A woman heads Oxford, an Irish at that!

James Anthony Froude may have been a renowned professor of religious history at Oxford, but what endeared him to his class of Englishmen of the century gone by was their shared derision of everything Irish.

Froude became famous for his racist writings, often featuring the Irish, in the late 19th century, the oft quoted of them all being, “...more like squalid apes than human beings. ...unstable as water. ...only efficient military despotism [can succeed in Ireland] ...the wild Irish understand only force”.

We don’t know what Froude thought of Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde  – both were in Oxford, he at Oriel while the Irishman was at Magdalen – and Froude would have never dreamt that an Irishwoman would head the prim-and-proper refectory of Englishness a century or so after him.

Oxford University has appointed Professor Louise Richardson as the next Vice-Chancellor. The seven-year term beginning January 1, 2016 is subject to affirmation of her name by the university congregation.

Once that formality is over, Prof. Richardson would become the first woman Vice-Chancellor of Oxford in the university’s 800-year recorded history.

She is everything a proverbial Oxfordian would not be. She is not English. She didn’t attend Eton, or any private school for that matter. She didn’t study at any English university. She graduated from Trinity in Dublin and got a doctorate from Harvard. She specializes in terrorism studies, far removed from “Greats”, the exalted subject of study at Oxford.

But then, this isn’t the first time she may be raising eyebrows for her un-English characteristics. When she was imported to the UK from Harvard and appointed Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of St. Andrews – the third oldest university in the English-speaking world after Oxford and Cambridge and where the future king of England studied and found a bride – she was not only first woman appointee to the post, she was also the first Roman Catholic in that post.

The snobs wouldn’t let her forget her trespassing. When she took up the post at St. Andrews, she was taunted by members of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club – one of the oldest and prestigious golf clubs in the world, based in St Andrews and worldwide regarded as the ‘home of golf’, having been the governing body of the game for centuries. She was not made a member because she was a woman. She did not shy away from pointing out to the discrimination, forcing the club to eventually overturn their decision. Even the then British Prime Minister Gordon Brown frowned in public at their membership policy.

Payback time for Oxford, some public school Britons who failed to get admission to Oxbridge said of her appointment. At least that is what is trending over there and even the grumpy English media finds it suits these times to go with the sentiment.

The Professor, on her part, hasn’t lost her Irish element a bit despite the overwhelming influences at the post-modern Harvard or the up-and-coming St Andrews. She bared her feelings, probably what she held close to herself all these years, as that of the underdog who made it despite all odds.

The first thing she said: “I look forward to the day when a woman being appointed isn’t in itself news.”

The reality she underscored: “Unfortunately, academia like most professions is pyramid-shaped – the higher up you go the fewer women there are.”

The veiled admission of Oxford’s snobbery of ignoring applications from students who aren’t from private schools: “This has been a priority for me at St Andrews, where we have dramatically increased the proportion of poor kids we accept.”

The courage of the self-made: “My parents did not go to college, most of my siblings did not go to college. The trajectory of my life has been made possible by education. So I am utterly committed to others having the same opportunity I have had.”

Chris Patten, or Baron Patton of Barnes to name his title, the university’s chancellor, said Richardson’s “distinguished record both as an educational leader and as an outstanding scholar provides an excellent basis for her to lead Oxford in the coming years”. That’s quite a eulogy, coming from the “last Englishman in Asia” as he was wont to be described as he left Hong Kong in 1997 after handing over the British colony to China.

How does Louise’s appointment impact Oxford’s age-old institutional rivalry with Cambridge? For most of their history, they didn’t permit women to study and receive degrees. It was only in the late 19th century that they established colleges exclusively for women – Cambridge leading with Girton College in 1869 and Oxford following Lady Margaret Hall in 1878. But when it came to having women Vice-Chancellor’s Cambridge has a real edge. It appointed Dame Alison Richard way back in 2003.

But all those years in the past when Britannica was best, Oscar Wilde wrote in De Profundis, a letter during his imprisonment: "The two great turning points in my life were when my father sent me to Oxford, and when society sent me to prison."

So, is the Oxford post Richardson’s turning point? She told The Irish Times: “I once asked my father what were his ambitions for his four daughters. He thought about it for a while and said – ‘that one enter the convent and none end on the shelf’.”

Mediating Bofors: A Presidential Recollection

Swedish national daily 'Dagens Nyhetter' Editor-in-Chief Peter Wolodarski was barely eight years old when the Bofors deal was struck in 1986, the same year that the Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, who wrangled the deal thanks to his friendship with his Indian counterpart Rajiv Gandhi, was killed.

By the time he was 12, Wolodarski was a journalist. Or so, the Wikipedia page on him claims. This prodigal journalist was probably touring India for the first time, but he was certainly interviewing the President of India for the first time. And, certainly, for the last time.

