, who immediately demanded of me whether my parents were there. I told her that my father was not too well, to which she readily countered, "But he is 10 years younger than I am". I promised to bring them over to her guesthouse room the next day. Their conversation was lively. One particular anecdote stood out. She related how in her youth she was at a music festival seated in a row of chairs, and had to pass in front of Kesarbai to go out. As she approached, the grand old lady stretched her leg out, halting the young Gangubai and keeping her in limbo, waiting until she, the reigning doyenne, deigned to lower her leg and let the younger musician pass. And while she stood there, Kesarbai spoke imperiously to her about "that man from your town" (namely Mallikarjun Mansur) "who has the effrontery to say he's of our gharana". The kind of musical tidbit that another exponent of her Kirana gharana, Sheila Dhar, would have brought to life for her readers.
Some years earlier, I'd taken my older son Siddhartha, who was about 6, to listen to her when she was singing at JNU, starting off the SPICMACAY Virasat series that year. After the concert, when I went over to meet her with Siddhartha in tow, she pointed remarked to him, "Kya gin rahe the jab main ga rahi thi? Taal seekh rahe ho kya?" Gangubai always loved to see her audience. She would invariably ask the organizers of a concert to not dim the lights in the hall. Music and the performance was close to worship, an experience to be shared with the audience. And in her small size and self-deprecating humility, there was a fierce pride in her achievements, her place in the constellation. She once famously turned down a plea from a political party to stand for local elections by saying that she had been born on this earth to be praised, not cursed by the commoners.
It's over 5 years since I last heard Gangubai singing in person. After the death of Krishna-ji she was disconsolate, and her own health began to deteriorate. My father's health was also failing, and their telephone conversations became fewer. But the last intimate memory I have is taking my sons to visit her and Krishna-ji at an apartment in the Asian Games village the morning after the Silver Jubilee celebrations of SPICMACAY over which she had presided as the senior-most musician (it was followed by a concert by her). On hearing that Aditya, then 5, too had started learning to sing, she made Siddhartha play the harmonium while Adu had to sing the bhajan that he had learnt. And then showered them with the Dharwar Pedas and a very unusual resin sweet.
I was perhaps 4 or 5 years old when I was first introduced to Gangubai Hangal's singing. My parents had taken me to listen to her at a concert at the Shankarlal Music Festival. Those days it was held in the grounds of Modern School Barakhamba Road, under a pandal. It was late at night, way past the bedtime of a child, but then I wasn't in school yet, and so was there rolling on the striped dhurries spread on the ground. I can't recall the ragas she sang -- I suppose they may have included Maru Behag and Chandrakauns -- but I couldn't escape the striking impression of a small lady sitting with one hand to her ear being transformed into a powerful roaring lion, a great big voice that brought you face to face with the heart of Hindustani music.
From then on, till I was out of my teens, we unfailingly heard her sing live whenever she came to Delhi. What was remarkable was that my father, who worked long hours for a most demanding boss, would make time to be there for almost every concert of hers. Over the next few years, thanks to their Kannada connection and some common acquaintances, Smt Vijaya Mulay and her sister Ambike for instance, we got to know Gangubai personally. In the 70s and 80s she stayed with us on more than a few occasions when she visited Delhi. She and her troupe lived a frugal austere life, travel by train "sleeper, not fuss class". And their staying arrangements were simple quite unlike the 5 star splurges lesser artists had begun indulging themselves in. I'd be made to move my things out of my room, and we'd move in a couple of extra beds for her, her daughter Krishna and her family to sleep there. In the daytime, the beds would be put together to make a makeshift stage on which she would practice, and my Miraj-made tanpura would be graced by the most illustrious hands that have handled it.
Once, when I was perhaps 13, I had a friend's guitar in the room, and she and Krishna-ji were immediately curious about its sound. They asked me to play and sing -- about the only song I could manage was Belafonte's "Jamaican Farewell". My modest performance was met with an almost childlike wonder that the notes sounded so much like the raga structure they were familiar with, and Krishna-ji immediately started humming a raga that used the same notes.
Gangubai-ji spoke with my parents in a dialect of Kannada which was not entirely familiar to me, so I'd speak with her in Hindi. But the subtlety and charm of her conversation came out so much more brilliantly in her mother tongue. She had a "nibbling wit", sharp but not biting, and often self-deprecating. After she was invested with the Padma Bhushan in 1971, she narrated how she was advised to wear a "sober-coloured sari" for the investiture ceremony. "Here I was fretting and worrying about what this 'sober' colour was, until someone told me that my sari was `sober' enough. And then when we got to Rashtrapati Bhawan, there was Mrs Saraswathi Giri wearing a yard of Zari, practically to her waist!"
She and Krishna-ji never failed to bring for us the very special Peda from Dharwar that they knew I was particularly fond of. I also had the wonderful experience of visiting them in their Hubli home in 1980, and was treated to her warm hospitality, and a complete tour of her modest house. Apart from introductions to members of the family whom I had only heard of but not met, the experience was special. To me, every nook seemed to carry a unique musical significance, as if a pakad from a raag had lodged itself behind a photo frame, or in the arm of a chair.
Over twenty years later, when she was in Delhi for a SPICMACAY event, she sang through the night, and I was sitting quietly in a corner, bleary-eyed but exhilarated, when Kiran Seth asked me to felicitate her with flowers at the end of the concert. Krishna-ji recognized me (after all the years), and told her mother, who immediately demanded of me whether my parents were there. I told her that my father was not too well, to which she readily countered, "But he is 10 years younger than I am". I promised to bring them over to her guesthouse room the next day. Their conversation was lively. One particular anecdote stood out. She related how in her youth she was at a music festival seated in a row of chairs, and had to pass in front of Kesarbai to go out. As she approached, the grand old lady stretched her leg out, halting the young Gangubai and keeping her in limbo, waiting until she, the reigning doyenne, deigned to lower her leg and let the younger musician pass. And while she stood there, Kesarbai spoke imperiously to her about "that man from your town" (namely Mallikarjun Mansur) "who has the effrontery to say he's of our gharana". The kind of musical tidbit that another exponent of her Kirana gharana, Sheila Dhar, would have brought to life for her readers.
Some years earlier, I'd taken my older son Siddhartha, who was about 6, to listen to her when she was singing at JNU, starting off the SPICMACAY Virasat series that year. After the concert, when I went over to meet her with Siddhartha in tow, she pointed remarked to him, "Kya gin rahe the jab main ga rahi thi? Taal seekh rahe ho kya?" Gangubai always loved to see her audience. She would invariably ask the organizers of a concert to not dim the lights in the hall. Music and the performance was close to worship, an experience to be shared with the audience. And in her small size and self-deprecating humility, there was a fierce pride in her achievements, her place in the constellation. She once famously turned down a plea from a political party to stand for local elections by saying that she had been born on this earth to be praised, not cursed by the commoners.
It's over 5 years since I last heard Gangubai singing in person. After the death of Krishna-ji she was disconsolate, and her own health began to deteriorate. My father's health was also failing, and their telephone conversations became fewer. But the last intimate memory I have is taking my sons to visit her and Krishna-ji at an apartment in the Asian Games village the morning after the Silver Jubilee celebrations of SPICMACAY over which she had presided as the senior-most musician (it was followed by a concert by her). On hearing that Aditya, then 5, too had started learning to sing, she made Siddhartha play the harmonium while Adu had to sing the bhajan that he had learnt. And then showered them with the Dharwar Pedas and a very unusual resin sweet.
How wrong can one be, Noam, when one reads only the manufactured consent of the lal salaam?
[Posted on Facebook, Tuesday, 26 May 2009 at 15:15]
Here I reproduce the texts of two letters written by various people who are called intellectuals, most likely at the instance of one of the signatories. I know a lot of my friends seem to think very highly of these guys, but they are quite fallible, opinionated, and often speak of things that are best passed over in silence.
First, an open letter:
And then, when this letter raised the hackles of several people in India including Mahashweta Devi and others, for almost every statement therein was contestable if not downright false, there followed the second letter:
Here I reproduce the texts of two letters written by various people who are called intellectuals, most likely at the instance of one of the signatories. I know a lot of my friends seem to think very highly of these guys, but they are quite fallible, opinionated, and often speak of things that are best passed over in silence.
First, an open letter:
To Our Friends in Bengal.
News travels to us that events in West Bengal have overtaken the optimism that some of us have experienced during trips to the state. We are concerned about the rancour that has divided the public space, created what appear to be unbridgeable gaps between people who share similar values. It is this that distresses us. We hear from people on both sides of this chasm, and we are trying to make some sense of the events and the dynamics. Obviously, our distance prevents us from saying anything definitive.
We continue to trust that the people of Bengal will not allow their differences on some issues to tear apart the important experiments undertaken in the State (land reforms, local self-government).
We send our fullest solidarity to the peasants who have been forcibly dispossessed. We understand that the government has promised not to build a chemical hub in the area around Nandigram. We understand that those who had been dispossessed by the violence are now being allowed back to their homes, without recrimination. We understand that there is now talk of reconciliation. This is what we favour.
The balance of forces in the world is such that it would be impetuous to split the Left. We are faced with a world power that has demolished one state (Iraq) and is now threatening another (Iran). This is not the time for division when the basis of division no longer appears to exist.
Noam Chomsky, author, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy; Tariq Ali, author, Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope and editor, New Left Review; Howard Zinn, author, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress; Susan George, author, Another World is Possible if, and Fellow, Transnational Institute; Victoria Brittain, co-author, Enemy Combatant: A British Muslim’s Journey to Guantanamo and Back, former editor, Guardian; Walden Bello, author, Dilemmas of Domination: The Unmaking of the American Empire, and Chair, Akbayan, the fastest growing party in the Philippines; Mahmood Mamdani, author, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, The Cold War and the Roots of Terror; Akeel Bilgrami, author, Politics and the Moral Psychology of Identity; Richard Falk, author, The Costs of War: International Law, the UN and World Order After Iraq; Jean Bricmont, author, Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War; Michael Albert, author, Parecon: Life After Capitalism, and editor, ZNET; Stephen Shalom, author, Imperial Alibis: Rationalizing US Intervention After the Cold War; Charles Derber, author, People Before Profit: The New Globalization in an Age of Terror, Big Money and Economic Crisis; Vijay Prashad, author, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World.
