Did she or didn’t she? That’s the question…

We just love to flaunt our connections, don’t we? And if we are the connection, we just love to flaunt that too. ‘Immunity’ is a word that has been misused by politicians, diplomats, journalists, bureaucrats and anyone with any connection to government. When we are not in that position, some of us engage in what we call ‘name-dropping’. “I know so-and-so” or “do you know who I am?” is a popular refrain. See what happens at airports around the country. An MLA or MP or even the son-in-law of a VVIP can walk through the green channel, because he has the connections.

Whether Devyani Khobragade broke the law, or was framed by her maid, or the US government, the twelve men and women in an American courtroom will decide. And Ms Khobragade has not cared to give us the correct version – and by that I don’t mean her version, but the legal and truthful one. She has just denied the charge. What is the real story? Did she or didn’t she underpay her maid and does she have the documents to prove that she didn’t? The complaint alleges that Ms. Khobragade undertook to pay Sangeeta Richard $9.75 an hour for a 40-hour work week, but actually paid her around 30,000 rupees a month, or about $3.31 an hour.

Even weirder is External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid insisting on immunity for the diplomat. So does Khurshid mean that even though she committed the crime he would like her to be exonerated because she is a diplomat? Or should she have been handcuffed or strip searched?

Even on the question of immunity there are two versions. And then to protect her, the government hurriedly shifted her to the UN, where she can avail full immunity. Why do that, if she is innocent?

So what makes Ms Khobragade so special? Her father’s connections or her exalted status as ingrained in the Indian Constitution? This isn’t the first case of an Indian diplomat underpaying his or her maid, and it definitely won’t be the last. I wish ordinary citizens like me would also get such leeway when we are caught in a jam. And after having read the report on the Adarsh housing scam, it looks like neither Ms Khobragade or her father are as clean as he is claiming to be. She has also been declared ineligible to own a house in Adarsh. So when the lady didn’t have any issues bending a few rules here, how do we know she didn’t bend it there too?

But I do wish we – government and people (journalists included) – would stop indulging in this shoddy chest-thumping rhetoric. We have been blaming the media from across the border for the past sixty odd years of being jingoistic on a rather touchy issue. Isn’t that exactly how we are behaving now? Aren’t we going by whatever version we want to believe is the truth? Or as the TV channels are doing – carrying out their own jury trials, with the Sardesais and the Goswamis shrieking at the top of the lungs to gain some extra TRPs. I am really surprised at the stuff that is floating around about Ms Khobragade’s treatment of the maid; about how the maid thought Ms Khobragade was a wonderful woman and treated her like family; about how the maid was blackmailing her, etc etc. All that is really not important in this case, is it? So can we stop the BS?

Which also makes me wonder why the Manmohan Singh government never reacted with such alacrity when former President APJ Abdul Kalam was searched or when former Defence Minister George Fernandes was strip searched at an American airport? Was it because both men were not on the ‘most favoured people’ list of the MMs government? The lame excuse given then was that these were their (US) procedures at all airports. Some of my friends sitting in the USA or some more here might disagree with me on this, but tell me what did the Indian government do, with reference to a certain Rajat Gupta who was till the insider trading news broke, the darling of the Indian government and media? Of course, he broke the law, and the Indian government does not extend courtesies to law-breakers, does it? But Kalam and Fernandes did not break any law? Why didn’t our government withdraw privileges to US diplomats then? So what’s so special now?

Someone sent me an interesting piece from the US that according to Article 47 (Exemption From Work Permits) of the Vienna Convention, the staff in question wasn’t bound by local wage laws. I’ll accept that if it is really the case. Article 47 states: Specific restrictions on authority to express the consent of a State: “If the authority of a representative to express the consent of a State to be bound by a particular treaty has been made subject to a specific restriction, his omission to observe that restriction may not be invoked as invalidating the consent expressed by him unless the restriction was notified to the other negotiating States prior to his expressing such consent.” If you can figure that out, let me know.