Interviewing the head of a state is an important assignment. You are expected to take it seriously. You are expected to prepare yourself seriously. Wolodarski, now 37, did neither. http://www.dn.se/nyheter/varlden/bofors-was-a-media-trial-says-president-of-india/

If at all, the interview illustrates his unexplained cynicism and a puerile attempt at portraying the President as a political person, on the eve of the latter’s visit to Sweden – the first by an Indian President. Believe me, this person wouldn’t last a week in an Indian newspaper! Can you imagine him asking Mukherjee what he thinks of Putin!

My brief on Wolodarski’s subjectivities will remain unjustified till I quote from a portion of his article where he trying to make the Swedes understand Mukherjee. He writes:

“Pranab Mukherjee is the opposite (to PM Narendra Modi): he is a veteran of the Congress Party, which dominated Indian politics, and which Olof Palme’s Social Democrats had close cooperation with. President Mukherjee has belonged to the country’s political elite since Indira Gandhi’s days. Since the early 1970s, he has occupied just about every governmental position that one can imagine – except for one, Prime Minister. But for the Nehru-Gandhi family’s total dominance in the post-war India, Mukherjee might have also managed to lead the government.

Instead, he became president three years ago, a role that is essentially ceremonial.”

Even a primary school student would say, correctly, that Wolodarski, came to the interview with a premeditated political mind.

He then asks Mukherjee what “he hopes to achieve” in Sweden. The President says,  “to strengthen the relationship”. He mentions several areas, but certainly, and specifically, not defence.

Yet, Wolodarski thinks he has reached a right point in his article to recall the Bofors scandal, gives a brief summary and writes:

“In New Delhi, we are skilfully assured that “The Bofors ghost” is buried, and perhaps that change in particular has contributed to the state visit.

I didn’t plan on taking up the old armaments corruption scandals, but rather on asking a question about how new Bofors affairs with the accompanying corruption can be avoided, especially if trade between Sweden and India is to increase.”

Then, he notes:

“At this point, President Mukherjee becomes animated:

- First of all - it is yet to be to be established that there was a scandal. No Indian court has established it, he reminds us.

- I was the defence minister of the country long after Bofors, and all my generals certified that this is one of the best guns we are having. Till today, Indian army is using it.

- The so-called scandal which you talk of, yes, in the media, it was there. There was a media trial. But I’m afraid, let us not be too much carried by publicity.

So it was a media scandal? (this is the sub-heading)

-I do not know. I’m not describing it, you’re putting that word. Don’t put that word. What I am saying is that in media it was publicised. But up to now, no Indian court has given any decisive verdict about the alleged scandal.”

Wolodarski does not explain what exactly led to Mukherjee becoming “animated” with reference to Bofors.  And the President’s wouldn’t tell, would he?

His remarks were bound to attract attention from the very Indian media which probably faced the stiffest silence from the country’s political leadership – read primarily as the Congress leadership -- in its attempts all these years to unravel the final truth about the Bofors scandal.

The issue trended in the social media platforms as well. But no one was willing to say what he or she truly felt, no one willing to share any ounce of information he or she still possessed or had access to. They had the right excuse this time – how can one comment on what the First Citizen of this country said?

But why did Mukherjee say what he said? The utterance is such that it lacks the sophistication of an innocent remark. I do not want to disrespect the President in any manner, but that is the sense I get.

We are a democracy, we have an independent media, and short of imputing motives we have the right to ask:

1.Was it a redemption of a political debt to the first family of the Congress?

2.Would his silence to the question have been more meaningful?

3.Is it believable that Bofors was only a media trial and there was nothing more to it?

4.Was that an attempt to re-write history and if so, whose?

Having said that, to be fair to the President, should he have instead said, yes, it was a scandal? Would that have enriched the image of his and the country’s stature on the eve of his visit to Sweden? No. It would have ended up embroiling the President’s Office in a scandal. It would have led to an embarrassing moment in Indo-Swedish relations. When asked a direct question, I do not think the President had much room to maneouvre to avoid saying anything that could be construed as inappropriate and politically incorrect. His statement does not take away even an inch from the Indian media its insistent efforts to bring the Bofors culprits to book howsoever high they might have been. I don’t think no journalist is seriously hurt by the use of the phrase, “media trial”. That’s the media’s bread and butter!