And then, when this letter raised the hackles of several people in India including Mahashweta Devi and others, for almost every statement therein was contestable if not downright false, there followed the second letter:
We are taken aback by a widespread reaction to a statement we made with the best of intentions, imploring a restoration of unity among the left forces in India – a reaction that seems to assume that such an appeal to overcome divisions among the left could only amount to supporting a very specific section of the CPM in West Bengal. Our statement did not lend support to the CPM’s actions in Nandigram or its recent economic policies in West Bengal, nor was that our intention. On the contrary, we asserted, in solidarity with its Left critics both inside and outside the party, that we found them tragically wrong. Our hope was that Left critics would view their task as one of putting pressure on the CPM in West Bengal to correct and improve its policies and its habits of governance, rather than dismiss it wholesale as an unredeemable party. We felt that we could hope for such a thing, of such a return to the laudable traditions of a party that once brought extensive land reforms to the state of West Bengal and that had kept communal tensions in abeyance for decades in that state. This, rather than any exculpation of its various recent policies and actions, is what we intended by our hopes for ‘unity’ among the left forces.
We realize now that it is perhaps not possible to expect the Left critics of the CPM to overcome the deep disappointment, indeed hostility, they have come to feel towards it, unless the CPM itself takes some initiative against that sense of disappointment. We hope that the CPM in West Bengal will show the largeness of mind to take such an initiative by restoring the morale as well as the welfare of the dispossessed people of Nandigram through the humane governance of their region, so that the left forces can then unite and focus on the more fundamental issues that confront the Left as a whole, in particular focus on the task of providing with just and imaginative measures an alternative to neo-liberal capitalism that has caused so much suffering to the poor and working people in India.
Signed
Michael Albert, Tariq Ali, Akeel Bilgrami, Victoria Brittain, Noam Chomsky, Charles Derber, Stephen Shalom
On Authenticity
[Posted on Facebook Sunday, 02 November 2008 at 21:52]
The Hindu's Literary Review Section today carried a shortened version of Amitava Kumar’s article in The Boston Review on Adiga's (Aravind, not the Kannada poet Gopalakrishna Adiga) The White Tiger. Amitava Kumar, who confesses to the religion of realism, is exercised by a lack of authenticity in Adiga's novel . Not having read it --- which I won't until the hype about the book dies down --- I cannot state my verdict on this matter.(*)
Some of Amitava Kumar's problems with Adiga's novel arise from finding something, or rather several things, at variance with one's “lived experience” (such a horrid phrase) — Something that the consciousness of continuity deems counterfeit. Es klinkt nicht.
How many of us can easily accept Wendy O'Flaherty's dating of the Ramayana after the Mahabharata and both after the Buddha? And why, while I sympathise and identify with Martha Nussbaum's positions, do I find her descriptions of the contemporary Indian politics to be not quite right? However, we may not always have Popperian grounds for ruling something inauthentic. Memory, lived experience and consciousness can be fickle, unreliable and devious, and much of what we perceive to be the truth may be coloured by our emotions, or how we would like the truth to be.
Apart from circumscribing the ambit of the writer, the quest for authenticity can be treacherous. Painstaking attempts at verisimilitude may betray not only an anxiety about authenticity but also the author. In The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri has Gogol's mother remembering boarding a Jumbo Jet in Calcutta circa 1968-69, though the Jumbos (747's) were commercially introduced only in 1970. What tastes authentic to Dionysus may not seem right to Apollo's palate.
Some years ago, I was with my father at the funeral of Kanu Kesavan, a woman of formidable capability whose dry, matter-of-fact humour perfectly complemented the sheer exuberance and flamboyance of her husband, the legendary B. S. Kesavan. Her sons, Sudhakar and Mukul, had arranged for a priest from an Iyengar sect to conduct the rites in accordance with the tradition that they felt Kesavan's family would have observed. The vadyar (priest) went about the rituals in a business-like manner, with curt instructions to the sons punctuating a staccato intonation of the Vedic hymns: place a hand here, pour a drop of ghee there, und so weiter. In the midst of it all, his cell phone rang, the ringtone being a Vedic chant. Without breaking off from the rites, and almost in the same sing-song tone, he informed the caller in Tamil that he was conducting “a function”.
During the funerary rites, Mukul, a historian and author, came up to my father to ascertain whether the rituals were being conducted in an authentic way. My father, who had no great regard for rituals, nodded as if in assent. When he recovered what little voice Parkinson's permitted him, he whispered to me, “If Kesavan had been here, he would have pulled this priest up by the scruff of his neck, and boxed his ears for mispronouncing every other word.” Now that would have been truly authentic.
(*) Many years later I did read The White Tiger. It is a novel constructed quite imaginatively in the form of the very contrived device of a self-made man (and made in the sense you find in The Godfather) writing to the Chairman of the Communist Party of China. Many things in the novel may not have been what a middle class Indian may directly experience. However, the mistreatment of the working class is real, And the notion of the "chicken coop" is an insightful description of the power structures that keep the working class from rising up against such callous (at best if not downright cruel) treatment.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Gopal Mama
I’m overwhelmed with a truly warm feeling just thinking of one of my favourite uncles, Gopal Mama. An enduring image from my very young days is of his broad smile. Gopu Mama, lanky and wiry, bald with black framed glasses and long long fingers. As a child, those fingers held a special fascination for me – whether he was clicking away on his camera (Gopu Mama was an accomplished photographer), spinning the ball when he played cricket with us, or packing little samples of ores and minerals into neatly labeled packets (“fool’s gold”, “quartz”,…) which was our initiation into his world of geology. And, of course, the image of him, wiggling his long fingers, teasing us that he’d tickle us with them. “T-o-r-m-e-n-t-o-r”, he’d laugh and get us all squirmy without even actually tickling us.
Gopal Mama was special to us. He was especially close to Shouri, since they –- technically an older nephew and a younger uncle -- were very close in age, practically siblings and childhood playmates. And, in all of Shouri’s family, he was the closest to my mother. How we looked forward to his visiting Delhi and staying with us, joking with us and keeping us regaled with stories! And to visiting Madras and staying with him. The memories of us jumping into the car with Suku, Sridhar and Shobha, going to the Snake Park and having boas round our necks are still so vivid. On a later trip, Gopal Mama took us all to Kanchipuram and also to Mammalapuram, telling us not only about the monuments and temples there but also about their construction, the stone used, and a wealth of other information. How lucky we were to have Nature’s mysteries opened to us – one uncle introducing us to plants and trees, another to rocks and stones, and a friend of my father’s to the world of wildlife.
Another indelible memory is from a visit in June 1983 to his home in Nungambakkam. The cricket World Cup final was on, and the whole family (Veena’s family was over too), was gathered around the TV, watching that tense gripping match. India had not put up much of a score, 183, and there was a doleful air amongst all of us. But Sandhu (I remember Jayant gently correcting his father, who had mistaken him for Bedi) gave all of India a moment of sheer joy by pegging Greenidge’s stumps back. And then Kapil Dev took that magical catch, and then the wickets began falling. Hope once more, and bated breaths. Amidst all the tension Gopu Mama went to the toilet, and while he was away, a couple of wickets fell. Then there was a bit of a stand. We started joking with him that another trip there would yield a wicket, and he winkingly obliged us by downing a glass of buttermilk and pretending to head out of the room again. A few more quick wickets, this time of tail-enders, and India was on the threshold of victory. Gopu Mama had worked his magic again! He was our man of the match.
Gopal Mama was special to us. He was especially close to Shouri, since they –- technically an older nephew and a younger uncle -- were very close in age, practically siblings and childhood playmates. And, in all of Shouri’s family, he was the closest to my mother. How we looked forward to his visiting Delhi and staying with us, joking with us and keeping us regaled with stories! And to visiting Madras and staying with him. The memories of us jumping into the car with Suku, Sridhar and Shobha, going to the Snake Park and having boas round our necks are still so vivid. On a later trip, Gopal Mama took us all to Kanchipuram and also to Mammalapuram, telling us not only about the monuments and temples there but also about their construction, the stone used, and a wealth of other information. How lucky we were to have Nature’s mysteries opened to us – one uncle introducing us to plants and trees, another to rocks and stones, and a friend of my father’s to the world of wildlife.
Another indelible memory is from a visit in June 1983 to his home in Nungambakkam. The cricket World Cup final was on, and the whole family (Veena’s family was over too), was gathered around the TV, watching that tense gripping match. India had not put up much of a score, 183, and there was a doleful air amongst all of us. But Sandhu (I remember Jayant gently correcting his father, who had mistaken him for Bedi) gave all of India a moment of sheer joy by pegging Greenidge’s stumps back. And then Kapil Dev took that magical catch, and then the wickets began falling. Hope once more, and bated breaths. Amidst all the tension Gopu Mama went to the toilet, and while he was away, a couple of wickets fell. Then there was a bit of a stand. We started joking with him that another trip there would yield a wicket, and he winkingly obliged us by downing a glass of buttermilk and pretending to head out of the room again. A few more quick wickets, this time of tail-enders, and India was on the threshold of victory. Gopu Mama had worked his magic again! He was our man of the match.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
People who live in glass houses shouldn't.
