A Review of #NL Hafta from Havil Mitra, Mir Amer Hussain and Deepti Sharma

Dear Newslaundry Team,

First things first, I am a subscriber. I like the content and I pay for it simple. Supporting independent media, pay to keep news free falls in place only if the content is good. I feel if you keep creating good content and keep your customers engaged, subscribers will come, don’t have to call them names. But well whats the harm if it adds spice to the podcast! 

I wanted to throw in my views on Paytm CEO Vijay Sekhar Sharma’s so called performance which went viral and later clarified as “not meant for public viewing”. I am a business head for an organization and I would like to give a corporate perspective to it. Lets dissect the issue into two

1. Why did it go public in the first place
2. Content of the video

Now, how did it go public? It’s a no brainer; it’s a very simple PR gimmick. It’s a selective leak meant to create a splash. If you don’t believe it ask yourself why only 7min of the whole program got leaked? There are about 2000 employees with mobile phones why only one video got leaked? If we are settled with that then let’s come to the real question.  Why do they have to do it? The answer is Paytm got more attention in the last two months than it has got for all its existence till date. The general and not so positive perception is that Paytm got windfall gains due to demonization. It is a Chinese backed company.  Its headed by a CEO who is a shy and mediocre background who doesn’t have the aura as that of other young self starters. This is coupled with crass ads like “drama Band karo” right during demonetization. With this prelude, lets go to the PR war rooms.

The first thing about curtailing any negative publicity is not to kill it, but to change its course. Because people have to vent it out and they will vent it out but PR agencies decide the substance and who should take the brunt. Say for example if the head of the company is caught for fraudulent practices, Company would want to disassociate with the person and will spend Millions of Dollars to let it go away,  that’s when PR agencies come into picture to disassociate the man from the company and over the course of few days the headlines change from “XYZ company found cheating” to “CEO of a top company detained for fraud” and during the course if a disgruntled customer throws ink on the CEO face in public then that becomes the news “Ink thrown at Mr. X’s face” slowly company’s name goes in the back burner. This is a proven tactic and used extensively in image management. PR agencies decide how much hatred should be absorbed by the company, how much hate should go to person and how much hate should go to the “Event” and they plant headlines and news accordingly. In this case since Paytm is major ad contributor to almost all news agencies except Newslaundry,so  it must have been a pretty easy task.

To quote few examples

1. Bhopal gas tragedy – everyone knows about it, but ask which company is responsible for it – not many may know
2. MH370 – everyone knows it’s the disappeared Malaysian airlines flight, but it could very well be due to a technical glitch in the aircraft so who is the manufacturer of the aircraft? Not many will know.

Now, paytm as much as they claim is an Indian company. Its not! and Vijay sekhar Sharma is not the owner. Below is the major shareholding pattern

Alipay Singapore E-Commerce P Ltd – 32.41%
Mr. Vijay Shekhar Sharma – 21.33%
SAIF III Mauritius Co Lyd – 20.37%
Alibaba.com Singapore E commerce Co P Ltd – 8.53%
SAIF Partners India P Ltd – 8.31%

It would be too naive to think CEO calls the shots in any company(don’t know about Abhinandan though) , he is more like a caged parrot and is a front for the company. He has to strictly adhere to the directives of the real owners(major share holders) and for them company comes first and CEO is just a disposable head who takes care of the day to day administration. In this case President of Paytm Mr. Bhushan Patil(Appointed by Alibaba) is responsible for securing the shareholders interest and I am sure he doesn’t dance to manali trance during board meetings.

After this video is out, all the media outlets and subsequently the public is only talking about the good, bad and ugly side of Vijay Sekhar Sharma and not Paytm anymore.  now he came out and gave a clarification, newsrooms will debate it for a few days,  in the end all people will remember is Vijay Sekhar Sharma’s dance, MC, BC cuss words. They will not remember the use of Modi in their ads or who asked CBI to handle a 10Lakh internal fraud in Paytm.

Now the content of the video in question.

If it is meant for internal consumption, absolutely nothing wrong in either his language or demeanor or the content or the way he was talking about his completion. Deepanjana was wondering how the reaction would be if a women CEO does something like that. Well barring the pelvic thrusts Vijay Sekhar was doing I have seen Women CEOs talking equally passionately with all the colourful adjectives while giving a high energy presentations. Just that they don’t come out for public consumption. Well but if the video come out then yes the reactions would be badgering the women CEO because we live in a patriarchal society.This kind of high on redbull style speeches happen mostly in banking and sales organizations and is very common in western countries may be new to India.

Now my rant on DeMo

In ancient times some wealthy families use to safe keep people’s gold and issue a note in exchange. Over time the trust on those families increased and people started to trade those notes which eventually became currency. I am sure Anand would have written a piece on this. There is no cost involved in transacting notes, because it’s physical transfer of a paper. Say for example a Rs.100 note exchanges 1000 hands a month(just a guess couldn’t get any statistics on this) previously its physical exchange of a paper. Now in NaMo’s DeMo and DiGi push, they want us to use a 3rd party to enable service this transaction. So even by conservative estimate they charge 0.1% fee for their service. They have made Rs.100 revenue in a month for substituting one currency note! So black money, fake currency, increasing tax revenue etc. are just a charade. It’s simple promotion of a business idea and ironically PM is the brand ambassador. I can go on a longer rant giving global perspectives, but may be some other time. 

