The Info-Leak-Age

One could be on cloud nine after being served with dollops of praise from just about anyone, but when the offering comes from none other than the President of the United States of America, it is certain to stir the common man from his dreary stance to spring up in joyful celebration! He said we are not an emerging nation but an already emerged nation! We are not “developing” but “developed” – in substance we had already arrived, just in case we happened to miss noticing the decorated, flashy gates of the elite club of nations who lead the world of the 21st Century for having gate-crashed into the lavish dinner table.

Suddenly we felt as though we had not only arrived, but also taken our rightful place at the G-20 or UNSC or any such elite gathering. Our upbeat mood was only natural – when was the last time that our country was praised so much for having done so much for shaping the world, for giving the world such gems like the Mahatma and so many heroes, for being the largest democracy in the world or for that matter for our diverse cultures and yet for being one voice the world was dying to listen to? Can’t remember, can we?

Come to think of it, let us do an exercise – try remembering a time in your own personal life and career that one would have been praised so much for all that one is or has done for your organization or for being a great person to have known or been associated with. Chances are, that you’ve heard these words of high praise at a send-off party while leaving your organization after a long-stint for better pastures or even at retirement. That is when you hear all the words you always wanted to hear when you’ve been working hard all the time – just for that appreciation and recognition –(although nobody seems to know)!

The only other instance when one may have experienced unconstrained showering of mighty praise has been when one is contemplating a large value purchase, either for oneself or for the organization one represents. Suddenly, marketing professionals will wax eloquent about your attributes and praise you to the heavens for all that you are – and even for all that you’d hoped to be; all the skills that you have and several that you hope you had possessed! Although it is really an occasion to introspect and work on these missing attributes, human nature being what it is, leads us to believe that there is nothing for me to do, but to accept the praise in all its glory and celebrate the moment.

President Obama had his wares to sell to boost his countrymen’s job prospects - and India would have been working on its shopping list for its nuclear energy program, other clean energy initiatives and several such developmental budgets to keep the pace of GDP growth going for the coming decades. Get the drift?
High praise, like the good old spirits, is indeed intoxicating. It gets to one’s head faster than truth, which takes a longer time to sink in. We had been in a celebratory mood, albeit only until the same news channels suddenly started doling out scam after scam, making one wonder where are we heading and whether we are really getting there at all? Will the Wikileaks comment citing Hillary Clinton to have dubbed India as being “a self- appointed front-runner for the UN Security Council seat” bring our feet firmly back on terra firma? Or will we just brush the Wikileaks information aside as an apocryphal account and continue to celebrate?

Talking about leaks, we are living in times, which future generations may call as the “Info-Leakage”. Classified documents leaking into public domain is being witnessed in India too. The Nira Radia tapes found their way into blogs and media websites and shocked the scale and spread of the malaise in our political and social fabric. The flip side of the Radia Tapes leak is a host of websites got busy transcribing the conversations. The involvement of media bigwigs in the corridors of powers is being hotly debated. Although those involved are defending themselves of the allegations - of going beyond their call of duty and engaging in power-broking activities alongwith lobbyists - by explaining that they were only stringing a potential news source or humoring them for future utility, it is to many a sighting of a tip of the iceberg that one cannot afford to simply brush aside.

The media has of late assumed a larger role, sitting in judgment and trying citizens for their misdeeds in extra-judicial court-rooms having high national visibility unlike the real judiciary. In that sense it was a rare treat to find political news editors, being big names in the industry on the other side of the table defending their actions and inactions and discussing the ethics of journalism. Satish Acharya, the well-known cartoonist has been kind enough to work on this creation, working on the idea provided by me, indicating the dangers of the newsrooms in our TV channels. Collaborative blogging, we may say. Thanks, Satish Acharya!


We are witnessing a High Level of RADIA-ACTIVITY in Newsrooms!