(Something for Headlines Today to “introspect about”)
Context
The publication of the recordings of telephone conversations between lobbyist Niira Radia and several journalists by Open and Outlook magazines generated much discussion in the media. CNN-IBN broadcast a show anchored by Karan Thapar, in which several senior journalists (N. Ram, Sanjaya Baru, etc.) discussed how media personalities such as Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi had crossed the line. NDTV then gave Barkha Dutt an opportunity to answer the allegations of power-brokering in a show anchored by Sonia Singh, where Ms Dutt faced questions from Dilip Padgaonkar, Sanjaya Baru and Manu Joseph (editor of Open Magazine). The less said about her performance, the better.
On 2 December 2010, Headlines Today broadcast a (live) panel debate: “Experts debate Radia tapes' impact”. The show was anchored by Rahul Kanwal, and the participants were Vir Sanghvi (then Editorial Director of HT Media), Prabhu Chawla (Editor, Languages, India Today) MJ Akbar (Editorial Director of India Today), N. Ram (Editor-in-Chief, The Hindu) from Chennai, Hartosh Singh Bal (Political Editor of Open Magazine) also sitting in Chennai, and Dilip Cherian (Lobbyist, Consulting Partner at Perfect Relations).
The entire broadcast can be viewed at the following site: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/Video/121822/42/Videos/experts-debate-radia-tapes-impact.html where it has been segmented into 20 parts. Fortunately for us, Headlines Today is rather proud of this show, and over a week later continues to highlight it in its promotional spots. There is considerable irony in Headlines Today airing a show on journalistic ethics involving the Radia recordings, since the channel had been in possession of them for several months, and had carried a story till the names of two journalists from the India Today group – Prabhu Chawla and Shankkar Aiyar – cropped up. The India Today group was, in the words of a friend, holding two lumps of kryptonite. There is also more than some irony in N Ram speaking on journalists transgressing the line.
After the usual introductions, the show aired portions of the controversial conversations between Niira Radia and the journalists.
Vir Sanghvi, who was charged with acting “as a middleman in Radiagate” and of having taken dictation from a lobbyist and printing this verbatim in his column, spoke live from a balcony in Bangkok. He delivered a prepared statement in which he explained, rather unconvincingly, his version of what had transpired and gave a rather weak apology for his conduct. Subsequent releases of conversations by Outlook totally belie any claim on his part that his column was not a cleverly dressed up statement from Niira Radia.
I am not going to comment further on Vir Sanghvi’s statement but will focus on another farcical aspect of this broadcast.
In Part 10 of the debate, N Ram was asked to give his opinion on Sanghvi’s statement. He correctly and unhesitatingly termed Barkha Dutt’s defence of her conduct (the previous night , on the NDTV show) “pathetic”. He was also right in calling VIr Sanghvi’s explanation unconvincing – and he quoted at length from the transcripts of the conversation and Sanghvi’s articles while commenting about them. He concluded by dubbing Sanghvi’s conduct “a transgression of professional norms”. Anchor Rahul Kanwal added helpfully that action should be taken against the “guilty journalists”.
Now let us examine how the same gentlemen, Kanwal and Ram in particular, applied very different standards when discussing the conduct of the other participant who figured in the controversial recordings, namely, Prabhu Chawla. First, Chawla was (oddly enough?) not “accused” by the anchor of any specific misconduct.
Part 4 of the broadcast aired excerpts of Prabhu Chawla’s conversation with Niira Radia (the call took place on Jun 20, 2009 14:32:07 and the recording was 13:07 minutes long). Having previously heard the recording of this conversation (#82, put out by Outlook magazine on their site (http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?268406), I immediately felt that several critical portions had (deliberately) been omitted. I went back and listened carefully to the recording on the Outlook site (http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?268406) and starting with the transcript provided there, made the corrected transcript for this conversation that is attached. I have marked which portions were omitted by Headlines Today in their broadcast, and it should be clear that by leaving out these critical portions, Headlines Today gives a misleading picture about the nature of the conversation. In particular, it crucially omits portions where Prabhu Chawla mentions actions of his which may have constituted gross violations of journalistic ethics.
A brief summary of the conversation is that it that took place 5 days after the Mumbai (Bombay) High Court’s judgement on the Ambani brothers’ dispute over natural gas. Niira Radia was touching base with Prabhu Chawla’ for his opinion on the dispute and the judgement. During the conversation Chawla indicated that he knew both the litigants well, and clearly stated that he had tried to intimate Mukesh Ambani some days before the judgement that it would be adverse to him (M. Ambani). This portion has been cleverly omitted by Headlines Today in the excerpts that it aired. The legal implications of Chawla’s statement are not clear to me, but it is certainly clear that it would not be very ethical conduct on part of a journalist. Niira Radia conveyed her view that the judgement was unfair, whereas Chawla’s position was that the dispute between the brothers was not a good thing for all concerned. A fair part of the conversation consists of opinions and gossip about various individuals, how the “system” works, and specifically that both the Ambani brothers try to “fix” judgements in their favour. The second portion of the conversation that has been elided mentions details of the judgement, and comprises gossip about various politicians, people working with the Ambanis, and people from the legal profession. The conversation moves to tactics that may be applied by the litigants when appealing the judgement in the Supreme Court. In the third and fourth elided portions, Chawla hints to Radia about information he has obtained, (perhaps through his son), and strongly hints in guarded but coded language at a specific kind of message that she should convey to Mukesh Ambani, very likely about a possibly unethical legal tactic “on how to approach the Supreme Court” (stated in what can be called a rather triumphant tone).
One should maybe do what Rahul Kanwal failed to – make the allegation against Prabhu Chawla of transgressing limits of responsible journalism, acting as an operator/fixer/go-between for business interests, passing inside information to interested parties and unsolicited advice on actions of a possibly dubious nature in a matter concerning the Supreme Court.
In his response, which appears in Part 11 of the broadcast, Prabhu Chawla chose brazen obfuscation as his defence strategy. He claimed that he had been accused of advising Niira Radia {his conduct is far more problematic than that, since he seemingly wished to pass information about an impending judgement in the Bombay High Court gas case to one of the parties}. He raised the irrelevant issue of what some other journalists had written, and then absurdly claimed that no one was hearing the tapes carefully. He claimed that in the conversation that he was “very angry” with the behaviour of the Ambani brothers, yet his tone in the recording is a far cry from an angry tone, and indeed very different from the almost apoplectic blustering that he currently was displaying.
He claimed that the tape was “fractured”, whereas there is no indication in the recording (put out by Outlook) that it was, and then brought in a conversation of M K Venu (whom he called Venugopal) with Niira Radia about the same judgement, quoting from it to buttress his claim that he was only stating a belief, an opinion to which he was entitled, that the judgment was fixed. He however, offered no explanation – as e.g., Barkha Dutt was asked to provide – why he didn’t write about the judgement being fixed, which is what one would expect from a journalist following a story. He finished with an all-too-loud protestation of innocence, and gave a rather measly apology for, if at all anything, gossiping and speaking loosely.
In Part 12 of the debate, Hartosh Singh Bal, after rubbishing Vir Sanghvi’s defence and also pointing out that Open did not carry the Chawla conversation because that may have involved contempt of court, correctly raised the issue of the transcript on Prabhu Chawla’s site misrepresenting a crucial word (at time point 2:02 in the conversation). Chawla’s transcript states “probe on him” instead of “forewarn him”. (Outlook’s transcript incorrectly has it as ``forewarn you’’).
Prabhu Chawla pressed on with “probing on him”, paradoxically stating that he agreed with Mr Bal. Then he raised the red herring of there being other issues on which he wanted to “probe on him”. When he came around to accepting that the word might be “forewarn”, he claimed that there were other reasons he was talking to Mukesh Ambani and that he wanted to “forewarn him” about something else. (He has elsewhere said he wanted to meet Nita Ambani, and still elsewhere that he wanted to invite Mukesh Ambani for the India Today conclave). This defence is disingenuous, since the very next line in the conversation is an interjection from Niira Radia: “ki Judgement uske khilaf aa rahaa hai”, to which he assents (Haan haan). He continued to insist, without basis, that his transcript was correct.
In Part 13, Chawla continued to obfuscate, blustering on about journalists not being clear about the sequence of events: he asked how there could be a question about him being involved in fixing the Supreme Court judgement when it hadn’t yet happened at the time of the conversation. He went on to claim that there is no word “judgement” when he is alleged to have said “forewarn”, trying to hide from everyone the fact that the very next words from Radia confirm that the reference was about the Bombay HC judgement, to which he had assented, as is very clearly present in the recording carried by Outlook (and which words were cleverly left out in the Headlines Today excerpt). Chawla then, even more disingenuously, claimed that he had nothing to do with the Bombay High Court, since he was in Delhi. He claimed again that there were breakages in the tape, and that he had not doctored the transcript. Both these claims are unsupportable.
At this point, sensing that the question was getting too uncomfortable for the channel’s interests, on the specious plea that both had made their points, the anchor Rahul Kanwal quickly moved the discussion to Dilip Cherian, to talk about Niira Radia’s rise and “lobbyism”. Somewhere through Cherian’s anodyne answers, Akbar interjected with some sharp observations. And then (against the flow of the conversation), Akbar “agreed” with N Ram (who hadn’t actually said so in the programme) that “journalism lives and dies by credibility”.
At this point, in Part 14 of the broadcast, N Ram, with little in the preceding discussion to buttress this contention, announced “to be fair to Prabhu” that Chawla “had no case to answer for”. He claimed to have read the excerpt from the transcript (from Chawla’s website), and cleared him of any professional misconduct (with a figurative nod towards the issue that Bal had raised, but which seemed to strike him as a minor issue). He didn’t bracket him with Vir or Barkha. To me, this was shockingly dishonest or poor journalism or both – one wondered whether he was indeed in the same room as Mr Bal who was sitting next to him; one wondered why, if he could quote extensively from the Sanghvi transcripts, he couldn’t have listened to the Radia-Chawla conversation; and one wondered why he had chosen to look at Chawla’s version of the transcript, in which Bal had pointed out a crucial error.