Thanks and Regards, 

Janaab Karthik,

Aap aur saare azizan-e-newslaundry hafta ke mimbaraain ko Assalaam-aleikum

Iss baar aapko qatib kar raha hoon kyonki maloom chala aap hi khaton ki chaant-been karte hain. 

Janaab Ranga saab ko sunna aur aisa maloom hua ki jaise shayad voh bade alim-o-faazil ho gaye hain deen ke mamlon mein! Chaar kitabein padhne se ilm haasil nahin hota; usske liye ek accha ustaad chahiye kyonki kitaabein sab vohi padhte hain par naatije padhne wale ki samajh aur padhane wale ki soch par manhasar hain varna har talib-e-ilm  Feynman, Bohr ya Keynes nahin ban jaata…

Islam vohi rehguzar se guzar raha hain jahan par kuch arsa pehle Christianity thi; voh ‘dark ages’ kehlati thi. Iss kashm-a-kash se kuch nateejay aayenge jaise ki Janaab Abhinandan aur Mohtarma Manisha keh rahi thi.

Quran padhna aur Islam samajhna bahut muqhtalif cheezay hain. Par jis yakin se voh davaa karte hain; voh galat hain choonki sunne vale isse apni ek rai banaenege ya phir unki nafrat mein izafah hoga jo ek sahaafi ko nahin karna chahiye jab talak uske pass mukammal ilm ya maloomat na ho ya phir kahein ki ‘yeh mera mukhtasir nazaria hain’ apni baat kehne se pehle

Khudahafiz 

P.S.: do let me know if you find it difficult to comprehend and I shall send it in English.

Hi,

First of all, please accept my long-delayed gratitude for reading out my last email – many moons ago, I had the dubious honor of being the first Hafta listener whose letter you read out on the podcast. I had waxed emotional on the Kangana Ranaut issue, and I was wrong on a couple of points, but it’s past too late to discuss that any further.

Congratulations on completing your first century – I’m confident there will be many more to come. 

Sharing a few thoughts on this episode. This will probably end up as another rambling message, so dividing it into sub-headings so you can skip through one section if you wish.

On Sati

And a brief note on the subject of Sati, that came up during the debate on Jallikattu on today’s episode. I have always wondered about the thought process behind such regressive practices – what did ordinary well meaning people in the past tell themselves that let them be mute witnesses to atrocities such as Sati, or even the inhuman treatment meted out to widows and the vehement opposition to their remarriage?

Modern film and literature stays politically correct on the subject, treating the past practices with nothing more than the disdain they deserve. But they present no insight into the minds of the people who did practice that – after all, even women who lost their husband often resigned themselves to the fate prescribed to them by society, and even took righteous pride in it.

A glimmer of a hint came to me from a Premchand short story recently. In “Dhikkar”, a young man falls in love with a child widow, and speaks to her brother about his intention to marry her. In presenting his appeal, this young man tactically asserts, “I don’t endorse widow remarriage. I think Pativrat is a precious value that should not be lightly tampered with…” and so on before making his case for treating this young widow differently.

Pativrat – that very glamorous term thrown around in those glossy mytho-fantasy films I watched on Doordarshan as a kid. I never connected that term with this sinister implication – that a woman, once sworn to a man, can or should never let into her heart – or more to the point, between her legs. Or that this was the excuse used to justify the barbaric Sati practice. 

In a certain Manoj Kumar movie set in British Raj era, our freedom fighter giving a princess some lessons in the cruel ways of the British, points her to a woman shrieking madly. Explaining the woman’s story, our patriot says, without blinking, that this woman was about to follow her family tradition and sit on her husbands pyre… when British soldiers crashed the party, took her away and raped her. The princess flinches at the latter part, but the bit about that young woman sacrificing herself got no reaction. I think the P-word was thrown into that conversation as well.

Colonial narratives of Sati abound with stories of women rescued by gallant soldiers of the Empire. 

Basically, there are many conflicting narratives of even something my modern sensibility instantly dismisses as evil. I think our treatment of widows is a shameful chapter of our history that isn’t quite over yet. Someday I hope to see a Newslaundry take on the subject, to let us look an uncomfortable issue in the eye and own up to it, if we hope to be a better society.

The three-parent child

Anand Ranganathan’s bit about a child born with the biological inheritance of three parents reminds me of Dolly the sheep – she was born of three mothers, with DNA from one, egg from another and carried to term by a surrogate. Is there a similarity here?

Zahira Wasim & the Bad Muslim

A Pune-based Muslim writer I follow on Twitter got on the Zahira-trashing train by accusing her of not taking a stand on the beef issue. Takes me back to the girl’s words – I’m 16, just let me be! I don’t feel anybody has a social obligation to take a stand on things. This also ties in with Anand’s recent comments on Islam – the Good Muslim, Bad Muslim argument. 

People have no control on what faith they are born into, nor on what was written in the Holy Book of that faith centuries before they were born. Nor do they have to defend it, or defend their choices in cherry-picking aspects of that religion without taking a radical stand, rebelling or changing faith. Exposing the fact about religion does not have to be on everybody’s agenda.