I have to admit I’m amazed by our incredible appetite for ‘big’ news and ‘bigger’ controversies. The brouhaha over the IPL has barely subsided (with IPL Commissioner Lalit Modi being suspended from his post by BCCI, India’s apex cricket body) and yet we’ve already hurtled on to another huge story that’s keeping the news waves crackling.
In its latest issue, popular news magazine Outlook has a cover story which says the government has been tapping the cell phone conversations of prominent political leaders, both within and outside the government. Yet again, the parliament was adjourned, with the opposition parties asking Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for an explanation against a backdrop of heated primetime TV debates.
It’s interesting how out of touch our political establishment really is (or worse, pretends to be) considering ‘IPLgate’ was first broken on Twitter, and this recent controversy by a weekly publication. If allegations on both fronts are proved true, is it really possible that none of the people who ‘rule’ us had even the slightest inkling of what was happening?