The world has moved on. India revoked the Bofors blacklisting when there was a sudden demand for the gun’s spare parts during the Kargil war. Since, AB Bofors has changed owners so many times it’s quite complex to recall here. Most of the dramatis personae of the scandal are dead. The Swedes are desperate for defence ties with India, what with their companies bound to get their balance sheets hurt if they don’t get a part of the big Indian defence slice. No wonder that they vociferously support the Make In India campaign – so long as they get the contracts to help Indian companies set up defence manufacture in India. Recall the Sweden India Nobel Memorial Week, which began to focus on Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Vidyarthi themed on “Sweden Made in India: Co-creating the Future”, organized by the Swedish embassy in India. Sweden expects a big fillip to trade tries following Mukherjee’s visit and they are leaving no stone unturned to make the visit memorable. In spite of Wolodarski.

Parting nuggets:

• The most famous of the many owners of Bofors was none other than Alfred Nobel, who owned it from 1894 until his death two years later. The credit of turning Bofors from an iron and steel producer to manufacturer of cannons.
• Three members of the same family, all of whom became PMs of India, went to Sweden, within a gap of nearly 15 from each other! Nehru in 1957, Indira Gandhi in 1972 and Rajiv Gandhi in 1986 and 1988.
• “Kroners for Cronies” was the phrase – alluding to the friendship between Rajiv Gandhi and Olof Palme – that rang through the world media in the early days after two Swedish Radio reporters first talked about the scandal in their bulletin on the morning of April 16, 1987.
• VP Singh came to power by campaigning against the scandal – his references to the Lotus account, his popular act of taking a small calculator out of his pocket to tell crowds in 1989 that it contained the Swiss Bank account number – but did nothing to solve the kickbacks mystery.
• George Fernandes talked about exposing the kickbacks accounts and Ram Jethmalani asked Rajiv Gandhi 10 questions a day, but nothing happened when they became defence minister and law minister, respectively, in the Vajpayee government. Jethmalani would go on to represent the Hinduja brothers win their way out of the courts in 2003.
• One man who made his mark was an emerging brilliant lawyer, Arun Jaitley. VP Singh appointed him Additional Solicitor General in 1990 and he pursued the case with great vigour.

Aruna Shanbaug: Made To Live At All Costs

Can you be alive yet not be living? Aruna Shanbaug can’t say because she is dead. She couldn’t say when she was alive either.  

For 42 long years unnatural causes forced life on her. That’s what her medical history says. She is dead today owing to natural causes. That’s what her death certificate will now say.

And we all played God to give her life she couldn’t lead for over four decades for a crime she did not commit but suffered.

The facts of the case are well known. In November, 1973, Aruna a junior nurse at Mumbai’s KEM Hospital, was forcibly sodomised by a ward boy who first choked her with a dog chain to subdue her.

The choking cut off oxygen supply to her brain. Her brain stem was injured and so was her cervical cord. She developed blindness as well.

But the police registered a case only of robbery and attempted murder.  Why? The doctors at the hospital perhaps thought public knowledge of sodomy would stigmatise her life and did not disclose it to anyone. They played God.

The rapist was caught but tried only for assault and robbery. No policeman, no lawyer, no one thought it fit to check the case facts a second time. That fellow was out of jail after seven years in jail and we don’t know how many more Aruna’s were left in his wake. Neither the police, nor the courts, nor the hospital,have any photographic evidence of the rapist!

Aruna was better off dead than survive a vegetable. But she couldn’t even know that. She was kept in the hospital. The nurses cared for her. They were happy they were caring for her. They fought against the Bombay Municipal Corporation which was thinking of getting Aruna to vacate her hospital bed. They wanted her to live at all costs. They would care for her at all costs. Whether it mattered to her or not, whether she liked it or not, whether she had a say in it or not. They played God.

The days passed, turned into weeks. Weeks turned into months and months into years and years into decades. Her fellow nurses aged, neared retirement, or even retired, had children and grand children of their own. They continued to take care of Aruna. Her features became older, the skin rougher, the hair grey. She attained the age of retirement, but she didn’t know it. She turned 60 two years later, but she didn’t know it. In fact, she never knew how she lived all these 42 years.

And yet we wouldn’t relent.

Journalist Pinki Virani wanted euthanasia for Aruna. India has no euthanasia law. The Supreme Court took up the case. It ruled in favour of passive euthanasia. But with a rider. It is not applicable in Aruna’s case. Why?

This is what the 2011 judgment says: “From the above examination by the team of doctors, it cannot be said that Aruna Shanbaug is dead. Whatever the condition of her cortex, her brain stem is certainly alive. She does not need a heart--lung machine. She breathes on her own without the help of a respirator. She digests food, and her body performs other involuntary function without any help. From the CD (which we had screened in the courtroom on 2.3.2011 in the presence of counsels and others) it appears that she can certainly not be called dead. She was making some sounds, blinking, eating food put in her mouth, and even licking with her tongue morsels on her mouth.”

