Columns
It was a picture that perhaps best captured the angularities of Indian secularism: AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal and Trinamool Congress MP Derek O’Brien in a topi even as Delhi lieutenant governor Najeeb Jung and vice-president Hamid Ansari preferred to be bare-headed. The occasion was an iftaar party organised by the Delhi chief minister. Perhaps Kejriwal and O’Brien (an Anglo-Indian from Kolkata) had taken their cue from Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, who once said, “To run the country, you have to take everyone along … at times, you will have to wear a topi, at times a tilak.”
In the age of 24×7 breaking news, even ‘scams’ have a limited shelf-life. If June was dominated by every tweet and soundbite of a Lalit Modi, July has seen the Vyapam issue become a screeching headline. On the face of it, you couldn’t have two more different plots: One, a story of how a cavalier businessman in self-exile in London was getting special favours from the country’s high and mighty, the other, a murderous tale set in the remote districts of Madhya Pradesh. And yet, the two stories have a common thread that unites: How the ‘system’ is compromised for private benefit at different levels by the country’s power elite.
ike the brand line of the cigarette company which his family owns, Lalit Modi likes living life king size. Just before the 2010 IPL, I had gone to interview him at the penthouse suite of the Four Seasons hotel in Mumbai which he had converted into an office cum residence because his home had ‘burnt down’. As I waited for him, in the adjoining room I spotted a stream of high profile visitors filing in: IPL franchise owners, business leaders, actors, politicians, board officials, the rich, famous and powerful had gathered. When Modi finally arrived, he was quick to remark with typical swagger : “All my friends you see, all my friends!” Five years later, the many friends have become, well, “frenemies”, but as the Lalit leaks controversy swirls, what is apparent is that the original IPL — the Indian Political League — is alive and kicking.
