Re: Re: Defence Deals

[Padmanabha Rao <kvprao@igidr.ac.in>]

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Please help make the Manifesto better, or accept it, and propagate it!
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On Thu, 29 Mar 2001, Navaneethan Sundaramoorthy wrote:
 http://www.agencyfaqs.com/www1/news/stories/2000/11/17/1184.html More on
 the Tehelka team here : http://www.tehelka.com/dateam.htm. I doubt if
 there were any vested interests in their corruption-finding, except
 their own success as a media company with...

On Fri, 30 Mar 2001, Lavlesh Lamba wrote:
  Corruption is Corruption no matter who finds it out , What differance it
  will make if it was me or you.

The concern is if the success has been sought through criminal documentry.
When documenting the corrupt ways in the government (the commonest
property) it should be without any vested interests, whatsoever.
Corruption has a constituency and it can be overcome by holding up a
mirror. The holding up is the act, not the mirror or the mirroring. If the
focus is on the mirror or mirroring, through whatever means, the act is
useless for the general public and merely substitutes one corrupt gang
with another; the folk buying the reflections continue on the ride.

 A revelant quote from the US Supreme Court :
(found on the rediff's pages)

"The first duties of the officers of the law are to prevent, not to punish
crime. It is not their duty to incite to and create crime for the sole
purpose of prosecuting and punishing it. Such a gross abuse of authority
given for the purpose of detecting and punishing crime, and not for the
making of criminals, deserves the severest condemnation... While there are
those who do harbour an actual criminal predisposition, the reality is
that themajority do not fit this description. These sting operations are
constructed so as to take advantage of the fact that everyone makes
mistakes. They refuse to discriminate between the 'unwary innocent' who
are legitimate victims of human nature, predisposed to eventually making a
mistake and nothing more, and the 'unwary guilty' who are looking for the
opportunity to commit the crime, or the 'unwary negligent' who just don't
care enough one way or the other."

<http://www.rediff.com/news/2001/mar/19spec1.htm>

The Press in an officer of the law (authority given by the citizens and a
democratic government together). Its institution lies in balancing the
commercial and official responsibility. If an institutional member cannot
do so it cannot claim the privileges accorded to that institution. In the
case of the dotcom's documentry a lot of airspace and newsprint has flowed
despite the fact that all of the 100 hours of the tapes have not been
publicised. I think that's needs to be done to keep its credentials
intact. Otherwise the suspicion continues.

Please note that I am not insinuating the dotcom. It has certainly brought
about more discussions in homes and offices about "corruption" and that
might ultimately lead to good. But it's a grave matter that all the noise
has been carried without the full documentry. It isn't admissible even
between two individuals, let alone a common property such as the
government.

Thanks.

Padmanabha Rao










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