Month: June 2015

As a bonafide member of Delhi’s power elite, Lalit Modi knows too many secrets. Is he trying to cut friends-turned-adversaries down to size? Who will he implicate next? Can Sharad Pawar, Praful Patel, Shashi Tharoor and Rajeev Shukla be safe? What is the security threat that Modi goes on and on about?

Away-from-the-spin-doctoring-charges-and-counter-charges-the-Lalit-Modi-scandal-embodies-all-that-is-wrong-with-our-system-nepotism-conflict-of-interest-dirty-tricks-media-plants-and-zero-ethics

At some point in the course of his interview with Rajdeep Sardesai, I had to press ‘pause’ just to take my pulse. Could it be true? Was I actually nodding in agreement with Lalit Modi? Perhaps it was his sibilant lisp. But my pulse was steady and as I pressed ‘play’ again, I had to ask, how does a fugitive from the law become a self-righteous victim?

If you saw that interview you would have heard Modi declare that he was not about to roll-over quietly. Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah tweeted: “How many people is he going to throw under the bus here?”

Modi’s revelations have already laid claim to one cabinet minister, fighting charges of impropriety, and a chief minister, fighting far graver charges. Suddenly, the party with a difference has started looking dangerously like the scam-tainted Congress, voted out of power just a year ago.

Away from the spin-doctoring, charges and counter-charges, the Lalit Modi scandal embodies all that is wrong with our system — nepotism, conflict of interest, dirty tricks, media plants and zero ethics.

To pretend that there is no conflict of interest in what Sushma Swaraj did for her pal — a man wanted for questioning by the enforcement directorate in connection with a Rs 425 crore IPL scam — by interceding with a foreign government is to be devoid of all moral sense of right and wrong. That this was done by keeping her ministry’s top officials in the dark makes it worse. That this might be a result of insidious BJP infighting is irrelevant. That the UPA’s P Chidambaram’s threat to Britain with ‘souring’ bilateral relations (according to Modi) only proves that in this hamaam, all are, well you know the rest.

That leaves us with Vasundhara Raje. Given her own temporary amnesia and the BJP’s refusal to come out and bat for her, we have only Modi’s claims that she offered to come out as a witness for him provided the authorities were kept in the dark. Add to this serious charge, a questionable investment in her son Dushyant’s company, hotel bills, hospitality and a suspiciously timed MoU with a hospital where Raje had kindly escorted Modi’s wife for cancer treatment and you have a pretty water-tight case.

Beyond the screaming headlines lies the lamentable fact that very often India is a functional oligarchy. In Delhi’s durbar asking a ‘family friend’ for a favour is not new. Certainly, Swaraj is not the first politician to have over-extended herself for a friend, in this case a non-paying client of her husband and daughter. But the Congress can hardly claim a high moral ground and the BJP’s counter-attack includes the names Ottavio Quattrocchi, Adil Shahryar (the son of Indira Gandhi’s family friend, Mohammad Yunus) and Warren Anderson. But how do those wrongs make what its ministers are now doing right?

It’s not just politicians and their fixers but senior journalists too — many who function as nimble gardeners, a little planting here, a tiny uprooting there. When ‘their’ government comes to power in a cyclical change of seasons they can expect to be rewarded with Padma awards, junkets and memberships on the board of public companies. That’s the name of the game.

As a bonafide member of Delhi’s power elite, Modi knows too many secrets. Is he trying to cut friends-turned-adversaries down to size? Who will he implicate next? Can Sharad Pawar, Praful Patel, Shashi Tharoor and Rajeev Shukla be safe? What is the security threat that Lalit Modi goes on and on about? Will the BJP ministers be sacrificed for some later legislative gains? At this point, your guess is as good as mine.

Lalit Modi is hardly your average whistle-blower. There is no altruism in this stunning expose. It’s a settling of scores and the sending out of a powerful message: I know too much about you and your dirt. Come after me at your own peril. I’m sure that message has been received.

The views expressed are personal.

The writer tweets as @namitabhandare

If the ongoing global gender conversation over sexual violence, over gay rights, over stereotypes just got a bit more interesting, then you can thank Caitlyn Jenner for that. Jenner’s decision to come out as a woman may not immediately open doors and dispel discrimination but it gives hope to many like her.

The Kardashian khandaan is not anybody’s idea of a role model. Well, technically the former Bruce Jenner is not a Kardashian, except by marriage. Yet, I find myself moved by his transformation to Caitlyn Jenner.

Forget for now the oozing cynicism: Is she doing it for the money? Is this a marketing prelude to a new reality show that goes on air later this year? Does Annie Leibovitz’s Vanity Fair cover break new ground or does it reinforce stereotypes of feminine beauty?

Valid questions, and yet I’m cheering because an Olympic gold decathlon winner, a macho symbol if there ever was one, has spoken up and emerged as a symbol for transgender rights. For me, for now, that is enough.

America’s response is teetering (and tweetering) between applause and shock. An online petition wants the International Olympic Committee to revoke Jenner’s 1976 gold for competing as a man. A New York Times op-ed called the transition a “commercial spectacle on an enormous scale, revealing some disturbing truths about what we value and admire in women.” Still others pointed out that few transgenders anywhere can afford the surgeries and hormone treatment available to Caitlyn.

But if the ongoing global gender conversation over sexual violence, over gay rights, over stereotypes just got a bit more interesting, then you can thank Caitlyn Jenner for that.

In India we’re yet to have our celebrity moment for transgender rights. Barring some individual progress — Manabi Bandopadhyay, who became the first transgender person to be appointed the principal of a women’s college, a couple of transgender TV anchors and even a transgender mayor — the community remains marginalised and discriminated against.

Yet, institutionally we have made progress right from when Tamil Nadu in 2008 set up a welfare board for transgenders and decided to provide free sex reassignment surgery in government hospitals.

In 2009 the election commission allowed transgenders to choose ‘other’ on ballot forms. In April 2014, our Supreme Court recognised transgenders as a third gender and asked the government to treat them as they would any socially and educationally backward group. And in April this year, the Rajya Sabha voted unanimously to endorse a Bill that promotes transgender rights, including financial aid and reservation.\

Hijras have been a part of Indian culture from the time of the Ramayan and Mahabharat and continue to be called upon to bless auspicious occasions like weddings and births. But it is this superstitious belief that hijras have special powers and are somehow ‘different’ as well as their subsequent criminalisation by British colonial rule (including the infamous Section 377, which makes ‘sex against the order of nature’ a crime) that has also led to horrific marginalisation of a population that is officially 450,000 people in India (the community claims the figure is 2-2.5 million).

Part of the confusion stems from a lack of understanding of what is transgender — a broad term that embraces men who identify as female, women who identify as male, transsexuals, inter-sexuals (or hermaphrodites) and cross-dressers.

But part of the confusion is also a refusal to understand that everyone need not fit into binary definitions of gender or social stereotypes of masculinity and femininity. This lack of empathy coupled with a denial of legal status has pushed hijras to the margins, valued for their ‘good luck’ at auspicious occasions but socially shunned — often by their own families.

Gender is our most fundamentally profound basis of identity. It defines biologically, culturally and socially how we think, we dress, we act, we respond. Caitlyn Jenner’s decision to come out as a woman may not immediately open doors and dispel discrimination faced by transgenders. It does, however, let in a little crack of light.

namita.bhandare@gmail.com

Twitter:@namitabhandare

The views expressed are personal