That's what we call dumb and dumber. Needless to say, his actions instantly evoked whoops of appreciation from the television channels, which instantly went to town with this unexpected gift that arrived on a slow weekend.
The twitterati were no less eager to do their part toward the greater goal, i.e. making a Himalaya-sized brouhaha out of what was, at best, a termite mound of a PR flub. And right on cue, Congress party members on TV played their assigned role, which these days appears to be guided by that great anti-Hippocratic oath: Do every harm. They dutifully made everything worse by claiming first that Vadra was a "private citizen" and later that he ought not to be accosted in such an unseemly fashion at "private events."
Never mind that there is no constitutional exemption for private citizens from being questioned by the press. And certainly not for a certain private citizen who has been only too happy to wax eloquent to reporters about his fitness regimes, political aspirations and personal life. It is also exceptionally foolish to claim a media exemption for a man who was happily plugging the Ashok hotel's fancy new gym right before he had his hissy fit.
Such cupidity established, let's also point out reporters get beaten up all the time in India. Muslim rightwing thugs beat up this guy ; this BBC correspondent got it from bat-wielding BJP goons; then there are our valiant policemen who routinely hit and arrest journalists on a whim, as they did in Vadodara.
And if an international perspective helps, there have been plenty of ugly incidents involving a politician's security guards and journalists in that bastion of democracy, United States of America.
Of course, in our fair Delhi, it's not just nosy journalists who are at risk. A hapless chemist can incur the wrath of a politician's bahu for committing the grave error of not stocking the right medications. And let's not get into all the bullying hapless citizens have to suffer in the hands of all the other 'private' security guards hired by wealthy citizens in our fair capital.
So maybe we need to calm down before we tweet out things like, "The camera doesn't lie. The vicious look in Vadra's eyes when he smacked reporter's mike will come to haunt Congress." Or claim, as Arnab did, "He has behaved like a goonda today. He has physically assaulted a journalist."
All a pouty Robert did was push aside an errant microphone. But because he is Robert Vadra, he then did that next very foolish thing, i.e. try and delete the footage of him pushing aside a mike, thereby allowing the likes of Arnab to immediately whip out the most atrocious parallels. For example: "The Emergency lasted from 1975 to 1977 and your Congress party should have learnt the lesson from what happened after the Emergency. I am comparing this directly to the Emergency because this man behaved worse than Sanjay Gandhi did during the Emergency."
Because what is a mass sterilization programme or imprisonment of journalists compared to an effort to bully a journalist into deleting a video clip. Guess it's my turn to ask, "Are you serious? Are you nuts?"
As I've noted before, Robert Vadra is not the sharpest tool in the Lutyen's shed. The now infamous Facebook update — "Mango people in banana republic" — was not just crassly elitist but also plain stupid. A shred of common sense would have made obvious the perils of sneering at ordinary people in the midst of an unfolding corruption scandal targeting his disproportionate wealth. That critical shred seems to have been missing in action on Saturday, as well. A mildly embarrassing media moment was transformed into a ham-handed attempt at press censorship.
That it failed and backfired speaks volumes about Vadra's diminished status, or rather the diminishment of the family association upon which it rests. Let's face it. Even if Vadra does end up in jail for his real estate sins, it will merely confirm what we already know about our electoral system: To the winner, go the spoils. Out of power, out of money, and that's the way it always goes.
But if Vadra was foolish, then our news media were outright shameful. It is precisely this kind of trivialisation of political coverage that aids and abets the kind of corruption that Vadra is accused of. In this parade of vainglorious fools, the only participant who covered himself with any kind of glory is the ANI reporter who asked the question, and later refused to be cowed by security guards or the police into giving up his camera. Maybe Arnab should consider taking a refresher course in journalism from him.
As for the kissa microphone ka, let's treat it as it is: a reason for amused schadenfreude rather than overdone outrage.
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