What transpired then was even funnier. Ram raised the totally irrelevant issue of passing on a message to the Congress (as if that were the worst crime that had been committed by the journalists), for which “why go to Prabhu Chawla when one could have gone to Ranjan Bhattacharya?”. Unfortunately for him, Chawla could not understand that he was being given a clean chit, since it was so backhanded; he counter-attacked Ram and made snide remarks about Akbar and Ram’s role in advising governments, etc.
Ram had to later reiterate his clean chit to Chawla in clearer terms (it wasn’t a Siidhi Baat, the first time around) and only then did the latter visibly relax.
Ram, even more disingenuously, said that he couldn’t understand why Chawla needed to be part of this discussion (ostensibly since he didn’t consider him in the same bracket as Vir and Barkha, but with an oh-so-clever smirk). With eagerness, Rahul Kanwal explained why it was so important for the India Today Group to have Chawla on the programme, and that he had “taken the questions head on”. {Come on, Ram and Kanwal, it was all too obvious that Headlines Today needed a publicly issued clean chit to Chawla,; the studio air was thick with collusion}.
Chawla was still edgy and persisted in digging himself deeper into a rut by now mentioning a significant elided line, but again crucially distorted as “Kya judgement uske khilaf aa raha hai?”, trying to obfuscate further by talking about the illogic of some unnamed journalists.
The rest of the show was carefully orchestrated to avoid the discomfort caused by the question raised by Bal. In part 15, Kanwal did not allow Hartosh Bal to speak, first offering a non-existent question to Ram, then moving the conversation to Cherian, and then talking about tweets from viewers. To his rhetorical question, “Can journalists brazen it out?”, one can only respond that we had just witnessed one do so, with the connivance of some of his colleagues.
Mission “Clean Chit to Prabhu” accomplished, the rest of the debate degenerated into some mutual back-scratching between Akbar and Ram, with Ram talking of his Asian College of Journalism, after a favourable plug from Akbar. To Akbar’s wisecrack about whether this was the Bofors of the Indian media, Ram talked about cover-ups. Nice inside joke, Akbar and Ram, but we just had witnessed a cover-up job by Headlines Today. Hartosh Bal tried to reinject some idealism into the conversation with an important point on legitimacy of sources, but the rest of the conversation was mostly self-promotion (Ram about Reader’s Editor at The Hindu, Chawla on his being a teetotaler, Kanwal plugging Headlines Today)
Kanwal concluded by informing us, “this programme has been a completely unscripted, live show; nothing has been predecided, everybody had their say. You can’t cast aspersions on others without looking in.”
Well, Rahul-ji, if you live in a glass house, you can look in. I hope you are receiving your paycheck at the end of the show, because you did a superb job of rigging your show to clear one from your own organization. What you just anchored was an example of dishonest journalism; it should have raised your pretty-picked eyebrows. Perhaps you can explain to us how cherry-picking excerpts from a dodgy conversation can be “unscripted” and not “pre-decided”. And did you let poor Hartosh Singh Bal “have his say?” {I love being able to imitate Rahul Kanwal’s sincere admonitions, talking truth to power}.
And maybe Mr Ram can explain the logic which holds Barkha Dutt passing on a message from Niira Radia to the Congress to be deplorable, but makes it okay for Prabhu Chawla to (attempt to) pass on a mssage to Mukesh Ambani about an impending HC judgement, for him to pass advice to Mukesh Ambani on “how to approach the Supreme Court”. Mr Ram, you just became the “journalist who defended the indefensible.
TRANSCRIPT OF NIIRA RADIA’S CONVERSATION WITH PRABHU CHAWLA.
{This version makes some corrections to the version posted by Outlook. Any further corrections will be appreciated. Parts elided by the Headlines Today are clearly marked, and appear in red. Outlook also posts a link to Chawla’s own version. }
Niira Radia: Hi Prabhu
Prabhu Chawla: Yeah tell me now {both speak, stop}
Niira Radia: Nahii nothing, I was just wanting to understand from you. You always have a very good perspective.
Prabhu Chawla: {(laughs) ha ha ha} On what?
Niira Radia: On everything bhai, ha ha ha ha. Generally you have a good perspective. I was trying to understand what is your view of this great... historic judgment.
Prabhu Chawla: Which one? The Bombay one?
Niira Radia: Bombay one. Which takes the family pact above the national interest.
Prabhu Chawla: {(laughs) ha ha ha ha ha ha} You see when the brothers are involved, …
Niira Radia: Haa
Prabhu Chawla: … the nation also gets involved, naa?
{The following portion of the conversation elided by Headlines Today}
Niira Radia: Yeah, but probably not a good thing naa. Not good for the nation.
Prabhu Chawla: Not good for the nation, but the brothers don’t talk to each other. There is nobody who can force them to talk also naa?
Niira Radia: Wo to hogaa hi nahii Prabhu tum bhii jaante ho
Prabhu Chawla: Maine koshish kii thi., nahii huaa. maine kahaa ho jayegaa
Niira Radia: Nahii. Abhii nahii. I was speaking to him even recently, I spoke to him this morning, the question of ..
Prabhu Chawla: (interrupts) is he back from wherever he had gone, Mukesh?
Niira Radia: He is very much here, he has been here the whole week. He’s not gone anywhere .
Prabhu Chawla: He was abroad last week I think.
Niira Radia: No no no. He was here.
Prabhu Chawla: Anyway, somebody told me that he is abroad.
Niira Radia: NO NO NO. He has been here the whole week. He’s not been anywhere. He is not due to travel till next week.
Prabhu Chawla: Haa because maine to. But he doesn’t. Sometimes he responds. Abhii I have stopped calling him and talking to him, ...
Niira Radia: No. He’s been here the whole week. I just spoke to him this morning also. He is very much here. He is not supposed to go anywhere till next week.
Prabhu Chawla: Nahii. Maine to usko... somebody… I didn’t… Usko maine 15-20 din pahle message bhejaa thaa. Then he responded. Then I asked again. Then he never responded. Maine usko message nahii bhejaa phir…. Because the whole judgement was coming, yaa, I wanted to forewarn him.
{end of portion of conversation elided by Headlines Today}
Niira Radia: Haan… Ki judgment uske khilaaf aa rahaa hai?
Prabhu Chawla: Haan Haan, Arrogant hai naa. uske saath kyaa kare? Uske arrogance, dono bhaaiyyon ki, samajh mein nahi aatii mere ko {laughs}
Niira Radia: Nahii. But Prabhu tell me one thing. Judgement is fixed, right?
Prabhu Chawla: Dekho in this country, dono side mein fix karne kii capacity hain. Par baRaa bhaai jo hain naa.. Chhotaa bhaai mobile jyaada hai. Paise kam kharach kartaa hai, kanjoos hai sabse jyaadaa. But he is more mobile than the elder brother. Elder brother doesn’t want to go beyond what Dhirubhai left behind with him. Men or people, whatever. I think… You are getting what I am telling?
Niira Radia: I understand. Haan Haan
Prabhu Chawla: He is totally depending on the people who Dhirubhai created. They were relevant at that point of time. Now they are not relevant. Anil Ambani has done… has developed new sources, new contacts, new way of thinking. That can be possibility of Mukesh ko apnaa… uskii wife bhi thoRaa dictate jyaadaa karti hai. Anil kii wife nahii kartii hai. The way things are moving, Mukesh, poor fellow, is not able to get the right feedback,... because of insulation from various other sources. And I know what he is doing on the Supreme Court front. Various things. Which is not the way to go about.
Niira Radia: Hmm.
Prabhu Chawla: What he doing it is known to every pers… rest of the world. Which is not good. Usko thoRaa… If he has to…. because everything is fixed now these days.
Niira Radia: Haan
Prabhu Chawla: Ab Supreme Court mein reverse ho gayaa, then he is finished forever, yaar! If he doesn’t get a favourable judgement from Supreme Court, then he is finished, naa?
{The following portion of the conversation elided by Headlines Today}
Niira Radia: Hmm. But Prabhu ek baat bataauuN?
Prabhu Chawla: HaaN?
Niira Radia: Abhi to Supreme Court kaa, between you and me, to finalise huaa bhii nahin?
Prabhu Chawla: Finalise kaa matlab kya hai? Bhai Murli Deora bhii jaayega court mein. Murli Deora ko … Prime Minister is also putting pressure on Murli Deora to settle it. Because ultimately it is national loss naa, as you put it. {not intelligible} Itnaa mehanga ho raha hai fuel, ab 90 dollars ho jayegaa 2-3 mahiine meiN, if you are not able to take out gas from your own sources, then there is a problem, naa. Country should bloody not suffer because of these two brothers.
Niira Radia: That’s right. Which is what Mukesh has also told Anil very clearly. What is the issue? Anil …usne kabhii apne gas ke liye manaa kiya nahin. Usne kaha tera 28 mmcd [mmBtu siidhi?] bantha hai. Agar NTPC 12 nahiiN letaa to teraa wo bhii bantaa hai. Theek hai? Lekin jo 2.34 ki price hai wo government ki domain hai, mein us mein decide nahin kar sakta as I’m an operator. Uska point limited woh hai. Prabhu, I don’t know, aapne MoU dekha hai? Maine MOU …I don’t know whether you have seen it, but I will show it to you. MOU mein aisa kuchh likhaa nahiiN hain.
Prabhu Chawla: Nahii. MoU mein pataa nahiin, maine dekhaa nahiin isiliye I can't say, frankly speaking , and MoU mein, agar court ne order kiya, toh kisii basis pe kiyaa hogaa naa. Padhaa hogaa court ne.
