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Friday, August 28, 2009

James Astill's Dazed Denial

So I tracked down, Shri James Astill, who is the South Asia correspondent for The Economist, who speaks French,Japanese and Spanish but no Hindi, Urdu or Kannada and may be forgiven for not quite knowing the ways of us "lesser breeds without the law".

To Shri Astill's immense credit, I repeat immense credit, he did something extraordinarily humane.

He did something that very few Indians do.

He emailed me back.

Dear Divakar,

Though I am unversed in your various battles, I wish you success with them. But your effort to involve The Economist in this struggle seems odd: I'm afraid I can't see the connection. I don't why your comment was removed from The Economist website, though I suppose the fact that it seems to be not at all about the article you were notionally commenting on could be a reason. I imagine you can respond to the moderator asking for a fuller explanation. But we would not consider publishing your letter, for the simple reason that it is almost entirely unrelated to The Economist.

Best wishes,

James Astill

I have handraised a child and I know when she is dissembling.

The weak sarcasm is a dead giveaway.

Corruption is "not at all about the" the Indian economy ?

Did you read our Prime Minister's speech to our Central Bureau Of Investigation, Shri Astill ?

I will not grudge you the brownie points you may earned with Shri Khare's office, Shri Astill - but it doth seem like both Shri Khare and our Prime Minister are not on the same page.

When The Going Gets Tough Our Prime Minister's Media Advisers Appear To Go Nuts !

This was to the good folks at The Economist.

Ladies And Gentlemen,

I am shocked and disappointed by the admonishment administered to me by your Comments Moderator.

Only an hour before I received your email, I had spoken to Shri Harish Khare regarding the widely reported speech of the Hon'ble Prime Minister to the Central Bureau of Investigation, in which he has, once again shared his deep concern and understanding regarding the stultifying problem of "pervasive corruption".

Since our Prime Minister had spoken similarly to the CBI just three years ago, I confided with Shri Khare, who according to Wikipedia possesses a Phd in Political Science from Yale University on the subject of Perception In Decision Making, that it would have such a Gandhian act to have come clean on the matters that I have placed before the esteemed readers of your eminent publication and which I have extensively supported with documented evidence in my blog.

sathyagraha.blogspot.com.

Shri Khare appears to have taken the easy road and appears to have bare knuckled you into removing my comment.

Shri Khare was of course," just doing his job."

But I am deeply saddened that, just one hour after my call to Shri Khare, your esteemed publication has buckled under and removed a serious, factual and well documented comment, that had been on your site since five days and had received its fair share of approvals from your readers.

Please consider this.

About twenty years ago, alarmed and offended by a section of my co religionists "profiling" Muslims in the most derogatory manner, I conceived, researched, scripted, directed, edited and presented a documentary in Urdu, "Hyderabad. August 1948".

In this documentary, I had the opportunity to narrate the events leading to the tragic saga of Shoebullah Khan, the 28 year old editor of Imroose who had his right palm chopped off and who was shot dead because his writing had offended the Razakars of pre Independence Hyderabad. His second daughter was born a fortnight after his assasination.

This documentary was commissioned by Doordarshan, but it was only exhibited after nearly two years of wrangling.

This, despite the, or come to think of it, because of the encomiums that were heaped on it.

To get a sense of how my documentary was received, please read the review by Dr Sanjaya Baru, Dr Harish Khare's predecessor Media Adviser to Dr Manmohan Singh, then an editor of The Economic Times in my blog post Divakar S Natarajan And Varun Gandhi Cannot Both Be Wrong.

Responding to my signature campaign, in which Dr Baru was a participant and Dr Abid Hussain, former Ambassador to the United States the main resource person, the then Prime Minister of India, Shri P V Narasimha Rao, officially recognised Shoeb's sacrifice by granting a Freedom Fighter's pension to the widow of Shoebullah Khan , more than 40 years after his martyrdom.

Unfortunately, the Doordarshan authorities chose to take deep offense to my outspoken ( published in the editor's page of The Hindustan Times) resistance to what I perceived to be the "kickback raj" at Doordarshan.

The then Director General of Doordarshan, responded by vowing, "Your article in the Hindustan Times has defamed Doordarshan. As long as I am there, I will see to it that your work will not get done."

The former Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Shri Chandrababu Naidu, made a representation to the Government of India, that I be commissioned as " a film maker of acknowledged eminence" to make films to celebrate the 50th year of Indian Independence.

His representation on my behalf was probably, the most popular he made.

It was supported in writing by the Centre, Left and Right.

Nothing happened.

To get a sense of how I was treated, please read the letter of the former Minister of Home Affairs Indrajit Gupta to the then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

In my blogpost De freezing Com Gupta I have documented how Shri Indrajit Gupta, a University of Cambridge Tripos, who was elected by Parliament as its first "Most Outstanding Parliamentarian" decided to most kindly befriend me after watching my documentary and the role played by Shri Harish Khare in publishing my impressions of the veteran communist leader in The Hindu.

