It’s a gab fest out here

A visiting Japanese once remarked with awe, ‘‘You Indians talk and talk so wonderfully, we can never match you.’’ However, he added a rider, ‘‘But when it comes to action, not so good.’’ Westerners are often taken aback when after they pose the formal greeting ‘How are you?’ to Indians, instead of getting the same polite query thrown back at them, they are subjected instead to long-winded clinical details of ailments.

No wonder Indian television news channels have more talk shows than any other country.

Holding forth on all manner of issues and non-issues is a national pastime, for we do not believe in Talleyrand’s advice that, ‘Speech was meant for man to conceal his thoughts.’ We feel a cathartic need to explain to the world just what we are doing regardless of common sense and propriety. And in the age of TV sound bytes the urge to declaim in front of a camera is irresistible.

Even our security agencies, who because of the nature of their job should know better, displayed no circumspection during the operation to flush out terrorists from the Akshardham temple in Gandhinagar. They were happy to confide on national television their strategy to capture the armed militants. (What would be their point of entry into the room where the gunmen were holed up, how many commandos were involved and why they were waiting for day break to carry out their game plan).

If the militants had radio contact with anyone outside the temple, they would have had the enormous advantage of knowing the opponent’s strategy.

The Delhi police has been similarly indiscreet in leaking out details of the Shivani murder case. Delhi Police Commissioner R.S. Gupta thought it appropriate to first announce triumphantly to the media that he was planning to arrest the Haryana IG, R.K. Sharma, before actually carrying out the deed.

Not surprisingly, by the time the cops landed at Sharma’s doorstep, the bird had flown the coop. Despite this fiasco, the cops have learnt no lesson. Senior officers have been giving out intimate details of Sharma’s interrogation to the media. They confided that they would indulge in psychological warfare to extract his confession. Grilling him round the clock by three teams, then humiliating him by making him sit on the floor, and so on.

When Sharma’s wife visited him at the police station, the police, probably illegally, and certainly unethically, taped the conversation and disclosed the contents to an enterprising journalist.

The media was the first to be informed that Sharma had reportedly signed a confession. No doubt, these premature news leaks will be put to good use at the appropriate time by a smart defence lawyer in a bid to secure Sharma’s acquittal.

Nobody suffers from a worse case of verbal diarrhoea than our politicians. Which may be alright when they are in the Opposition but not when they occupy responsible positions in government. We are accustomed to the prime minister, deputy prime minister, the PM’s principal secretary, minister for external affairs and defence minister speaking in different voices, whether on talks with Pakistan or the future of Kashmir.

If Home Minister L.K. Advani ventures the opinion that the Godhra carnage is an ISI operation without waiting for the official inquiry, the very next day the then MoS for External Affairs Omar Abdullah is happy to counter that the ISI can be responsible for many things but not Godhra.

Surely Minister for Disinvestment Arun Shourie needs to speak positively of the undertakings he has put up for sale, not document how they have been run to the ground by his ministerial colleagues. Mamata Bannerjee has just written a book Anubhati which explains why she feels so frustrated with the NDA government.

At a recent flyover foundation laying ceremony, Labour Minister Sahib Singh Verma vented his spleen against the very construction firm hired for the flyover, and Defence Minister George Fernandes launched into a defence of the same firm, as the audience listened in amazement.

Ironically, while Prime Minister Vajpayee has managed to silence most of his alliance partners — taking away plum portfolios from the outspoken Sharad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan sent out a chilling message to others — he has been less successful in shutting up his own parivar.

The public quarrel over disinvestment of PSUs with A.B. Vajpayee, K.S. Sudershan, George Fernandes, Ram Naik, Venkaiah Naidu and Murli Manohar Joshi et al speaking in different voices, displays the deep divisions in this Hindu joint family.

The VHP’s Ashok Singhal blames Vajpayee for the country’s problems and his inability to curb terrorism. BJP President Venkaiah Naidu accuses Singhal of being influenced by religious fundamentalists across the border. Singhal responds by asking Naidu to introspect and exercise caution.

Pressured by opposing camps, the BJP president first admonishes central ministers not to air their views publicly then changes his mind and rules that there was nothing wrong if three or four ministers meet and exchange views at an appropriate forum. His party general secretary Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi meanwhile insists that Naidu’s advice to outspoken ministers was a fiat.

The only group which stands to benefit from this unseemly cacophony emanating from the government is the media, which thrives on people in public life making fools of themselves in public. So a journalist, like myself, has really no cause to complain about the national habit of speaking out of turn!