The court hardly saw any possibility of remission but the question was “whether her life support system (which is done by feeding her) should be withdrawn, and at whose instance?” Such a decision is taken by the immediate family or close relatives or in the absence of any of them – as in Aruna’s case – “a person or a body of persons acting as a next friend”.

The court went on to state that “it is the KEM hospital staff, who have been amazingly caring for her day and night for so many long years, who really are her next friends, and not Ms. Pinky
Virani who has only visited her on few occasions and written a book on her”.

And so, came the order: “Hence it is for the KEM hospital staff to take that decision. The KEM hospital staff have clearly expressed their wish that Aruna Shanbaug should be allowed to live.”

Finally everything boiled down to who was her friend -- the nurses who wanted her to live or Virani who wanted her to die.

The critical, larger, unemotional, pragmatic, path-breaking, scientific, fundamental, constitutional question of whether Aruna’s case on the basis of medical assessment and prognosis of her condition merited passive euthanasia was decided on the basis of who could legally decide her fate and who had already decided that her life had to be prolonged. Who played God?

Post-Script:

Today, Pragna Pai, former Dean of KEM Hospital was asked why they were against passive euthanasia for Aruna. She said: “Our belief system doesn't allow us to play God and decide death and birth. It was that reason. Personally I felt she needed routine comfort. The nurses felt they could take care. She was after all an ex colleague. And since her family abandoned her it was even a reason to take care of her.”  In any case, they did not have her consent for euthanasia, she added.

India and China: Who’s Carrot, Who’s Stick?

Our experts are comfortable with the idea that India is an emerging power centre, using that notion to largely explain its multi-pronged approach to foreign policy.

We think mutual back-slapping with Obama and Abe is a strong counter to China reaching out to Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Signing a cost-ineffective deal for an old naval carrier with Russia is sending another signal to China, we assume. We send our President to Vietnam and host their Prime Minister in New Delhi to indicate we know all about the South China Sea dispute.

We cloak these acts of steel with a fabric of geniality. Our Prime Minister receives the President of China in his home state of Gujarat and teaches him how to work the charkha in Sabarmati Ashram. Our Prime Minister goes to China with full information on Chinese monk Xuanzang trip to Gujarat 1400 years ago. We also ask BJP chief Amit Shah to defer meeting the Dalai Lama before our Prime Minister’s visit to China.

The hot-and-cold – or carrot-and-stick, if you wish – policy has its returns, the experts tell us. The Chinese President received our Prime Minister in his home province of Xi’an. We signed not one, not two, but 24 agreements worth 10 billion dollars in various sectors. There’s also this proposed tie-up between Doordarshan and its Chinese counterpart, CCTV. But the icing on the cake is we Indians now have access to a motorable route to Mansarovar and Mount Kailash, the mythical abode of Shiva.

If you look at it this way, our Prime Minister’s visit to China will be deemed a success. That’s how these experts will keep projecting it in the coming days.

I cannot say if they are right or wrong because I am not an expert. I get a different sense of what happened.

Like many other nations we also went to China to attract investments. We got them. As a bonus, we can reach Shiva’s abode faster. And we are now convinced that more and more Chinese can speak in Hindi do Yoga. We will soon have Chennai familiarizing itself with Chongqing, Hyderabad with Gingdao. The Chinese will also help us set up a skill centre in the Ahmedabad of Gandhi.

As to our Prime Minister, he was received with so much warmth by Xi Jinping. They took care to offer an all-bean spread in deference to Modi’s personal gastronomy – assorted vegetables with pancake and red bean rice, bean curd with mushroom, water chestnut in bean sauce, braised asparagus and bamboo fungus and lotus root.

Those were their carrots. And here were their sticks. Even before CCTV broadcast a controversial map of India that showed Arunachal Pradesh as 'South Tibet' and excluded large parts of Jammu and Kashmir, their mouth piece Global Times had written about Modi’s visit:

1."Modi has been busy strengthening India's ties with neighbouring countries to compete with China, while trying to take advantage of the tremendous opportunities for economic development created by China.

2."Modi has also been playing little tricks over border disputes and security issues”, hoping to boost his domestic prestige while increasing his leverage in negotiations with China.

3.”Modi should no longer visit the disputed border region (Arunachal Pradesh) in pursuit of his own political interests, nor should he deliver any remarks that infringe on the consensus on bilateral ties.”

4.”The Indian government should completely stop supporting the Dalai Lama, and stop making the Tibetan issue a stumbling block to the Sino-Indian relationship.”

The message was clear. Know your place. Is that what the Chinese are telling India?

Our Prime Minister has talked of “nation first” as a preamble to all his policies. It is not fair to put it down only to nationalist ideology. The phrase has found an echo in programmes like Swachch Bharat. But where the phrase matters most, when we deal with neighbours like China to resolve disputes, specially of the border-and-boundary kind, has it yielded us any ground?