Niira Radia: Nahin. Uska court kaa order meiN, 328 pages meiN I can give you anything, I can tell you, woh pen drive bhi jo use kii hogii naa, Prabhu, woh jo telecom kaa TDSAT kaa judgement huaa naa, dual technology kaa Vahanvati ne jo karvaya hain, Dr Sarma.. Baad meiN Raja ne phir Dr Sarma ko TRAI chairman banaa diya. Woh … I’m guaranteed ki same pen drive use kii hogii
Prabhu Chawla: hahaha (laughs)
Niira Radia: Mein tumko dono judgement aamne saamne dikhake, dekh lo, dono paRlo. Usme jo… Tumhari dono wordings meiN…
Prabhu Chawla: Goolam Vahanvati is an old friend of mine. He was in Indian Express. When I was editor of Indian Express, he was our counsel in Indian Express. Meraa bahut achhaa dost hai puraanaa. Nusli Wadia ke saath thaa pahle. Nusli Wadia brought him. He was a good friend of Nusli, I think even now he is with . [inaudible] He was with Sharad Pawar also. But he is very close to Anil Ambani. Everybody knows about it. And appointment.. Anil Ambani, Nusli Wadia and our kya naam hai? power minister, Shinde, they all went for him naa for the appointment of [inaudible]. Bhardwaj never liked him. Bhardwaj would not have made him the attorney general agar Bhardwaj law minister hotaa. Ab ban gaya wo. The question is these brothers have to come to the conclusion themselves first. Kyuunkii agreement to hogaa Court meiN jaa karke. Supreme Court ne order dono ko acceptable de diya, that can be one way of looking at it. KyuuNkii abhii to you are basically… this whole judgement will decide the future of both of them naa? More of Mukesh than of Anil. {Kyunki} Anil kaa to saalaa power plant hii shuruu nahiiN huaa, usko gas ka kyaa karni saale ko?
Niira Radia: Judgement meiN usne 17 saal to likhaa nahiiN hai. mujhe lagtaa hai kal se gas to de denii chaahiye. Usko bolo chal tu le. Kya karegaa uske saath? Kuchh nahiiN kar saktaa
Prabhu Chawla: Aur le nahin sakta. Thiik hai, lelo utthaa lo gas jaa kar ke
Niira Radia: Aur paise do uske liye.
Prabhu Chawla: Haan paise do, bech saktaa nahii kisii aur ko. Judgement is you can't sell it to anybody else naa?
Niira Radia: Correct, correct.
Prabhu Chawla: Theek hai, bhai. That, that… let Mukesh sell it wherever he wants to sell it. That should be the… Ab Mukesh kaa objective kyaa hai, I don’t know. You are not clear. Because unkaa yahaaN jo Anand Jain to baahar ho gayaa mere khayaal se. He is out, naa?
Niira Radia: Nahii nahiin, he is very much there. Again ye Anil ki philaaii hui baateiN haiN. Yeh galat baat hai. MaiN usko itnii baar khud dekh chukii huun.
Prabhu Chawla: I’m just saying. I don’t know, because people on both sides are haraamis, advisors.
Niira Radia: Nahiin, ek baat, sach baat, bataa duun tum ko. Anand Jain is very much there. Manoj Modi is very much there. Mukesh is very much there.
Prabhu Chawla: Manoj Modi is little more professional
Niira Radia: He is very professional
Prabhu Chawla: Manoj Modi very much professional. Anand Jain thoRaa politics kartaa hai kii uskaa apnaa dhandaa bhi hai. He has more influence on…
Niira Radia: But is matter meiN Manoj Modi jyaadaa hogaa na nazdiik?
Prabhu Chawla: Haan, Manoj Modi jo bhi hain, but now Supreme Court mein to aana hi hai case. Anil Ambani ne caveat file kardii. Kal parson kii.
Niira Radia: Woh toh karegaa naa. He has to safeguard his interests.
{end of portion of conversation elided by Headlines Today}
Prabhu Chawla: But if you have access to Mukesh, just convey that the way he is going about the Supreme Court is not… I won’t give you anything more than that. It is not the right way.
Niira Radia: Nahin, “not the right way” matlab? You’re saying – “He is going to Supreme Court, he shouldn’t go to Supreme Court”?
Prabhu Chawla: No, No, No. The way he going to the Supreme Court. I won't tell you more than that. The people which he is using, they are not the people who can be trusted for keeping it to themselves.
Niira Radia: Hmm..
Prabhu Chawla: Bol dete hain, ab London mein baith ke kuchh bhi kuch bolta rahe. Achchaa nahiin lagtaa naa, it gets back. London is like… London is not London. It is a phone call away.
Niira Radia: Hmmm..
Prabhu Chawla: Usko thoRaa… He must be… Political system bhii Delhi meiN change ho gayaa. Mukesh. Mukesh ne bhi.. People may be projecting whatever he is close to Sonia, he is close to Rahul, he is close to this. But may be he has got access, but he can’t influence anything. Collective zyadaa ho gaya naa. Kamalnath can decide one thing but he can be overruled by Pranab Mukherjee. Yeh saare loose ends ko tight karnaa paRta hai naa?
{The following portion of the conversation elided by Headlines Today}
Niira Radia: Maine tumharaa London kaa point catch nahiin kiyaa
Prabhu Chawla: Matlab, he is trying to understand how to go to the Supreme Court.
Niira Radia: I don’t think so Prabhu, tumko yeh kisne bataya?
Prabhu Chawla: ChhoRo na ab.
Niira Radia: Nahiin seriously, main tumse kyuuN chupauuN baat? Sach-much. I mean. Come on.
Prabhu Chawla: He has to go to appeal in Supreme Court or not finally?
Niira Radia: Agreed. He is appealing to Supreme Court. He will have to appeal in the Supreme Court, the question doesn’t arise.
Prabhu Chawla: If he is appealing to Supreme Court, he must be trying to find out the right people. Harish Salve to uskaa advocate hai hii. He will appear for him. Because Harish Salve is an outstanding advocate. But he must be thinking if there is any way of, like, Anil can use various ways, he can also use various ways or not. And you know what? Brothers are not… Clean to dono mein se… apne apne tareeke dono lagayenge naa?
{end of portion of conversation elided by Headlines Today}
Niira Radia: Haan. Anil Ambani apnaa lagaa hogaa, apne logo ke through, DMK ke through , apne Chief Justice ke paas yeh sab.
Prabhu Chawla: No, DMK yeh sab… Chief Justice Kerala kaa hai.
Niira Radia: Haan. Kerala kaa.
Prabhu Chawla: He is not… Yeh bhi lage hoNge naa kisii ke through? Mukesh bhii to kar rahaa hogaa naa? Phir? Wohii kah rahaa huun. Mukesh jis tariike se approach kar rahaa hai, if what I heard is correct, is not the right way to go.
Niira Radia: Thiik hai. I understood what you are saying.
Prabhu Chawla: Haan. Now you understand naa?
Niira Radia: I will… Mein baat karuungi thoRii der meiN, I will tell him to speak to you.
{The following portion of the conversation elided by Headlines Today}
Prabhu Chawla: Yeah, Because, I sent him messages, 10 bar messages bhejaa, he doesn’t reply. I don’t want to come into. Because my family is a retainer for Anil. I don’t want to discuss with him at all. Par sun to letaa huuN naa kai baar kai chiizen, idhar udhar political logoN se. But he not appearing for him. My son is not involved in this case at all.
Niira Radia: Your son, naa?
Prabhu Chawla: Haan, he is not involved at all
Niira Radia: Why?
Prabhu Chawla: He doesn’t trust my son also, in this case. {laughs} Anil doesn’t trust my son (in this case).
Niira Radia: Your son is with whom now?
Prabhu Chawla: He is a retained by Anil naa. He is independent. He is running his own independent company. He is not with Ryan [?] any more. He is running his own solicitors firm. He was retained by various people. Das barah log hain Anil’s mobile is one company which retains him. But in this case he is not involved. But idhar udhar se pick up to kar lete hain na chiizen sab.
Niira Radia: Right right
Prabhu Chawla: My information is through the legal sources. Once you tell him that Prabhu was saying something about you talking to people in London, he will understand.
Niira Radia: Chalo I will tell him
Prabhu Chawla: Chhota Bhai baRaa haraami hai.
Niira Radia: Harami to hai lekin har waqt haraamii panaa last nahiin kartaa naa, Prabhu you also know.
Prabhu Chawla: Question is, abhii, when you are working in a system which is not clean, you have to be… bhaii tumhaare ko nuksaan to ho gaya naa? Udhar recovery karte raho apne aap. It is better to do it in a manner so that you are not the loser.
Niira Radia: Thiik hai.
Prabhu Chawla: Main kal jaa rahaa huuN Bombay. Ek baar usne kahaa thaa dinner pe aana ghar pe. That is about… He called me one day. You remember [inaudible] Press Conference mein gaya tha uske liye. I was the only senior editor there. After that I tried to meet him but nahiiN mil paayaa. I went a couple of times to Bombay recently but he was not there. I have been trying to reach him par uske baad baat hii nahii huii.
{
end of portion of conversation elided by Headlines Today}
[abrupt end]
Since writing this piece, I have learnt of two blogs which have taken apart Prabhu Chawla’s version of the transcript and his accompanying explanation.
http://www.countermedia.in/?p=341
http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2010/11/30/the-niira-radia-tapes-india-todays-prabhu-chawla/
A subsequent development is that Outlook has posted a conversation between Niira Radia and another person a little while before the call discussed here on the same afternoon, wherein the latter is instructed by her to contact Shankkar Aiyar (then with India Today Group) since Prabhu Chawla had been trying to contact Mukesh Ambani, that Anil is ahead. The other person was asked to find out from Shankkar Aiyar the context, prior to Radia speaking to Chawla, who was then at lunch. Taken at face value, this conversation would confirm that the context of Chawla wanting to contact Ambani was in all likelihood related to the Gas dispute and not, as per his protestations, to the India Today conclave or contacting Mrs Nita Ambani.
