The Case of Mayawati’s Sandals

Take a good look at the sources of the WikiLeaks cable

When WikiLeaks first decided to make the US diplomatic cables public, it got in touch with a few newspapers, including The Guardian and The New York Times. Both papers deputed correspondents who had experience in covering military and foreign affairs to pore over the cables and check whether it was true before printing it. It’s called verification.

Come now to the case of Mayawati and her private jet which flew empty to Mumbai to pick up a pair of sandals. All of India, except Dalits, have accepted it as gospel truth. But whose word do you have for it? A US diplomat. Whose word does the US diplomat have for it? Journalists. If you read the cable, it talks about the diplomat going to three cities in UP to gauge ‘political state of play’. And then goes on to attribute almost everything he finds to journalists. 

Besides currently saving India from corruption, there is one more attribute to your correspondent’s profession: our ability to confidently pass off hearsay as truth to any willing ear as long as we don’t have to print it. Ask any film correspondent about his insights into the Bachchan family and you will get mindblowing lurid nonsense. A political correspondent will be full of seedy bedroom details of politicians. None of it is printed because it’s just meant to be the kind of stuff that makes life interesting over a table in the Press Club bar. It is also the reason why a private jet flying to Mumbai to collect sandals never got into the newspapers or channels in India. Only US diplomats take it seriously.

The journalists in UP also grudgingly admit that the law and order situation has improved, but since that would be giving credit, there is a leap of logic that the diplomat paraphrases into “she has institutionalised corruption with competitive fealty payments to her replacing (underworld) shootouts.” It’s a little hard to wade through such language but even if you can guess what he’s driving at, to imagine that the previous Mulayam regime was any less an expert at criminal management will take some swallowing.  

Does Mayawati suffer, as the cable says, from ‘Eccentric Paranoia’? Probably yes; there are enough statues to back it up. But should we then automatically believe that a jet went to get a sandal? Probably not.

About The Author

Madhavankutty Pillai

Madhavankutty Pillai has no specialisations whatsoever. He is among the last of the generalists. And also Open chief of bureau, Mumbai  

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