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Labelling with gay abandon

As against those who supported my column of last week, several readers used the fundamental human right of 'freedom of speech and expression' with gay abandon. Thus the labels pinned on this writer: defender of corruption, a BJP stooge, a RSS fundamentalist, a fraud in search of a sinecure job etc. including a variation of the four-letter word. One reader even tagged a tainted petrol pump to me. It was a wide, wild sweep, embedded in the belief that whatever the media says about corruption in India is the gospel truth, and not to be questioned.

All of it compelled a recall of the way The Indian Express used the 'freedom of the press' concept with almost equal abandon to label India's largest representative party in Parliament as the 'Bharatiya Janata Petrol Pump Party' on the basis of its as yet unproven allegation of August 2 that 'over half of the 3,850 petrol pumps and LPG agencies allotted until May this year went to the relatives of his (Ram Naik) BJP colleagues and coalition partners.' It continued with that label day after day even as Naik himself was denied his say in Parliament by the frenzied Opposition demanding his scalp till the hapless, helpless Speaker adjourned the august Lok Sabha sine die.

The written contention of a BJP member of Parliament, Balbir Punj, that if Naik had been allowed to make his statement in Parliament he would have pointed out that the 'so-called shady allotments' constituted only 7% in four years of the BJP-led government was drowned in the storm of the 'big story.' The non-inclusion of the 'so-called' adjective in the title of last week's column was cause enough for readers' to infer contemptuously label that 'just 7%' corruption was acceptable to me.

Let it be clarified that even 7% or, for that matter, even 0.1% corruption is not acceptable. Let it also be clarified that corrupt RSS and BJP people should be blasted -- on the basis of credible evidence, not mere insinuations.

There's a small side issue there. 'Corruption' under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, entails illegal gratification as a motive or reward for doing an official act. IE did not make that specific accusation; it left that to Kapil Sibal, the Congress MP. What the newspaper alleged was really 'nepotism' or 'undue favouritism.' Even this lesser charge was not proved beyond hints and innuendoes. The assumption was that a BJP-linked allottee was automatically not meritorious enough. It was overlooked that, as an allottee was quoted by IE itself, 'rules did not say that the agency should not be given to a BJP worker.' It was forgotten that, as the Karnataka BJP state legislator, A Ramdas (whose sister got an LPG agency), told the newspaper, 'being related to someone in the BJP does not rob anyone of the right to be a citizen of the country.' Yet, what IE did, day after day after day, was to give small state-wise lists of allottees predominantly containing BJP-connected names -- without giving the total allotments in the respective state list. The percentage of alleged 'nepotism' in each state was thus concealed.

One allegation was that 'pressure' was exerted on the chiefs of the 60 three-man dealer selection boards across the country. (The chief of the board was either a retired high court judge or a retired sessions judge or a retired additional district judge, while the two others were representatives of the public sector oil companies.) One chief was reported as having received phone calls from 'junior staff' (sic) of Naik's petroleum ministry. Another chief said he received a phone call from Naik himself -- Naik denied that publicly. Yet another chief, a retired high court judge, denied any political patronage and said, in print, 'Everything has taken place on the basis of merit.' A fourth chief, who was suspected to have taken three million rupees for allotment of a petrol pump, had been subjected by government to a CBI inquiry for that alleged crime even before IE came out with its expose. All this in IE itself, mind you.

So the 'Petrol Pump Party' label boiled down to unproven proportion of allotments, unproven illegal gratification, unproven nepotism and unproven phone calls of pressure. Interestingly, in an ongoing court case against a Mumbai film financier, proof has been demanded that the voices on the tape produced as evidence by the police in fact belong to the film stars and the underground criminal concerned.

Yes, it was a clever 'expose' all right -- the percentage of 'over half' and the copywriter's label on the first day, followed each day by state lists containing short accounts of each of the chosen and numbered allottees -- between 11 and 45 each day, with the maximum of 61 on one day. The lay and busy reader, taken in by all the hoopla of the headlines, believed that all those numbers were BJP-linked. He overlooked that, apart from those who were clearly identified as Congress-connected, the numbered list was boosted with such allottees as --

• the son of 'a former MLA' (no party mentioned)
  
• an educated unemployed who 'happened to be the son of an ex-MLA from BJP'
  
• a BJP chief minister's son whose allotment had been upheld by a high court
  
• grandson of an IAS officer (no political link mentioned)
  
• one who obtained allotment because the original allottee withdrew
  
• brother of a middle-level bureaucrat (no political link mentioned)
  
• son of a municipal commissioner (a bureaucratic position)
  
• son of 'two times Congress MLA but now in the BJP'
  
• one who was 'formerly of BJP who joined the Congress in January 2000'
  
• daughter of 'expelled BJP MLA'
  
• one who said there were no other contenders for the allotment
  
• two agricultural co-operative societies, each headed by a BJP functionary and, best of all,
  
• one who was 'a nephew of a state BJP official who said his nephew is a Congress member.'

Taking the list of August 14 into account, IE published, from August 2, brief descriptions of a total of 354 allottees from 13 states; of these, 28 were not linked either to BJP or to its coalition partners. Considering the politically amorphous among the above, the BJP-linked list would aggregate 315, give or take a handful. Now, 315 out of how many in all? We were, to repeat, not told.

In fact, IE just stopped publishing its daily list after August 14. August 15, August 16, August 17, and August 18 -- when this is being written -- no list [The Indian Express, August 20 carried a list of 14 names from Madhya Pradesh]. It had stopped the promised list after covering 13 states out of the 28 states and two Union territories that constitute the country. The major exclusions were Delhi (the seat of the Petroleum Ministry), West Bengal, Assam, Kerala, Orissa and Uttaranchal. Why these exclusions? Were there no outlets for petrol pumps, LPG and kerosene to be allotted in the remaining 15 states and two Union territories? Or were there no BJP-linked allotments there? We were not told.

Was it then a case of 'Mission Accomplished' once the PM ordered the cancellation of all the allotments save those to families of the Kargil martyrs? If so, IE's list, begun on August 2, remember, should have stopped from August 7, the day after it splashed the PM's announcement in big bold headlines of glee. Why did the list stop only from August 15?

The previous day a quarter-page advertisement appeared in various newspapers on August 13 -- the day on which, perhaps, another IE list was put together, headline and all, for publication on the next day that turned out to be the last hurrah. That ad of August 13 offered the chance of 'a deal' to those who possessed 'suitable land' for enabling a project for 'a nationwide network of petroleum retail outlets' being planned by...Reliance. Remember, Reliance has a giant refinery in Gujarat and is a strong contender for a key stake in Hindustan Petroleum and Bharat Petroleum -- the two big public sector companies that are on the anvil for divestment.

So, is it just a coincidence that the IE expose and Reliance seeking land on a lot of which the government has cancelled scores of petrol pump allotments come so close after each other?

Tailpiece: Instead of impetuously cancelling all the 3,000-odd allotments at one go, the PM ought to have axed only those determined as shady by a time-bound committee comprising an equal number of representatives from IE and the petroleum ministry. That would not only have preserved the interest of the meritorious allottees but also exposed both the labelled and the labeller. But the BJP isn't so adroit, is it?

Arvind Lavakare