Sex and the neta: In  24×7 media age, politicians can’t invoke the right to privacy

sagarikaBy Sagarika Ghose in Times of India, September 14, 2016,

(Note: Politicians are public figures. The more prominent and public they the less there is place for privacy in their personal life. In the case of Aam Admi party they always claimed a moral high and came to clean up the rot in politics. For that reason I wrote many articles in support of Kejri and Anna Hazare.  Anna keeps up his name and fame, not Kejri who threw away the baby with   the bath water with the Delhi elections and I stopped supporting him ever since. AAP is now in down hill drive sped by sleaze and misconduct among its netas.

Therefore the writer asks: “If rulers are licentious what moral right do they have to rule?.. Are MPs free to surf porn while sitting in the assembly as part of their private lives? Are ministers free to snoop on women as part of their private lives? Certainly they are not.” Then it is for the Fouth Estate and writers James Kottorto act  as a deterrent to erring netas and force them to toe the beaten track. Sagarika Ghose, the writer has been a prominsent news Anchor, an accomplished  writer and is now the consulting editor to Times of India. We wish her well. james kottoor, editor)

Politician-porn recently dominated primetime news. The rather corpulent figure of Delhi AAP minister Sandeep Kumar was seen in merciless close-up, filmed in the throes of lurid passion. The ‘sex CD’ went viral even faster than the chikungunya epidemic. TV anchors shrieked in high decibel outrage. “Off with his head,” chanted Congress and BJP women activists on the street. Party supremo Arvind Kejriwal panicked and immediately suspended the “gandi machli”.

Kejriwal’s colleague Ashutosh however wrote a furious blog defending Kumar’s right to privacy. Yet in today’s times, does the right-to-a-private-life argument for politicians really work? No it doesn’t. In a fiercely competitive political scene, with the ravenous beast known as 24×7 media chomping hungrily on every new sensation, when citizens’ wrath against the powerful is at an all-time high, when the demand for personal accountability is widespread, there’s now simply no space for politicians to have secret or dishonest personal lives. Like it or not, personal behaviour codes are seen as increasingly linked with overall political honesty.

Either politicians are honest and open about their personal affairs or they will be ousted by citizens. In fact this is increasingly the price to be paid for being in politics: to open oneself up to public scrutiny all the time. After all democracies function best when they enable people to hold their leaders accountable, for all their deeds, personal love affairs, financial misdemeanours, family disputes or domestic abuse.

Kumar’s sacking was inevitable, not only because by not doing so AAP would have opened a delicious new flank for its opponents; but also because the fact that such a CD exists in the first place is reason to believe that the former minister is guilty of shady, secretive peccadillos which cannot be washed away under his right to privacy. The existence of the CD itself raises unsavoury implications about Kumar’s character. Now that the woman has formally complained of rape, Kumar in any case faces more serious charges.

There was an era when we could say, “No sex please, we’re Indians.” As Ashutosh has written, wasn’t there a time when the private lives of our public leaders were private? There was a time when voters didn’t care or chose to overlook the private foibles of stalwarts. Ram Manohar Lohia famously said, “Between a man and a woman everything is possible provided there is no use of force or breach of commitment.” Lohia never married his lifelong partner Rama Mitra. The Mahatma was famously honest about his sexual experiments and Nehru never hid his close friendships with either Padmaja Naidu or Edwina Mountbatten.

Yet Gandhi, Nehru and Lohia were leaders whose immense stature and credibility made their private lives irrelevant. Not only that but they were also open about their personal choices. Gandhi wrote in detail about his struggles with celibacy. Lohia made no attempt to hide his views on the institution of marriage. Nehru was frank about his life’s travails, pouring out his thoughts in books and articles. Today’s politicians are hardly equal in stature to the freedom movement heroes, nor are they as courageously candid about their personal lives. Sandeep Kumar, let’s face it, is no Lohia!

Nor are we anymore in that feudal era when voters kept a respectful distance from netas’ sexual fads. That time is over. Before 24×7 TV, sexual liaisons of public figures were the stuff of gossip but rarely made it to the front pages. Moralistic public stoning by a howling mob is dreadful, but netas shouldn’t be able to get away easily either. The accountability demanded of our leaders is much higher today than it was in the pre-TV time. With the eye of the camera perpetually on, the public-private distinction has been blurred beyond recognition. There’s no place to hide.

Sex is out of the Indian closet. News magazines churn out sex surveys, Indians are consuming more porn than ever before, the glamour industry constantly titillates and the public culture is sex-suffused. Yet the response to this avalanche of sex has been the paradoxical rise of a demand for propriety, particularly from elected leaders and influencers. Are MPs free to surf porn while sitting in the assembly as part of their private lives? Are ministers free to snoop on women as part of their private lives? Certainly they are not. If rulers are licentious what moral right do they have to rule?

Conversely, if netas were open about their actions, for example if an MP openly declared that I believe in the right to consume porn, or I don’t believe in sexual fidelity, he or she may gain some respect. But our netas generally abide by a cloying hypocritical doublespeak which gets the public even angrier.

Moreover, in times of frenzied political competitiveness, to expect rival parties to be squeamish about raising sex scandals is to be oblivious to ground realities. When a party like AAP, for example, chooses to occupy the high moral perch and target its rivals for financial corruption, then the ‘system’ will inevitably hit back and look for the slightest misdemeanour. Cosy cross-politician networks that worked on a nudge-wink mutual understanding have fallen apart. Like in western democracies, in India too, political parties now seek to keep their opponents constantly on their toes.

Although our leaders still get away with far too much misogynistic comment and disgraceful behaviour towards women, the walls of their ‘private lives’ are crumbling as they should. Sandeep Kumar in fact is a soft target; there are many other far bigger leaders who should be put on notice for serious personal character flaws. Sex and the Indian politician is no longer a no-go area.


DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

Author Sagarika Ghose

Sagarika Ghose has been a journalist for over two decades, starting her career with The Times of India, subsequently moving to Outlook magazine and The Indian Express. She has been a primetime news anchor and hosts the show 'Capital View' on ET Now. At present she is consulting editor, The Times of India. She is the author of two novels, "The Gin Drinkers" and "Blind Faith" both published worldwide by HarperCollins.

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1 Response

  1. almayasabdam says:

    Without going along the tide of frenzied attack on AAP and its minister Sandeep Kumar, what has to be ascertained is the date of the VCD.  This I believe is done by the Government in Hyderabad. The question is how much control the ruling party at the Centre has on an independent analysis of the VDC. This would decide (1) Whether the VCD is authentic or doctored (2) The time of the act.

    If the act was done when  Sandeep Kumar was an AAP Minister, then definitely he has to pay for it, which he is doing now.  If it was committed when he was not a minister or AAP office bearer, then I do not see how he can be held guilty.

    So the timing of the VCD is very important.  Surprisingly, no one is talking about this point.

    Isaac Gomes

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