Although I have never held a full-time job in a mainstream newspaper or magazine, the reputation of former editor and current minister of state for external affairs MJ Akbar as an alleged serial predator reached my ears long before his transgressions became public knowledge. The stories, when they emerged, were so numerous, so consistent, and so credible that it was hard to imagine any response short of an abject apology from the perpetrator. However, I wasn’t entirely surprised when Akbar, returning from an official visit to Nigeria, labelled his accusers liars, and filed a defamation suit against one of them, Priya Ramani. We live in unusual times, under an administration whose stated policy is to tackle all allegations aggressively, and never to say sorry.
In its four-and-a-half years in power at the centre, the Modi administration has chosen to sail through every storm rather than head for cover, and it has done so with great success. Soon after taking power, the government faced a scandal relating to Smriti Irani, then minister in charge of human resource development, who was accused of misrepresenting her educational qualifications. While keeping secret the documents in question, the Modi government stuck with Irani. She was, after all, not the only person so accused. The prime minister himself is alleged to have fudged his educational record, and has stonewalled all enquiries. More recently, the Bharatiya Janata Party has refused to sack Ankiv Baisoya, president of the Delhi University Students’ Union, whose degree from Thiruvalluvar University appears to be fake.
Soon after Smriti Irani’s degree controversy faded, it came to light that the Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj and the Chief Minister of Rajasthan Vasundhara Raje had helped Lalit Modi flee India. Modi, founder of the immensely popular Indian Premier League cricket tournament, was charged in several cases of financial irregularities and money laundering. Responding to demands for the resignations of Raje and Swaraj, the Home Minister Rajnath Singh said, “Our ministers do not have to resign. This is not their government. This is the NDA [National Democratic Alliance] government.” It was a sign that the BJP had learned from the experience of the second Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government that resignations and sackings, far from dampening criticism, create a clamour for further sackings and resignations, and ultimately undermine the government’s authority.
Learning from UPA’s mistakes?
Among the first UPA ministers asked to resign was Shashi Tharoor, after a row in which Lalit Modi played a part. The issue was relatively trivial, but Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh decided to take the high road. Having instructed Tharoor to step down, they could hardly do anything different when more serious allegations were made against other ministers. And so, a procession of resignations commenced, among them A Raja, minister of communication and information technology; Dayanidhi Maran, minister of textiles; Ashok Chavan, chief minister of Maharashtra; Railways Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal; Virbhadra Singh, minister of micro, small and medium enterprises; Subodh Kant Sahai, minister of tourism; and Ashwani Kumar, law minister. The image created, of a deeply corrupt, dysfunctional government, scuppered what faint hopes the Congress had of returning to power for a third straight term. The UPA ministers who resigned were either not charged with any crime, acquitted in court, or are still fighting cases.
Modi and his advisors have shown a keen understanding of the media’s attention deficit disorder. They have been helped, of course, by an Opposition that lacks cohesion and purpose. Sushma Swaraj has continued in her job unhindered by any baggage from the Lalit Modi episode. Smriti Irani was demoted and shifted to a different ministry for reasons that had nothing to do with her bachelor’s degree. Vasundhara Raje remains the BJP’s candidate for chief minister in Rajasthan, though she faces a difficult battle in the upcoming Assembly election.
Media response
The MJ Akbar case might prove easier to negotiate in Parliament than the other episodes mentioned in this column. That is because no political party’s hands are clean when it comes to the sexual harassment of women. Which outfit will risk taking a strong stand on the Akbar issue knowing it may backfire spectacularly with misdeeds of its own high-ranking members being revealed? Non-BJP parties have handled with kid gloves Narendra Modi’s abandonment of his wife and the misrepresentation of his marital status in election forms. They also went easy on revelations that he had misused state machinery to spy on a woman much younger than himself. I doubt if they will discover a wellspring of righteous indignation in the matter of MJ Akbar.
If the ruling party can expect an easy time from the Opposition, the same will not be the case in its interactions with media outlets, which are likely to prove more persistent, more aggressive, and less easily distracted than usual. The fact that Akbar was a journalist and his victims are also journalists makes all the difference. The Jamal Khashoggi case, which has put more pressure on Saudi Arabia than the fallout from any of that nation’s actions in Yemen, demonstrates that the disappearance of a single journalist can become a larger issue than the murder of hundreds of innocent civilians. The imbalance is a systemic problem that needs to be addressed, but at least the Khashoggi case is shining a necessary light on the Saudi regime’s murderousness. In a similar vein, other ministers may have committed worse crimes than Akbar, but I hope the Indian media will keep hammering away at him till the BJP is forced to back down from its defence of harassment and falsehood.