What does China want? For a country which concealed its capabilities for years, it’s splurges into infrastructure development is an open book today. The revival of the Silk Route, the proposed maritime Silk Route, the industrial banks, the speed rails, energy pipeline networks, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, etc, make transparent it’s need to expand its economic tentacles, at least initially, all over Asia, and ever progressing westward.

In other words, China would be happy to see the American influence over Asia weaken. Things have not come to that as yet, so it is still easy for us and countries like ours to play both sides. But what happens when the time of reckoning comes? What choice we, unlike other countries who have no border disputes with China, will then make?

In his joint press statement with Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang, our Prime Minister said this about the border dispute:

”On the boundary question, we agreed that we continue to explore a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable resolution. We both reiterated our strong commitment to make all efforts to maintain peace and tranquility in the border region. I found sensitivity to our concerns on this issue; and, interest in further intensifying confidence building measures. I also reiterated the importance of clarification of Line of Actual Control in this regard.”

Eight months ago, when the President of China was in India, our Prime Minister had said:

“I raised our serious concern over repeated incidents along the border. We agreed that peace and tranquility in the border region constitutes an essential foundation for mutual trust and confidence and for realizing the full potential of our relationship. This is an important understanding, which should be observed diligently. While our border related agreements and confidence building measures have worked well, I also suggested that clarification of Line of Actual Control would greatly contribute to our efforts to maintain peace and tranquility and requested President Xi to resume the stalled process of clarifying the LAC. We should also seek an early settlement of the boundary question.”

Save the contrasts in writing styles, the crux of our statements over the years has not changed much.

Our geographic position and demographic disposition give us no option but to play the global political game. The lack of an option is true for all countries, though the compulsions vary. The only difference is that those who play the game and simultaneously continue to grow economically often stay on course longer.

We may have expanded our world-view in the last 12 months thanks to our Prime Minister’s visits to 19 countries – nine more in the pipe line – but the message is getting clearer day by day: Look inward to expand outward. We need to focus more on getting things right with all our internal wrongs which currently, literally, stink. At the same time, let us learn the basics of becoming a geo-political player by first getting things right with our immediate neighbours. Moving men and material to Nepal in the time it takes to blink is by all means a great humanitarian effort but cannot be an indicator of our regional influence. There is still Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and then there is Pakistan. Then only, China.    

Section 304-A: Drunk Drivers’ Boon, Their Victim’s Bane

Salman Khan’s case is about his alleged drunken state that fateful night. A person driving in an inebriated condition does not have control over the vehicle. And accidents can happen. They did happen. People can get killed. People got killed.

The question is should Salman have been punished only for drunk driving or for killing a person?  

Had he been charged only under Section 304-A, he would have been let off or made to serve a simple jail term. As to the death, he would have been asked to pay a paltry fine as compensation to the kin of the dead. End of story.

But there was someone who perhaps considered it was not justice, considered that the crime was heinous than mere negligent driving and that the accused was also responsible for the dead person. In the event, Salman was charged under Section 304-II. That’s the only way he could have got five years.

Salman Khan is lucky to get away with five years. Had he been in Japan – where the SUV he was driving comes from – he would have been in jail for 15 years. And Japanese courts would have completed the trial and sentenced him in 2002 itself. Salman in that case would be expecting to get out any time now! Being in India, and what Indians can do to “manage” law, he is yet to begin his jail term. Rather, he is yet to go to jail!

In India, the laws related to offences such as Salman’s are superficial and their enforcement is often turned into a farce. The Salman verdict is no deterrent to future accidental deaths caused by drunk drivers.

I am not saying it. It is the Supreme Court itself saying it. Ruling in the Alister Periera case similar to Salman’s (http://indiankanoon.org/doc/79026890/),in 2012, it said: “It is high time that law makers revisit the sentencing policy reflected in Section 304A IPC.” That is the crux of the matter.

Rash and negligent driving in this country is dealt with under Section 304A of the Indian Penal Code. It says: “S.304A.-- Causing death by negligence.— Whoever causes the death of any person by doing any rash or negligent act not amounting to culpable homicide, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to two years, or with fine, or with both.”

This deals with death caused by any rash or negligent act and where the death is not caused intentionally. In nearly all such cases, the accused are either let off after paying a fine or, in some rare cases, a brief time in jail. In all such cases, however, the accused gets bail. All a lawyer has to prove is that the accused did not have any intention to cause the death (culpable homicide not amounting to murder). That’s all.

Actor Raaj Kumar’s son, Puru, was similarly let off in 1993 thanks to this section even though he was drunk while driving, ploughed over sleeping people in Mumbai and killed two of them. And it was this very section Salman was originally charged under in 2002.