Context
The publication of the recordings of telephone conversations between lobbyist Niira Radia and several journalists by Open and Outlook magazines generated much discussion in the media. CNN-IBN broadcast a show anchored by Karan Thapar, in which several senior journalists (N. Ram, Sanjaya Baru, etc.) discussed how media personalities such as Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi had crossed the line. NDTV then gave Barkha Dutt an opportunity to answer the allegations of power-brokering in a show anchored by Sonia Singh, where Ms Dutt faced questions from Dilip Padgaonkar, Sanjaya Baru and Manu Joseph (editor of Open Magazine). The less said about her performance, the better.
On 2 December 2010, Headlines Today broadcast a (live) panel debate: “Experts debate Radia tapes' impact”. The show was anchored by Rahul Kanwal, and the participants were Vir Sanghvi (then Editorial Director of HT Media), Prabhu Chawla (Editor, Languages, India Today) MJ Akbar (Editorial Director of India Today), N. Ram (Editor-in-Chief, The Hindu) from Chennai, Hartosh Singh Bal (Political Editor of Open Magazine) also sitting in Chennai, and Dilip Cherian (Lobbyist, Consulting Partner at Perfect Relations).
The entire broadcast can be viewed at the following site: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/Video/121822/42/Videos/experts-debate-radia-tapes-impact.html where it has been segmented into 20 parts. Fortunately for us, Headlines Today is rather proud of this show, and over a week later continues to highlight it in its promotional spots. There is considerable irony in Headlines Today airing a show on journalistic ethics involving the Radia recordings, since the channel had been in possession of them for several months, and had carried a story till the names of two journalists from the India Today group – Prabhu Chawla and Shankkar Aiyar – cropped up. The India Today group was, in the words of a friend, holding two lumps of kryptonite. There is also more than some irony in N Ram speaking on journalists transgressing the line.
After the usual introductions, the show aired portions of the controversial conversations between Niira Radia and the journalists.
Vir Sanghvi, who was charged with acting “as a middleman in Radiagate” and of having taken dictation from a lobbyist and printing this verbatim in his column, spoke live from a balcony in Bangkok. He delivered a prepared statement in which he explained, rather unconvincingly, his version of what had transpired and gave a rather weak apology for his conduct. Subsequent releases of conversations by Outlook totally belie any claim on his part that his column was not a cleverly dressed up statement from Niira Radia.
I am not going to comment further on Vir Sanghvi’s statement but will focus on another farcical aspect of this broadcast.
In Part 10 of the debate, N Ram was asked to give his opinion on Sanghvi’s statement. He correctly and unhesitatingly termed Barkha Dutt’s defence of her conduct (the previous night , on the NDTV show) “pathetic”. He was also right in calling VIr Sanghvi’s explanation unconvincing – and he quoted at length from the transcripts of the conversation and Sanghvi’s articles while commenting about them. He concluded by dubbing Sanghvi’s conduct “a transgression of professional norms”. Anchor Rahul Kanwal added helpfully that action should be taken against the “guilty journalists”.
Now let us examine how the same gentlemen, Kanwal and Ram in particular, applied very different standards when discussing the conduct of the other participant who figured in the controversial recordings, namely, Prabhu Chawla. First, Chawla was (oddly enough?) not “accused” by the anchor of any specific misconduct.
Part 4 of the broadcast aired excerpts of Prabhu Chawla’s conversation with Niira Radia (the call took place on Jun 20, 2009 14:32:07 and the recording was 13:07 minutes long). Having previously heard the recording of this conversation (#82, put out by Outlook magazine on their site (http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?268406), I immediately felt that several critical portions had (deliberately) been omitted. I went back and listened carefully to the recording on the Outlook site (http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?268406) and starting with the transcript provided there, made the corrected transcript for this conversation that is attached. I have marked which portions were omitted by Headlines Today in their broadcast, and it should be clear that by leaving out these critical portions, Headlines Today gives a misleading picture about the nature of the conversation. In particular, it crucially omits portions where Prabhu Chawla mentions actions of his which may have constituted gross violations of journalistic ethics.
A brief summary of the conversation is that it that took place 5 days after the Mumbai (Bombay) High Court’s judgement on the Ambani brothers’ dispute over natural gas. Niira Radia was touching base with Prabhu Chawla’ for his opinion on the dispute and the judgement. During the conversation Chawla indicated that he knew both the litigants well, and clearly stated that he had tried to intimate Mukesh Ambani some days before the judgement that it would be adverse to him (M. Ambani). This portion has been cleverly omitted by Headlines Today in the excerpts that it aired. The legal implications of Chawla’s statement are not clear to me, but it is certainly clear that it would not be very ethical conduct on part of a journalist. Niira Radia conveyed her view that the judgement was unfair, whereas Chawla’s position was that the dispute between the brothers was not a good thing for all concerned. A fair part of the conversation consists of opinions and gossip about various individuals, how the “system” works, and specifically that both the Ambani brothers try to “fix” judgements in their favour. The second portion of the conversation that has been elided mentions details of the judgement, and comprises gossip about various politicians, people working with the Ambanis, and people from the legal profession. The conversation moves to tactics that may be applied by the litigants when appealing the judgement in the Supreme Court. In the third and fourth elided portions, Chawla hints to Radia about information he has obtained, (perhaps through his son), and strongly hints in guarded but coded language at a specific kind of message that she should convey to Mukesh Ambani, very likely about a possibly unethical legal tactic “on how to approach the Supreme Court” (stated in what can be called a rather triumphant tone).
One should maybe do what Rahul Kanwal failed to – make the allegation against Prabhu Chawla of transgressing limits of responsible journalism, acting as an operator/fixer/go-between for business interests, passing inside information to interested parties and unsolicited advice on actions of a possibly dubious nature in a matter concerning the Supreme Court.
In his response, which appears in Part 11 of the broadcast, Prabhu Chawla chose brazen obfuscation as his defence strategy. He claimed that he had been accused of advising Niira Radia {his conduct is far more problematic than that, since he seemingly wished to pass information about an impending judgement in the Bombay High Court gas case to one of the parties}. He raised the irrelevant issue of what some other journalists had written, and then absurdly claimed that no one was hearing the tapes carefully. He claimed that in the conversation that he was “very angry” with the behaviour of the Ambani brothers, yet his tone in the recording is a far cry from an angry tone, and indeed very different from the almost apoplectic blustering that he currently was displaying.
He claimed that the tape was “fractured”, whereas there is no indication in the recording (put out by Outlook) that it was, and then brought in a conversation of M K Venu (whom he called Venugopal) with Niira Radia about the same judgement, quoting from it to buttress his claim that he was only stating a belief, an opinion to which he was entitled, that the judgment was fixed. He however, offered no explanation – as e.g., Barkha Dutt was asked to provide – why he didn’t write about the judgement being fixed, which is what one would expect from a journalist following a story. He finished with an all-too-loud protestation of innocence, and gave a rather measly apology for, if at all anything, gossiping and speaking loosely.
In Part 12 of the debate, Hartosh Singh Bal, after rubbishing Vir Sanghvi’s defence and also pointing out that Open did not carry the Chawla conversation because that may have involved contempt of court, correctly raised the issue of the transcript on Prabhu Chawla’s site misrepresenting a crucial word (at time point 2:02 in the conversation). Chawla’s transcript states “probe on him” instead of “forewarn him”. (Outlook’s transcript incorrectly has it as ``forewarn you’’).
Prabhu Chawla pressed on with “probing on him”, paradoxically stating that he agreed with Mr Bal. Then he raised the red herring of there being other issues on which he wanted to “probe on him”. When he came around to accepting that the word might be “forewarn”, he claimed that there were other reasons he was talking to Mukesh Ambani and that he wanted to “forewarn him” about something else. (He has elsewhere said he wanted to meet Nita Ambani, and still elsewhere that he wanted to invite Mukesh Ambani for the India Today conclave). This defence is disingenuous, since the very next line in the conversation is an interjection from Niira Radia: “ki Judgement uske khilaf aa rahaa hai”, to which he assents (Haan haan). He continued to insist, without basis, that his transcript was correct.
In Part 13, Chawla continued to obfuscate, blustering on about journalists not being clear about the sequence of events: he asked how there could be a question about him being involved in fixing the Supreme Court judgement when it hadn’t yet happened at the time of the conversation. He went on to claim that there is no word “judgement” when he is alleged to have said “forewarn”, trying to hide from everyone the fact that the very next words from Radia confirm that the reference was about the Bombay HC judgement, to which he had assented, as is very clearly present in the recording carried by Outlook (and which words were cleverly left out in the Headlines Today excerpt). Chawla then, even more disingenuously, claimed that he had nothing to do with the Bombay High Court, since he was in Delhi. He claimed again that there were breakages in the tape, and that he had not doctored the transcript. Both these claims are unsupportable.
At this point, sensing that the question was getting too uncomfortable for the channel’s interests, on the specious plea that both had made their points, the anchor Rahul Kanwal quickly moved the discussion to Dilip Cherian, to talk about Niira Radia’s rise and “lobbyism”. Somewhere through Cherian’s anodyne answers, Akbar interjected with some sharp observations. And then (against the flow of the conversation), Akbar “agreed” with N Ram (who hadn’t actually said so in the programme) that “journalism lives and dies by credibility”.
At this point, in Part 14 of the broadcast, N Ram, with little in the preceding discussion to buttress this contention, announced “to be fair to Prabhu” that Chawla “had no case to answer for”. He claimed to have read the excerpt from the transcript (from Chawla’s website), and cleared him of any professional misconduct (with a figurative nod towards the issue that Bal had raised, but which seemed to strike him as a minor issue). He didn’t bracket him with Vir or Barkha. To me, this was shockingly dishonest or poor journalism or both – one wondered whether he was indeed in the same room as Mr Bal who was sitting next to him; one wondered why, if he could quote extensively from the Sanghvi transcripts, he couldn’t have listened to the Radia-Chawla conversation; and one wondered why he had chosen to look at Chawla’s version of the transcript, in which Bal had pointed out a crucial error.
