You don`t say!
Darius Nakoonwala
It is common knowledge in government circles that phones are regularly tapped. The autobiography by M K Dar, formerly of the IB, has only confirmed this.
So the tapping of Samajwadi Party General Secretary, Amar Singh, did not come as a surprise. And, therefore, it did not generate any outrage. Instead, there was an air of resignation.
Whereupon (or wherefore) only a few major papers chose to comment on the incident. And they did so with their shoulders drooping, as if completing a boring chore.
What a pity. I was reminded of that line about eternal vigilance being the price of liberty.
Even The Hindu, which is often very long on righteousness and short on common sense, sounded tired. It was content to call it a "disquieting reminder of the urgent need to review the safeguards of the surveillance system."
But it didn`t go all gooey on the government, as it often does these days. Describing the responses from the government and the Congress it said "such responses suggest a cover-up."
It then recounted the past scandals in this genre. "President Zail Singh accused the Rajiv Gandhi government of bugging Rashtrapati Bhavan telephones. Ramakrishna Hegde was forced to resign as Chief Minister in 1988 following an uproar over phone tapping of his political rivals. In 1990, Chandra Shekhar, who was to become Prime Minister soon, alleged that his telephone was tapped by the National Front Government."
It finally got to the point in the last paragraph, namely, "the apparently frequent abuse by intelligence agencies of their limited, supposedly regulated legal power. Such abuse is made easier by the obligation imposed on mobile service providers to make dedicated surveillance lines available to the agencies."
The Hindustan Times also focused on a relatively soft issue. "…of personal privacy and the way it was breached." Actually, love, the real issue is not that it was breached - that is a fact -- but on whose orders it was breached.
But it did get it right when it took a well-deserved pot-shot at Prakash Karat. Who blamed "the policy of allowing foreign companies into the telecom sector." It called it a non-sequitur. Right on, darling.
Neither, however, took note of the charge made by Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav, that Sonia Gandhi was the one who ordered the tap. That was left to the Pioneer which was delighted, of course because here was another stick to beat the government with.
"There is no way one can minimise the seriousness of the allegation… that Delhi Police was tapping the telephone conversations of both of them and a couple of other leaders."
It then turned to Sonia Gandhi. "Also serious is Mr Yadav`s other allegation that Ms Sonia Gandhi was behind the entire exercise … That the tapping had actually taken place and for well over two months lends credence to the allegations. What is being denied is that the Union Government and Ms Sonia Gandhi had authorised it."
I was just settling down to some inspired Sonia-bashing when the writer veered off into irrelevancies.
But what was even more disappointing was that neither The Telegraph nor the Indian Express chose to comment on it.