The wise and pleasing liberality of the Bharatiya Janata Party in supporting the former Chief Minister's representation was a welcome surprise.

Incidentally, Doordarshan's conduct of the 50th Anniversary Celebrations were described as the "50th Year Racket" by the media columnist of Dr Harish Khare's former newspaper, The Hindu.

Despite the earnest views repeatedly and eloquently expressed by this Prime Minister and most of his illustrious predecessors, the unstated attitude of the Indian elite regarding "the scourge of corruption" is like the one expressed by Prabhu Chawla, Editor, India Today, India's leading newsmagazine and flagship of a most influential media conglomerate.

He says, " I think people have accepted it as a reality as they have lost hope in the political leadership." (Emphasis mine. Quoted in my blogpost
Why Prabhu Chavla, His Esteemed Publication And India's Editorial Class Have Decayed And Are Dangerous
Saturday, June 13, 2009.)
Given this infantile "it is you, it is them, it is most certainly not us" dissembling by a large section of India's intellectual elite, one that clearly questions their very reason for existence, I should probably not be surprised by the fact that India's editorial class and others have ridiculed my sathyagraha and made me a "non person".

The Prime Minister's Office has had months to refute my allegations. It has kept quiet.

Now it is trying to corrupt your esteemed publication and put the quietus on the uncomfortable truths that I seek answers for.

In the meanwhile, two significant pronouncements by other Chief Information Commissioners have validated my allegation that Shri Wajahat Habibullah has colluded in the violation of the RTI Act 2005 by the PMO and has punished me for standing up for its proper implementation.

You may also probably know that the respected security expert and writer B Raman had castigated Shri Khare's predecessor Dr Baru for allegedly indulging in" character assasination" of persons like him who had views contrary to that of the PMO and for running the Media like the "Gestapo" ( Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle "Is Dr Sanjaya Baru Running The Gestapo ? September 22, 2006)

When the going gets tough, our Prime Minister's Media Advisers appear to go nuts.

The rest of us recognise the imperative of endeavouring to exercise our imaginations constructively however arduous and futile it might seem at this moment.

I know this is a little longish, but I shall be grateful if you would kindly publish this letter.

In the best traditions of journalism, please let Shri Harish Khare know, in no uncertain terms, that he must throw his weight in the right
directions.

Do feel free to call me, if you need any more information.
My cell number is.......

Sincerely,
Divakar

Psychotic PMO Bareknuckles The Economist

Barely an hour after I spoke to Dr Harish Khare, currently media adviser to the Prime Minister and formerly one of the prime panjandrums of The Hindu's editorial page , I received an email from the Comments Moderator of The Economist.

It informed me that my comment on The Economist's cheery piece, Asia: An Astonishing Rebound was being removed.

The comment had stood since five days and had received its fair share of reader recommendation.

In my conversation with Harish Khare, he sounded about as distant and disoriented as our crepuscular elites are from the agonies of Indian citizens.

He did not remember me. "Indrajit Gupta? That was such a looong time ago !"

Khare had personally accepted my impressionistic profile of the late Shri Indrajit Gupta, then Minister of Home Affairs.

The Hindu, as the unofficial mouthpiece of the Communist Party Of India (Marxist) was involved in a serious sibling spat with the Communist Party Of India, Indrajit Gupta's party and was undermining him at every opportunity.

Since I was conveniently perceived as Indrajit Gupta's man by the wise heads of The Hindu, that was excuse enough for them to ignore my sathyagraha.

No, he had not read my comments in The Economist and he had no idea about the letters I had written to our Honourable Prime Minister.

And in the style perfected by India's babudom to rouse the monster in the breasts of even the meekest of human beings, he hung up on me.

"Hahn,okay,hahn!,by..." Click .

Approximately an hour later, I have this in my inbox:

CommentsModerator@economist.com
to divakarssathyagraha@gmail.com
date Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 3:09 PM
subject divakarssathya's comment to Economist.com


Dear Sir,

The attached comment, posted under the pen name divakarssathya, has been deleted from Economist.com. The comment was removed because it breaks our comments policy:
http://www.economist.com/about/terms_and_conditions.cfm#8

We ask that future comments be made in the spirit of good-natured debate. Repeated violation of our comments policy will result in your being blocked from posting comments on Economist.com.

Yours sincerely,

Comments Moderator
Economist.com

Your comment:
----------
In my earlier comment, I had pointed out how the Indian ruling elite,The
Press, The Judiciary, The Bureaucracy and of course The Political Class work
together to do nothing, so that desperate citizens who value their sanity and
innocence can then prostrate to them, acknowledge them as their true fathers
and mothers,mai-baap, pay them a percentage of their income and eke out a
living as vassals.

You had kindly permitted me to invite your esteemed readers to my blog,
sathyagraha.blogspot.com, where i have documented how -

The Andhra Pradesh High Court has systematically denied me due process.

The State Information Commissioner has concocted a transparent ruse to
rubbish the RTI Act 2005.

The Chief Secretary, the top bureaucrat of Andhra Pradesh, has personally
supervised the false and misleading information that was fed to me and has
also lied to the High court. The State Information Secretary never
represented himself in the Court.