What transpired then was even funnier. Ram raised the totally irrelevant issue of passing on a message to the Congress (as if that were the worst crime that had been committed by the journalists), for which “why go to Prabhu Chawla when one could have gone to Ranjan Bhattacharya?”. Unfortunately for him, Chawla could not understand that he was being given a clean chit, since it was so backhanded; he counter-attacked Ram and made snide remarks about Akbar and Ram’s role in advising governments, etc.
Ram had to later reiterate his clean chit to Chawla in clearer terms (it wasn’t a Siidhi Baat, the first time around) and only then did the latter visibly relax.
Ram, even more disingenuously, said that he couldn’t understand why Chawla needed to be part of this discussion (ostensibly since he didn’t consider him in the same bracket as Vir and Barkha, but with an oh-so-clever smirk). With eagerness, Rahul Kanwal explained why it was so important for the India Today Group to have Chawla on the programme, and that he had “taken the questions head on”. {Come on, Ram and Kanwal, it was all too obvious that Headlines Today needed a publicly issued clean chit to Chawla,; the studio air was thick with collusion}.
Chawla was still edgy and persisted in digging himself deeper into a rut by now mentioning a significant elided line, but again crucially distorted as “Kya judgement uske khilaf aa raha hai?”, trying to obfuscate further by talking about the illogic of some unnamed journalists.
The rest of the show was carefully orchestrated to avoid the discomfort caused by the question raised by Bal. In part 15, Kanwal did not allow Hartosh Bal to speak, first offering a non-existent question to Ram, then moving the conversation to Cherian, and then talking about tweets from viewers. To his rhetorical question, “Can journalists brazen it out?”, one can only respond that we had just witnessed one do so, with the connivance of some of his colleagues.
Mission “Clean Chit to Prabhu” accomplished, the rest of the debate degenerated into some mutual back-scratching between Akbar and Ram, with Ram talking of his Asian College of Journalism, after a favourable plug from Akbar. To Akbar’s wisecrack about whether this was the Bofors of the Indian media, Ram talked about cover-ups. Nice inside joke, Akbar and Ram, but we just had witnessed a cover-up job by Headlines Today. Hartosh Bal tried to reinject some idealism into the conversation with an important point on legitimacy of sources, but the rest of the conversation was mostly self-promotion (Ram about Reader’s Editor at The Hindu, Chawla on his being a teetotaler, Kanwal plugging Headlines Today)
Kanwal concluded by informing us, “this programme has been a completely unscripted, live show; nothing has been predecided, everybody had their say. You can’t cast aspersions on others without looking in.”
Well, Rahul-ji, if you live in a glass house, you can look in. I hope you are receiving your paycheck at the end of the show, because you did a superb job of rigging your show to clear one from your own organization. What you just anchored was an example of dishonest journalism; it should have raised your pretty-picked eyebrows. Perhaps you can explain to us how cherry-picking excerpts from a dodgy conversation can be “unscripted” and not “pre-decided”. And did you let poor Hartosh Singh Bal “have his say?” {I love being able to imitate Rahul Kanwal’s sincere admonitions, talking truth to power}.
And maybe Mr Ram can explain the logic which holds Barkha Dutt passing on a message from Niira Radia to the Congress to be deplorable, but makes it okay for Prabhu Chawla to (attempt to) pass on a mssage to Mukesh Ambani about an impending HC judgement, for him to pass advice to Mukesh Ambani on “how to approach the Supreme Court”. Mr Ram, you just became the “journalist who defended the indefensible.
TRANSCRIPT OF NIIRA RADIA’S CONVERSATION WITH PRABHU CHAWLA.
{This version makes some corrections to the version posted by Outlook. Any further corrections will be appreciated. Parts elided by the Headlines Today are clearly marked, and appear in red. Outlook also posts a link to Chawla’s own version. }
Niira Radia: Hi Prabhu
Prabhu Chawla: Yeah tell me now {both speak, stop}
Niira Radia: Nahii nothing, I was just wanting to understand from you. You always have a very good perspective.
Prabhu Chawla: {(laughs) ha ha ha} On what?
Niira Radia: On everything bhai, ha ha ha ha. Generally you have a good perspective. I was trying to understand what is your view of this great... historic judgment.
Prabhu Chawla: Which one? The Bombay one?
Niira Radia: Bombay one. Which takes the family pact above the national interest.
Prabhu Chawla: {(laughs) ha ha ha ha ha ha} You see when the brothers are involved, …
Niira Radia: Haa
Prabhu Chawla: … the nation also gets involved, naa?
{The following portion of the conversation elided by Headlines Today}
Niira Radia: Yeah, but probably not a good thing naa. Not good for the nation.
Prabhu Chawla: Not good for the nation, but the brothers don’t talk to each other. There is nobody who can force them to talk also naa?
Niira Radia: Wo to hogaa hi nahii Prabhu tum bhii jaante ho
Prabhu Chawla: Maine koshish kii thi., nahii huaa. maine kahaa ho jayegaa
Niira Radia: Nahii. Abhii nahii. I was speaking to him even recently, I spoke to him this morning, the question of ..
Prabhu Chawla: (interrupts) is he back from wherever he had gone, Mukesh?
Niira Radia: He is very much here, he has been here the whole week. He’s not gone anywhere .
Prabhu Chawla: He was abroad last week I think.
Niira Radia: No no no. He was here.
Prabhu Chawla: Anyway, somebody told me that he is abroad.
Niira Radia: NO NO NO. He has been here the whole week. He’s not been anywhere. He is not due to travel till next week.
Prabhu Chawla: Haa because maine to. But he doesn’t. Sometimes he responds. Abhii I have stopped calling him and talking to him, ...
Niira Radia: No. He’s been here the whole week. I just spoke to him this morning also. He is very much here. He is not supposed to go anywhere till next week.
Prabhu Chawla: Nahii. Maine to usko... somebody… I didn’t… Usko maine 15-20 din pahle message bhejaa thaa. Then he responded. Then I asked again. Then he never responded. Maine usko message nahii bhejaa phir…. Because the whole judgement was coming, yaa, I wanted to forewarn him.
{end of portion of conversation elided by Headlines Today}
Niira Radia: Haan… Ki judgment uske khilaaf aa rahaa hai?
Prabhu Chawla: Haan Haan, Arrogant hai naa. uske saath kyaa kare? Uske arrogance, dono bhaaiyyon ki, samajh mein nahi aatii mere ko {laughs}
Niira Radia: Nahii. But Prabhu tell me one thing. Judgement is fixed, right?
Prabhu Chawla: Dekho in this country, dono side mein fix karne kii capacity hain. Par baRaa bhaai jo hain naa.. Chhotaa bhaai mobile jyaada hai. Paise kam kharach kartaa hai, kanjoos hai sabse jyaadaa. But he is more mobile than the elder brother. Elder brother doesn’t want to go beyond what Dhirubhai left behind with him. Men or people, whatever. I think… You are getting what I am telling?
Niira Radia: I understand. Haan Haan
Prabhu Chawla: He is totally depending on the people who Dhirubhai created. They were relevant at that point of time. Now they are not relevant. Anil Ambani has done… has developed new sources, new contacts, new way of thinking. That can be possibility of Mukesh ko apnaa… uskii wife bhi thoRaa dictate jyaadaa karti hai. Anil kii wife nahii kartii hai. The way things are moving, Mukesh, poor fellow, is not able to get the right feedback,... because of insulation from various other sources. And I know what he is doing on the Supreme Court front. Various things. Which is not the way to go about.
Niira Radia: Hmm.
Prabhu Chawla: What he doing it is known to every pers… rest of the world. Which is not good. Usko thoRaa… If he has to…. because everything is fixed now these days.
Niira Radia: Haan
Prabhu Chawla: Ab Supreme Court mein reverse ho gayaa, then he is finished forever, yaar! If he doesn’t get a favourable judgement from Supreme Court, then he is finished, naa?
{The following portion of the conversation elided by Headlines Today}
Niira Radia: Hmm. But Prabhu ek baat bataauuN?
Prabhu Chawla: HaaN?
Niira Radia: Abhi to Supreme Court kaa, between you and me, to finalise huaa bhii nahin?
Prabhu Chawla: Finalise kaa matlab kya hai? Bhai Murli Deora bhii jaayega court mein. Murli Deora ko … Prime Minister is also putting pressure on Murli Deora to settle it. Because ultimately it is national loss naa, as you put it. {not intelligible} Itnaa mehanga ho raha hai fuel, ab 90 dollars ho jayegaa 2-3 mahiine meiN, if you are not able to take out gas from your own sources, then there is a problem, naa. Country should bloody not suffer because of these two brothers.
Niira Radia: That’s right. Which is what Mukesh has also told Anil very clearly. What is the issue? Anil …usne kabhii apne gas ke liye manaa kiya nahin. Usne kaha tera 28 mmcd [mmBtu siidhi?] bantha hai. Agar NTPC 12 nahiiN letaa to teraa wo bhii bantaa hai. Theek hai? Lekin jo 2.34 ki price hai wo government ki domain hai, mein us mein decide nahin kar sakta as I’m an operator. Uska point limited woh hai. Prabhu, I don’t know, aapne MoU dekha hai? Maine MOU …I don’t know whether you have seen it, but I will show it to you. MOU mein aisa kuchh likhaa nahiiN hain.
Prabhu Chawla: Nahii. MoU mein pataa nahiin, maine dekhaa nahiin isiliye I can't say, frankly speaking , and MoU mein, agar court ne order kiya, toh kisii basis pe kiyaa hogaa naa. Padhaa hogaa court ne.