The problems began only after courts intervened and upgraded the crime and charged him under Section 304-II of the IPC. This provides for punishment for culpable homicide not amounting to murder. The relevant portion of the section reads: “if the act is done with the knowledge that it is likely to cause death, but without any intention to cause death, or to cause such bodily injury as is likely to cause death".

In Salman’s case, the courts probably felt that Section 304-A punishment was too little. So, Section 304-II was stipulated. I assume this means that the courts thought any person with reasonable brains – and Salman has one – knows and understands that if he drives, that too at high speed, when drunk, he can cause accidents which can lead to deaths. Which means, even though he had no intention to kill anyone, he was aware that if he was driving drunk he could cause an accident which could kill someone.

There are those who contend that Salman should have been tried under Section 304-A. Their logic is: This section specifically relates to rash and negligent driving. And that is exactly what Salman was accused of. A specific offence, a specific law. Period. Then why apply a “general law” like Section 304-II and complicate matters?

Obviously this logic does not even consider the fact that Salman’s act caused the death of a person. A life snuffed out for no reason. And the accused simply gets away with a fine or a simple jail term just because the section he was charged with does not charge him also with causing the death? By giving the logic that the accused simply did not have the intention to kill that person?

Nonsense.

In the Pereira case, the Supreme Court said the punishment should be commensurate with the gravity of the crime. In that case, Periera, whose drunk drivng caused the death of seven persons in Mumbai in 2006, questioned the application of Section 304-II.

The court upheld the use of that section: “….the appellant can be attributed with knowledge that his act of driving the vehicle at a high speed in the rash or negligent manner was dangerous enough and he knew that one result would very likely be that people who were asleep on the pavement may be hit, should the vehicle go out of control. There is a presumption that a man knows the natural and likely consequences of his acts.”

In the court’s view, Periera’s action – similar to Salman’s – was a “despicable aggravated offence”. It did not want any leniency to be shown to the accused: “Seven precious human lives were lost by the act of the accused. For an offence like this which has been proved against the appellant, sentence of three years awarded by the High Court is too meagre and not adequate…”

Time to call for a serious look at Section 304-A? Don’t want the next such case to drag on for a generation or the next Salman let off with a fine, do we?

Crime – Hit and Run; Justice – Hit and Miss

Quite funny how justice is meted out in courts. I’m talking about hit-and-run cases involving cinema artistes.

Here’s a queer coincidence involving two hit-and-run cases.

When:

1. December 7, 1997. 

2. September 28, 2002.

Where:

1. Bandra,  Mumbai

2.Bandra, Mumbai

Who:

1. Puru Raaj Kumar, Bollywood actor

2. Salman Khan, Bollywood actor

What vehicle:

1.Imported car

2.Imported car.

How:

1.Drunk driving, vehicle ploughs down sleeping people road-side

2.Drunk driving, vehicle ploughs down sleeping people road-side

Deaths:

1.Three dead, one maimed, 2 injured

2.One dead, 4 injured

Compensation paid:

1.Rs. 1 lakh to victims

2.Rs.19 lakh to victims

Result:
1.No conviction, accused let off

2.Conviction, 5-year jail term.

The judicial system has come a long way since Puru Raaj Kumar escaped conviction despite the deaths of three persons because of his drunken driving. That perhaps sealed the fate of Salman Khan. Even though it took a whopping 12 years for the legal system to reach the end of the tunnel.

In the first case, Puru was charged under section 304-I of the IPC, for causing death due to rash driving which has a maximum punishment of two years. It is a bailable section. Puru got bail. Eventually, he was not even convicted and let off after paying a paltry fine.

In the second case too, Salman was initially charged under section 304-i. He too got bail. But the Mumbai police later invoked section-ii. Salman challenged it all the way up to the Supreme Court, but in vain. So, he is in jail today.

What is this section 304-ii of the IPC?

It says: Punishment for culpable homicide not amounting to murder.—Whoever commits culpable homicide not amounting to murder shall be punished with 1[imprisonment for life], or imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years, and shall also be liable to fine, if the act by which the death is caused is done with the intention of causing death, or of causing such bodily injury as is likely to cause death, or with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years, or with fine, or with both, if the act is done with the knowledge that it is likely to cause death, but without any intention to cause death, or to cause such bodily injury as is likely to cause death.

Why was this section not used in the Puru case? Till then, strangely, it was routine practice is to book the accused for rash and negligent driving— a bailable offence punishable by a maximum of two years. The serious charge of culpable homicide was never applied on the ground perhaps that this charge is difficult to prove.