The Chief Information Commissioner, in New Delhi, has comprehensively
contumed the RTI Act 2005, has chosen to not examine the false claims of the
Prime Minister's Office and has punished me for standing up for the proper
implementation of the Act.

Not only has the Prime Minister's Office, violated the RTI Act 2005 it has,
perhaps inevitably, clearly kept the Hon'ble Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh
in the dark about their sordid juvenile delinquency.

The Prime Minister's Office has not answered, or even acknowledged my letter
to him sent by registered post, number 9700, dated June 15, 2009.

After a great deal of work by the concerned postal authorities, I finally got
the acknowledgment due for the Speed Post dated 28 July 2009 on 17th August.
The letter had been delivered to the PMO on the 1st August and normally, I
would have received the acknowledgment not later than a week from that date.

I had also described to you the President's helpline, launched with fanfare.

I finally received a response:

Name : Shri Divakar S Natarajan
Date of Receipt : 04 Aug 2009
Current Status : The petition is transferred
Date of Transfer : 19 Aug 2009
State Government : Government of Andhra Pradesh
Officer's Name : Shri C.R.Biswal
Designation : Principal Secretary
Address : General Administration Deptt.
3rd Floor, B Block, AP Sectt.,
Hyderabad
Telephone No. :

Note: You are requested to further liaise in the matter directly with
Principal Secretary, Government of Andhra Pradesh, General Administration
Deptt.3rd Floor, B Block, AP Sectt., Hyderabad for further information.

Well, if my President asks me to, I shall obey.

But are you and your esteemed readers, convinced that the President's
intervention in this form is adequate to address the issues that I have
documented ?

Or is it a, properly worded sigh of helplessness ?

Thursday, August 20, 2009

The President Of India's Helpline Is A Waste Of Time.

Shri Christy L Fernandez,
Secretary to The President Of India,
New Delhi.

Dear Shri Fernandez,

When a citizen petitions the President of India, it is reasonable that he expects a comprehensive, well considered and honest answer.

He does not expect to be thrown back into the bureaucratic quagmire.

The following is a comment that has been published by The Economist:

divakarssathya wrote:
August 20, 2009 6:42

In my earlier comment, I had pointed out how the Indian ruling elite,The Press, The Judiciary, The Bureaucracy and of course The Political Class work together to do nothing, so that desperate citizens who value their sanity and innocence can then prostrate to them, acknowledge them as their true fathers and mothers,mai-baap, pay them a percentage of their income and eke out a living as vassals.

You had kindly permitted me to invite your esteemed readers to my blog, sathyagraha.blogspot.com, where i have documented how -

The Andhra Pradesh High Court has systematically denied me due process.

The State Information Commissioner has concocted a transparent ruse to rubbish the RTI Act 2005.

The Chief Secretary, the top bureaucrat of Andhra Pradesh, has personally supervised the false and misleading information that was fed to me and has also lied to the High court. The State Information Secretary never represented himself in the Court.

The Chief Information Commissioner, in New Delhi, has comprehensively contumed the RTI Act 2005, has chosen to not examine the false claims of the Prime Minister's Office and has punished me for standing up for the proper implementation of the Act.

Not only has the Prime Minister's Office, violated the RTI Act 2005 it has, perhaps inevitably, kept the Hon'ble Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh in the dark about their sordid juvenile delinquency.

The Prime Minister's Office has not answered, or even acknowledged my letter to him sent by registered post, number 9700, dated June 15, 2009.

After a great deal of work by the concerned postal authorities, I finally got the acknowledgment due for the Speed Post dated 28 July 2009 on 17th August. The letter had been delivered to the PMO on the 1st August and normally, I would have received the acknowledgment not later than a week from that date.

I had also described to you the President's helpline, launched with fanfare.

I finally received a response:

Name : Shri Divakar S Natarajan
Date of Receipt : 04 Aug 2009
Current Status : The petition is transferred
Date of Transfer : 19 Aug 2009
State Government : Government of Andhra Pradesh
Officer's Name : Shri C.R.Biswal
Designation : Principal Secretary
Address : General Administration Deptt.
3rd Floor, B Block, AP Sectt.,
Hyderabad
Telephone No. :

Note: You are requested to further liaise in the matter directly with Principal Secretary, Government of Andhra Pradesh, General Administration Deptt.3rd Floor, B Block, AP Sectt., Hyderabad for further information.

Well, if my President asks me to, I shall obey.

But are you and your esteemed readers, convinced that the President's intervention in this form is adequate to address the issues that I have documented ?

Or is it a, properly worded sigh of helplessness ?"

You have my cell phone number.

I will be delighted to receive your response at your earliest convenience.

Sincerely,

divakar.


PS Incidentally,

1. Political Secretary (GAD) CR Biswal is the same officer who supervised the stream of false and misleading statements, that I have documented.

2. He is no longer the Political Secretary (GAD). The current political secretary is Shri R M Gonella, with whom I have been in touch.