Niira Radia: Nahin. Uska court kaa order meiN, 328 pages meiN I can give you anything, I can tell you, woh pen drive bhi jo use kii hogii naa, Prabhu, woh jo telecom kaa TDSAT kaa judgement huaa naa, dual technology kaa Vahanvati ne jo karvaya hain, Dr Sarma.. Baad meiN Raja ne phir Dr Sarma ko TRAI chairman banaa diya. Woh … I’m guaranteed ki same pen drive use kii hogii
Prabhu Chawla: hahaha (laughs)
Niira Radia: Mein tumko dono judgement aamne saamne dikhake, dekh lo, dono paRlo. Usme jo… Tumhari dono wordings meiN…
Prabhu Chawla: Goolam Vahanvati is an old friend of mine. He was in Indian Express. When I was editor of Indian Express, he was our counsel in Indian Express. Meraa bahut achhaa dost hai puraanaa. Nusli Wadia ke saath thaa pahle. Nusli Wadia brought him. He was a good friend of Nusli, I think even now he is with . [inaudible] He was with Sharad Pawar also. But he is very close to Anil Ambani. Everybody knows about it. And appointment.. Anil Ambani, Nusli Wadia and our kya naam hai? power minister, Shinde, they all went for him naa for the appointment of [inaudible]. Bhardwaj never liked him. Bhardwaj would not have made him the attorney general agar Bhardwaj law minister hotaa. Ab ban gaya wo. The question is these brothers have to come to the conclusion themselves first. Kyuunkii agreement to hogaa Court meiN jaa karke. Supreme Court ne order dono ko acceptable de diya, that can be one way of looking at it. KyuuNkii abhii to you are basically… this whole judgement will decide the future of both of them naa? More of Mukesh than of Anil. {Kyunki} Anil kaa to saalaa power plant hii shuruu nahiiN huaa, usko gas ka kyaa karni saale ko?
Niira Radia: Judgement meiN usne 17 saal to likhaa nahiiN hai. mujhe lagtaa hai kal se gas to de denii chaahiye. Usko bolo chal tu le. Kya karegaa uske saath? Kuchh nahiiN kar saktaa
Prabhu Chawla: Aur le nahin sakta. Thiik hai, lelo utthaa lo gas jaa kar ke
Niira Radia: Aur paise do uske liye.
Prabhu Chawla: Haan paise do, bech saktaa nahii kisii aur ko. Judgement is you can't sell it to anybody else naa?
Niira Radia: Correct, correct.
Prabhu Chawla: Theek hai, bhai. That, that… let Mukesh sell it wherever he wants to sell it. That should be the… Ab Mukesh kaa objective kyaa hai, I don’t know. You are not clear. Because unkaa yahaaN jo Anand Jain to baahar ho gayaa mere khayaal se. He is out, naa?
Niira Radia: Nahii nahiin, he is very much there. Again ye Anil ki philaaii hui baateiN haiN. Yeh galat baat hai. MaiN usko itnii baar khud dekh chukii huun.
Prabhu Chawla: I’m just saying. I don’t know, because people on both sides are haraamis, advisors.
Niira Radia: Nahiin, ek baat, sach baat, bataa duun tum ko. Anand Jain is very much there. Manoj Modi is very much there. Mukesh is very much there.
Prabhu Chawla: Manoj Modi is little more professional
Niira Radia: He is very professional
Prabhu Chawla: Manoj Modi very much professional. Anand Jain thoRaa politics kartaa hai kii uskaa apnaa dhandaa bhi hai. He has more influence on…
Niira Radia: But is matter meiN Manoj Modi jyaadaa hogaa na nazdiik?
Prabhu Chawla: Haan, Manoj Modi jo bhi hain, but now Supreme Court mein to aana hi hai case. Anil Ambani ne caveat file kardii. Kal parson kii.
Niira Radia: Woh toh karegaa naa. He has to safeguard his interests.
{end of portion of conversation elided by Headlines Today}
Prabhu Chawla: But if you have access to Mukesh, just convey that the way he is going about the Supreme Court is not… I won’t give you anything more than that. It is not the right way.
Niira Radia: Nahin, “not the right way” matlab? You’re saying – “He is going to Supreme Court, he shouldn’t go to Supreme Court”?
Prabhu Chawla: No, No, No. The way he going to the Supreme Court. I won't tell you more than that. The people which he is using, they are not the people who can be trusted for keeping it to themselves.
Niira Radia: Hmm..
Prabhu Chawla: Bol dete hain, ab London mein baith ke kuchh bhi kuch bolta rahe. Achchaa nahiin lagtaa naa, it gets back. London is like… London is not London. It is a phone call away.
Niira Radia: Hmmm..
Prabhu Chawla: Usko thoRaa… He must be… Political system bhii Delhi meiN change ho gayaa. Mukesh. Mukesh ne bhi.. People may be projecting whatever he is close to Sonia, he is close to Rahul, he is close to this. But may be he has got access, but he can’t influence anything. Collective zyadaa ho gaya naa. Kamalnath can decide one thing but he can be overruled by Pranab Mukherjee. Yeh saare loose ends ko tight karnaa paRta hai naa?
{The following portion of the conversation elided by Headlines Today}
Niira Radia: Maine tumharaa London kaa point catch nahiin kiyaa
Prabhu Chawla: Matlab, he is trying to understand how to go to the Supreme Court.
Niira Radia: I don’t think so Prabhu, tumko yeh kisne bataya?
Prabhu Chawla: ChhoRo na ab.
Niira Radia: Nahiin seriously, main tumse kyuuN chupauuN baat? Sach-much. I mean. Come on.
Prabhu Chawla: He has to go to appeal in Supreme Court or not finally?
Niira Radia: Agreed. He is appealing to Supreme Court. He will have to appeal in the Supreme Court, the question doesn’t arise.
Prabhu Chawla: If he is appealing to Supreme Court, he must be trying to find out the right people. Harish Salve to uskaa advocate hai hii. He will appear for him. Because Harish Salve is an outstanding advocate. But he must be thinking if there is any way of, like, Anil can use various ways, he can also use various ways or not. And you know what? Brothers are not… Clean to dono mein se… apne apne tareeke dono lagayenge naa?
{end of portion of conversation elided by Headlines Today}
Niira Radia: Haan. Anil Ambani apnaa lagaa hogaa, apne logo ke through, DMK ke through , apne Chief Justice ke paas yeh sab.
Prabhu Chawla: No, DMK yeh sab… Chief Justice Kerala kaa hai.
Niira Radia: Haan. Kerala kaa.
Prabhu Chawla: He is not… Yeh bhi lage hoNge naa kisii ke through? Mukesh bhii to kar rahaa hogaa naa? Phir? Wohii kah rahaa huun. Mukesh jis tariike se approach kar rahaa hai, if what I heard is correct, is not the right way to go.
Niira Radia: Thiik hai. I understood what you are saying.
Prabhu Chawla: Haan. Now you understand naa?
Niira Radia: I will… Mein baat karuungi thoRii der meiN, I will tell him to speak to you.
{The following portion of the conversation elided by Headlines Today}
Prabhu Chawla: Yeah, Because, I sent him messages, 10 bar messages bhejaa, he doesn’t reply. I don’t want to come into. Because my family is a retainer for Anil. I don’t want to discuss with him at all. Par sun to letaa huuN naa kai baar kai chiizen, idhar udhar political logoN se. But he not appearing for him. My son is not involved in this case at all.
Niira Radia: Your son, naa?
Prabhu Chawla: Haan, he is not involved at all
Niira Radia: Why?
Prabhu Chawla: He doesn’t trust my son also, in this case. {laughs} Anil doesn’t trust my son (in this case).
Niira Radia: Your son is with whom now?
Prabhu Chawla: He is a retained by Anil naa. He is independent. He is running his own independent company. He is not with Ryan [?] any more. He is running his own solicitors firm. He was retained by various people. Das barah log hain Anil’s mobile is one company which retains him. But in this case he is not involved. But idhar udhar se pick up to kar lete hain na chiizen sab.
Niira Radia: Right right
Prabhu Chawla: My information is through the legal sources. Once you tell him that Prabhu was saying something about you talking to people in London, he will understand.
Niira Radia: Chalo I will tell him
Prabhu Chawla: Chhota Bhai baRaa haraami hai.
Niira Radia: Harami to hai lekin har waqt haraamii panaa last nahiin kartaa naa, Prabhu you also know.
Prabhu Chawla: Question is, abhii, when you are working in a system which is not clean, you have to be… bhaii tumhaare ko nuksaan to ho gaya naa? Udhar recovery karte raho apne aap. It is better to do it in a manner so that you are not the loser.
Niira Radia: Thiik hai.
Prabhu Chawla: Main kal jaa rahaa huuN Bombay. Ek baar usne kahaa thaa dinner pe aana ghar pe. That is about… He called me one day. You remember [inaudible] Press Conference mein gaya tha uske liye. I was the only senior editor there. After that I tried to meet him but nahiiN mil paayaa. I went a couple of times to Bombay recently but he was not there. I have been trying to reach him par uske baad baat hii nahii huii.
{
end of portion of conversation elided by Headlines Today}
[abrupt end]
Since writing this piece, I have learnt of two blogs which have taken apart Prabhu Chawla’s version of the transcript and his accompanying explanation.
http://www.countermedia.in/?p=341
http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2010/11/30/the-niira-radia-tapes-india-todays-prabhu-chawla/
A subsequent development is that Outlook has posted a conversation between Niira Radia and another person a little while before the call discussed here on the same afternoon, wherein the latter is instructed by her to contact Shankkar Aiyar (then with India Today Group) since Prabhu Chawla had been trying to contact Mukesh Ambani, that Anil is ahead. The other person was asked to find out from Shankkar Aiyar the context, prior to Radia speaking to Chawla, who was then at lunch. Taken at face value, this conversation would confirm that the context of Chawla wanting to contact Ambani was in all likelihood related to the Gas dispute and not, as per his protestations, to the India Today conclave or contacting Mrs Nita Ambani.
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