Why was this section applied in Salman’s case. Salman is no Puru. Mighty star of Bollywood. High-profile case. High-profile coverage. High-profile attention. Finally, the supreme court had to intervene. Even then, it took nearly four years before the Mumbai magistrate framed charges under 304-ii against Salman in October, 2006. Also, there was another case where section-ii was being debated. It was a Mumbai case too.

Now we come to the third hit-and-run case of Mumbai involving Alistair Periera. Like Puru and Salman before him, a drunk Alistair ploughed his imported vehicle (coincidence) over a group of sleeping people (coincidence) somewhere in Bandra (coincidence) on November 12, 2006. Seven persons died.

If you thought the police by then smarting from the Puru and Salman episodes would have charged him under section 304-ii, guest again. He was granted bail! Not only that, he was convicted under section 304(a) – causing death by rash and negligent act – and awarded six-months in jail and fine of Rs. 5 lakh. Pereira challenged the conviction in the high court which actually enhanced the charge to section 304-ii and also the punishment to three years. It was not before the Supreme Court upheld it that Periera finally gave up challenging.

In the Puru case, there was not even talk about section 304-ii.

In the Periera case, it took five months – between April and September, 2007 – for the high court to enhance the charge to section 304-ii.

In the Salman case, it took nearly nine years  -- October, 2002 to December, 2013 – for the court to uphold the charge under section 304-ii against him.

Why so much delay?

I don’t see any reason for such delay. Ask the system.

Good Journalists do Bad Journalism

In response to Dr. Prannoy Roy's speech on current status of journalism in India: http://www.ndtv.com/opinion/prannoy-roy-on-the-tabloidization-of-indian-news-760247?pfrom=home-cheatsheet)

Dear Dr. Roy,

I have never had the opportunity to work with you. It will remain one of my professional regrets.

Tabloidization, like all catch-phrases, is largely misused in the public sphere. British academics coined this word a few decades ago to understand their changed media environment as news broadcasters were confronted with the culture of the market and beginning to fathom its impact on their news content.

What is tabloidization to them is not necessarily so for us. Our cultural context in which we disseminate news is quite different from theirs. Can you imagine the BBC or even ITN beginning the day without the ubiquitous weather report? No, just as our audiences cannot imagine going without a morning dose of astrology. Both, in their own way, determine how the day goes for viewers in the UK and India, respectively.

My doctoral thesis in the UK related to researching reasons for the dumbing down of news content in Indian commercial news channels. And I have had first-hand experience of just how this happens (I don’t have to tell you that!).

Before I embark on the rest of my commentary, let me correct a factual error in your address. The first-ever, privately produced English, news and current affairs bulletin in India on Doordarshan was “The First Edition”, produced by the Asia Pacific Communication Associates. I know that for a fact because I as News Editor produced that bulletin, presented by Dileep Padgaonkar, and rushed the tape to Doordarshan just in time for the broadcast in the morning of December 12, 1994. The rest of the production houses’ programmes followed.

Ratings is a seven-letter English word which, for journalists, is a more derogatory epithet than its shorter, four-letter sibling beginning with the sixth alphabet. But our lives revolve around it. No escape. Ask the BBC. Even the grandfather of “good journalism” is its victim. For the public service broadcaster, the audience ratings are critical in order to defend the legitimacy of its licence fee!

Our world of news broadcasting is quite young. Excluding the USA from our communication and limiting the comparison with the UK, the ITN was born in 1955. BBC, beginning its broadcasting in 1937, is a little older. In India, Pratima Puri read her first regular, daily news bulletin on Doordarshan in 1965. Zee came in 1992.

Yet, thanks to technology, we have aged faster as broadcast journalists than our British peers.

When we talk of good journalism and bad journalism, we must be clear what exactly are we talking about? As a journalist, I think we should only be talking about living true to the traditional principles of news gathering – objectivity, neutrality, factual, ethical. But we are not talking of these things, aren’t we? Why?

We are talking about ratings. We are talking about our relations with sources. We are talking about astrology. We are talking about a responsible internet. We are talking about democracy in our DNA.

When I last read Harold Evans, these weren’t mentioned as being among the traditional values of news craft.

And yet these are the factors which seem to concern us. This is at best a self-instilled diversionary tactic. We have come a long way from our traditional news rooms into our glitzy, multi-million-rupee virtual reality sets where we parody news. All of us. Without exception. We have come so far down the line it is very difficult to go back up the line. So, we clutch at straws. Like rating, sources, astrology, internet, even democracy.

There is as much a credible discourse about tabloidization, or bad journalism, as there is about good journalism. We understand bad journalism to define good journalism. Bad journalism is anything that is sensationalist, populist, irascible, shocking, irresponsible, lying, name-calling; everything good journalism is not. Academic Bob Franklin calls it Newszak, his Australian colleague John Langer calls it the Other News, John Glencross of UK’s Independent Television Commission calls it the Pelvic News.