The other issue is one of well-to-do Indians or Americans, or those in positions of power short-changing their countrymen elsewhere. In the midst of all this, spare a thought for the maid. We have conveniently made her the villain of the piece. A maid getting Rs 30,000 in India is unheard of except if she is working with the really rich. So it is easy to understand how someone in her position can be easily lured to any other country by such a figure.

I don’t know whether Ms Khobragade and the US government came to some sort of tacit understanding that they would look the other way while she underpaid the maid and a third party decided to be a little smart. If that is so, then all I can say is Ms Khobragade (India) slipped on a really big banana peel that was conveniently left there for her. If not, let us wait for the court to decide. And I mean the US court, not the one run on the news channels.

No difference between a crooked politician and a general

Should I feel sorry for a couple of our former defence chiefs? They led one of the largest armies in the world, and yet were clueless about things happening under their very noses. No one told them anything, they claim, when it came to putting money into a housing project. The poor dears!

Do you believe that? I don’t. Of course, it’s another matter that I take most anything I’m told with large doses of salt. I mean, these are the ex-chiefs of the army and navy – intelligent, highly trained, decorated and very senior defence officers – not some unsuspecting villagers from an obscure place who are told to sign off their properties on a blank paper. That is why I find difficult to swallow when they say they were not aware. As bad as the Maharashtra Chief Minister saying that he didn’t know his relatives were buying flats in Adarsh Housing Society, especially when he sanctioned it!

Just think, they invested lakhs of rupees (they couldn’t have got it at market price or it would have been in crores) in the multi-storeyed building in Mumbai’s posh Colaba area and no one told them that the land was originally purchased for war widows and ex-servicemen; which was also originally supposed to be six floors but suddenly shot up by another 25! Heck, even ordinary folks like you and me, go through the documents with a fine toothcomb to ensure we’re not being taken for a ride by the developers at the signing and registration stage. And these defence chiefs didn’t ask and didn’t check? Do these guys come from Pluto?

That’s a bit like Sharad Pawar saying he had no clue what Lalit Modi was up to with regard to the IPL. Now that the pious humbugs (and I am referring to the gentlemen from the armed forces) have been caught with their pants down, they are desperately trying to wash their hands off the sordid affair by offering to return the property. I can expect scumbag politicians to cheat their own mothers, because we don’t expect any better. But when it’s done by very senior and highly decorated defence chiefs, it makes my bile rise. I’m sure, you feel the same way.

Years ago, in 1984, when Indira Gandhi asked the Indian Army to invade the Golden Temple to end the siege by Bhindranwale, I was on a train returning to Pune. When the Sikh gentleman next to me read the story, his eyes brimmed with tears, and I thought he would say a few uncomplimentary things about the PM. But what he said surprised me: “Yeh sardaron ne hamari naak katwa di. Ab hum kaise sar utha kar jiyenge” I am sure a lot of armed forces personnel who were and are still up there in Kargil fighting the enemy must be feeling the same way, after reading about the scam.

Will the revered St. Anthony (supposedly the ONLY honest minister in the Manmohan Singh Cabinet, apart from the PM himself), nail his former defence chiefs and ensure that they don’t get a single paisa refunded for the flats? After all, if an ordinary citizen, even unknowingly, invests his hard earned money in an illegal construction, he loses not only the home but also his money. Why should the army officers be treated any different? They’ve already lost that right.

A few weeks ago I read a report in the Pune edition of the Times of India about a contrite burglar who came back to the house he had burgled, and pleaded with the owner to turn him over to the cops, because he couldn’t stand the guilt anymore of having committed a crime.

Some six months ago, the burglar had cleaned out a citizen’s bungalow and fled the city. He settled somewhere, spent the loot and then wracked with guilt decided to return to the scene of his crime to confess. The house owner, initially, refused to believe the burglar’s story, but when the crook disclosed what all he had stolen, the man called the cops. There’s a strange but nauseating parallel between the burglar and the highly decorated officers.
Are Tarun Tejpal and Aniruddha Bahal having a quiet chuckle and raising a toast to the whistleblower?