Wikileaks should be called Wikilies! The BJP and Left have got it all wrong.......

C’mon guys, lets get real. Some arbit US officials send some arbit cables to their equally arbit bosses somewhere around the world and that causes an uproar in our Parliament? Is this what our politics has come to? How is this different from any low-grade Hindi soap on a dumbed-down Hindi GEC really?

Honestly, I cannot understand one simple thing. Why would this person (Nachiketa Kapur) show the two bags of cash to US officials? In any murder mystery.....no matter what the “evidence”.....a case is not considered solved unless the “motive” is established. So what’s the possible motive here? Why was this person trying to ingratiate himself with the Americans? Was he on their payroll?! The BJP claims that the Americans had no motive to lie? Really? So now the BJP loves the Americans so much that they will trust them with whatever they say? Wow! Besides, the supposedly bribed MPs of the RLD did not even vote for the Congress in that vote for the nuclear deal! Surely, the Congress is capable of getting their pound of flesh if they pay money?

Also, just look at the amount involved? Rs 50 crores? On the one hand, the BJP claims that lacs of crores of rupees have been “looted” in the 2G issue (I refuse to call it a scam). And here, they are believing talk of Rs 50 crores? I personally think that if the government actually paid only Rs 50 crores to secure the vote, it was smart! The nuclear deal was far more important than Rs 50 crores. The Congress got a cheap deal!

Arun Jaitley on NDTV last night was positively out of his depths (in addition to being out of breath). At one point, when told that the JPC that investigated this scam in 2008 had found nothing in the allegations, he said “Parliamentary committee are known to vote along party lines.....”. If that’s what he believes, why did the BJP ruin a full Parliamentary session demanding a JPC in the 2G scam? The Congress is in majority and the telecom JPC also won’t find anything.

Is this the level of political discourse in our country? For many years, L K Advani kept on ranting about the Gandhi family having black money stashed abroad. Then one fine day, he writes an apology letter to Sonia Gandhi?! Here’s the interesting part: He does this because Sonia Gandhi wrote to him that she doesn’t have any black money abroad. That’s it! Nice I say. Why didn’t she write this denial earlier! If this is the way we are going to run our country....when serious charges are levied without thought and withdrawn for the funniest of reasons....then I am really worried that we are doomed as a nation. Forget emerging as one of the top 3, we won’t even be able to hold our current position.

In my mind, there is a reason why this story was picked up by the BJP at this time. For the last several days, the BJP has had nothing much to talk about. Unfortunately for them, the Japanese earthquake and the nuclear crisis has been hogging the headlines. There was simply no place for their shenanigans to come on the front pages. In fact, they have been accused of being a divided house themself....with a silent tussle brewing between Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley. This is interesting.....the BJP is miles (years) away from power, but the power struggles have already started! So the BJP was hunting for the next opportunity and in the absence of anything else, they decided something is better than nothing and grabbed it. Frankly, if it hadn’t been this, it would have been something else (they were toying with the idea of blowing up the accusations against Pawan Kumar Bansal, the MP from Chandigarh). The whole idea is to keep the pressure on the government.....keep it from performing.....paralyze it so that it cannot claim any achievements.....and forget about the truth.....who cares anyway! This is destructive politics. The BJP is destroying the country to come to power.

There is another important reason why the opposition will trump up such inane issues these days. The elections in the five states provides an opportunity for the BJP and the Left parties to try and upset the Congress’s applecart. The BJP doesn’t hope to win any of these elections.....they have very little at stake. The Left on the other hand is in a desperate position. It’s going to lose both in WB and Kerala. Hence their game plan is to hit the Congress as hard as possible. If the Congress stumbles even a little bit, it will find the going really tough.

As usual, they are being aided by a few news channels. News channels are a hugely worried lot these days as I have stated earlier. I am told that this is proving to be a really bad quarter for them. No one is watching them because of the damned cricket! And the cricket is not going to stop until May. Beyond a point, no one is interested in Japan....unlike the Americans, the Japanese are not doing any of the drama that the Americans did in New Orleans when the floods hit that town. They had looted their fellow citizens. But the Japanese are conducting themselves like decent, well mannered people. How boring for TV channels! The Kalmadi trail has gone cold (besides, he was enjoying the grilling it appeared!). Raja’s friend’s death had some potential, but his wife herself is claiming its a suicide. How sad! News channels were crying “Save us God” and God gave them Wikileaks!

Julian Assange won’t ever get the Time Man of the Year award. He’s entering his work in the wrong category. In fact, the wrong award entirely. He should enter his work in a fiction film category and he could win the Golden Globe or even the Oscar maybe! Maybe a name change may make his website better positioned....hence the title of this post.

But what about the people of India? When will they see thru all this rubbish? A leading newspaper which recently started publishing such stories on its front pages has been seeing declining readership over the last few quarters. Its main competitor nationally has been gaining.....albeit in small doses. This competitor has taken on a more positive attitude and shunned the negativity that the leading newspaper has adopted. What does this tell? Have the people spoken or is the research flawed!

The real truth is that cricket ratings will go up even higher if the news channel continue in this manner! Even those few who were reading newspapers and watching the news channels will switch away. The BJP is now becoming known as the party that demands the government’s resignation every alternate day. Wikileaks represents the worst form of media journalism. When the source of your information is a few American spies, what more do I need to say!