What’s bad about bad journalism? I’m trying to call a spade a spade here. What’s wrong with an astrology programme or reconstruction of a crime scene or a fiery, live pow-wow between feuding politicians or a hyped news package?

How is it differently “bad” from a virtual reality set – which suits a light entertainment programme more than a news studio – a two-way live between anchor and reporter – where the reporter chats without knowledge instead of going about the primary duty of gathering information – and blatant misuse of technology to come up with alarmist theme tunes and slugs, incomprehensible graphics, fake lives and repeated preview of “stories yet to come”, etc? These exercises to catch the viewer’s attention span, just like the crime-cinema-sport nexus or the astrology programme or the meaningless debates – which are anyway well past the point of danger of being degraded to the absurd -- are an insult to the viewer’s intelligence.

And yet we go about all this every day, diligently, ritualistically. And still we talk about Tabloidization?

However, when we place all these gimmickry in the Indian cultural context, it makes for some meaning. For the majority of the Indian population, the television continues to be the lone source of entertainment. It is the single-window system for getting news, views and all that in an entertaining manner. What the public needs, the public gets. Period. If the public does not want it, it will tell us so, quite emphatically at that. So, no point being moralistic about it, unless the platform is one of public service broadcasting. Let us not become hypocrites. We cannot be part of a private, commercial establishment dealing in news the content of which is tailored entirely to suit better and increasing advertising revenues and yet behave like we are all Woodwards and Bernsteins. By the way, in the US, journalism students often refer to them in quizzes and even examinations as Redford and Hoffman!

I used to think when the TAM ratings system was in vogue that a person belonging to the SEC AB segment would be a high-brow professional and influencer till I came to know the person was actually of the rank of a small trader!  Does it go on to prove that the ratings system was and will be attuned to the survival of Tabloid journalism which brings in all the eyeballs than good journalism?

But all this is besides the point. The truth of the matter is that in the media industry, in our world of journalism, everything is dictated by a “us” and “them” binary. “Us” denotes the upholders of good journalism, the high-brow suits who are part of the affluent intelligentsia, our thinking elite. These are the people who name-drop – whether the schools or colleges they attended, their mates among the top UPSC cadres, industry or politics, who intuitively take on the mantle of gate-keeping the country, its people, its policies and even its consumption of news. The “us” are the statusquoists, the traditionalists, some of whom hire journalists from among the kids of certain social stature or of parents in influential services.  “Them” denotes, obviously, the rest, those two-penny chaps who are always awfully aspirational, whose aspirations reach nowhere, who form the big, bad, broad base segment of the country’s population, who need decisions taken for them, who need to be told whom to vote in elections, who can even be journalists without achieving positions of influence, and who like bad journalism.

This binary has divided this country from the times of British rule. It continues to divide us culturally, linguistically, economically, politically. It divides the world of journalism as well. Is it the “us” or “them” which is part of the so-called mainstream, national, English media? Is it “us” or “them” which is part of the so-called vernacular, regional media?

For “us”, news has to be consumed slowly like an aged single malt, all such news falling in the hard, political category (aren’t we the decision-makers?). The likes of “us” frown then the boundary between politics and entertainment is eroded (shouldn’t political news come first, entertainment last just before sports, because politicals news is central to the whole journalism genre?).

Tabloid journalism may be immoral, unethical and possibly dangerous but these are not the reasons why it is vilified. It is criticized for the simple reason that it is less deferent – is actually challenges – traditional authority. It addresses that vast segment of the Indian population that was never the target of the prestige press. In course, it has given rise to a fresh, completely separate, discourse on journalism and mass communication, waiting to transcend the traditional.  It makes a caricature of a politician or a captain of industry. It cocks a snook a haughty bureaucrat. It laughs at the P3 anglers, it flays the nexus between the four pillars of democracy. It does it all while transcending the traditional barriers of both information and entertainment, entering its exclusive world of info-tainment. The “them” love it. They give us the reach. They give us the time spent. They encourage the advertisers. They pay our salaries.

And we, the “us”, the good journalists, the influencers of political leadership and public opinion, we produce this brand of journalism. Do we leave an inch on our screens which is not sponsored? Aren’t we the chaps who hire producers at fat salaries to come up with programme formats which deliver little news but lots of techno-whiz? Isn’t it true that traditional organizational hierarchies are so broken down in our newsroom that everybody, right from the top boss to the new recruit, is an editor?

Good journalism and bad journalism are idioms of a post-modernist corporatised world where, to quote an academic, “the celebration of the market as a cultural and economic strategy” is what life is all about. In the natural world of ordinary people, there’s only journalism. Without a prefix or a suffix. That’s the journalism we all knew and practiced once upon a time.

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