The Indian Defense forces were until now considered the only government front, untouched by rot of corruption. Corruptions, as only we Indians know it. Defense was our holy cow, even the Bofors scam for all its sensationalism and a cast that could match upto any Bollywood blockbuster (Bachchan starred too), could not break this myth. Then the Tehelka happened...and brought with it a deluge of hopelessness and pessimism. ’’The final frontier has been taken, ” they said. Doomsday aint far away. India is now surely deep in the dumps. I beg to differ. I see faintly, hope hidden somewhere in this mist of pessimism. I can smell it.
That a few young Indians, could bring down those wretched pot bellied politicians, the ones with blue label flowing though their blood, the ones we always thought were invincible, makes me feel good. To see the Gandhi topi’s, the rin white dhotis, the tobacco stained teeth hiding from the limelight rather than basking in it, makes me feel wonderful. To see the habitual liars running out of lies makes me want to scream, in joy. For once we got them by their balls...and for the sake of the country...I hope we never let go.
Hopefully this is just the beginning. I also hope the rest of the media wakes up and realizes that we, the people of this huge democracy do not need to wake up every morning to Bikini clad models..we don’t need to spend our afternoons mating the Midday mates..we do not care about news channels who are convinced that prime times need to be reserved for interviews with stars and cricketers. “News can come later, who wants to watch the news anyway”. I hope one day, they would realize that we the people, do care about what is happening to our country and it does hurt us when a fistful of fat men and women take us for a ride each day. We would stand up for news media, which brings us the truth.
It took three men, Tarun Tejpal, Aniruddha Bahal and Mathew Samuel, to do what none of these hugely funded and profitable media companies could do, but didn’t want to. Tehelka, showed us, literally, the ugly face of shameless corruption. Corruption unfortunately has too many faces for one Tehelka. It will take a lot more to get corruption out of our system. Tehelka made a start. They did the unimaginable on a shoestring budget. Better resources and we would have seen more heads topple. They did it with courage that stemmed from the need to uncover the humongous amount of crap that lay beneath the White topi’s and Dhotis. They did it because their self-belief, instincts and their collectively powerful journalistic noses for a good story, the noses that smelt a rat in our defense establishment
And they did it with a bang. Tehelka could not get their Cricket Scam on TV because none of the huge media houses wanted to disturb the dormancy in the life of the average Indian who idiolised his corrupt god. Imagine pointing fingers at the Gods of cricket. Who would they call on at Prime Time. This time, however, Tehelka had these same media companies begging them for footage. What a turnaround
On the flip side, we now know that all it takes to get to the Defense Ministers residence is 8 months, a few bottles of scotch and a flimsy Rs 11, 00, 000/-. This is the cost for our defense secrets and our collective national pride. As Tarun Tejpal puts it ’’If we had a little more money we could have ripped open the entire system end to end. We were just a group of amateurs, a leanly funded media organization with limited resources. Suppose we had been the ISI.’’
I hope Tehelka keeps up the good work. I hope success does not make them loose their journalistic blood. I hope Bangaru, Jaya, the two George’s (Congress and Samata) and their entire ilk rot in hell. We have no place for them, in our jails. We would have to pay for their air conditioners at Tihar.
We need to pull up our socks up as a nation. We need to put this Tehelka and all the others to come, behind us and keep looking forward. Our old men screwed our future, lets try and make it for our little ones who would be INDIA a 100 years from now. Lets hope no operation Westend would haunt our generation when we are old Bangaru’s age. The guy needs to opt for VRS and take off for the Himalayas.