Aamir Khan on Satyameva Jayate

Aamir Khan’s 13-episode Satyameva Jayate which fuses together the mass appeal of celebrity with the mass reach of the TV medium to raise awareness on social issues, is already the toast of drawing rooms. But it has also sparked questions: do hi-glitz shows such as this have a lasting impact? Or could this, like other shows, end up being just another platform to peddle products? Aamir spoke to Namrata Joshi in Jaipur. Excerpts:

Did you expect the programme would strike such a chord?
I was hoping it would be this huge. It has been a dream response.

Is the response due to the issue, the cause or the sheer power of your stardom?
No, it’s not about my stardom. Perhaps in a broad way people would come to the show thinking let’s see what he is saying. But it’s a combination of the research work of my team and the strength of TV which can, potentially, take change to every home. I am the via media in getting people to watch the show, to see the extraordinary stories of ordinary people.

Female foeticide (the topic of the first episode) has been much covered in the media. But Aamir Khan has got everyone talking about it now. Is the star turning into a citizen journalist here?
I am happy to be called a journalist. The first phase of our job, when we were dealing with research work I was a journalist. What I am doing here is empowering the viewers with 360 degree information on an issue. The information is emotional, social, legal, economic about the possible solutions and the way forward. Of course it is limited to my understanding of it. How my team and I, to the best of our ability, have understood various issues after two years of research.
But I get creative when it comes to taking that material to people. I am interested in reaching people on a human level. It's about what is the most effective way to touch your hearts. I am using entertainment to reach out. Which is not to say I am using fun and games. It's more about underlining things with emotions. Like I did with the issue of childcare and education in a film like Taare Zameen Par. The information people get from a newspaper and magazine article doesn't change their heart. Very few people cry on reading newspapers. I try to affect them emotionally.

The show has been criticised by some for being too manipulative...
I am using honest emotions to say something good. Look at the manner in which I open the show. I talk about mothers and motherhood. Then go on to pick one mother to show how we treat our mothers. I don't say the word foeticide immediately at the start of the show but after two cases have been discussed. I gradually take you to the issue. I am a communicator. I scare you with its eventualities when I talk of women being bought and sold. I am not limited by the format of an article. I am on a general entertainment channel. I am a person who makes feature films. These are my skillsets and I am using them to deal with the issues. Am good at engaging with people emotionally. That's what I have a passion for and am good at and I am using that ability.

Do such shows bring about change? Or do people engage and move on?
Often the stance on any problem is why doesn't the police, the government do something about it. However, here I am asking people to do what I am doing myself which is to look within and ask what am I doing about it. It's not about physical action but an internal, personal journey. The biggest change we can bring about is in ourselves. I am not asking people to come on the roads and take out a dharna. Three crore female foetuses have been aborted in the last 30-40 years. Female foeticide is a crime planned in our bedrooms and we can't have cops in the bedrooms to monitor us. But if we get even a hint that something like this is being planned in our family or by our friends we can create a ruckus. I won't tell you to decide. I won't judge you if you don't do anything. The choice has to be yours, I can't force it on you. I hope people do find courage and desire to change. So if a doctor who has been involved in foeticides decides after seeing the show that he or she won't do it anymore bas mera kaam ho gaya. Even if one girl child is saved then the show is a success.

I will be on TV. I will also be on Vividh Bharati, AIR, Radio Mirchi, Star News. I will write a column in HT. With every issue I want to go wide on many platforms. It's a deep and concentrated approach to reach out in as many different ways as possible. I hope it will make people understand an issue for a life. I hope it will have them converted for life.

People are critical of the way you get involved with a cause and then get out. For instance, the Narmada protest, which you joined briefly.
I find it a very faulty critique. It's actually your desire of seeing me as a full time, 24X7 social activist. I am not that. It's not what I claim to be. I can agree, support, endorse but I can't leave my job which is films. Talaash is delayed right now. But I will go back to it. Am doing Dhoom 3 and P.K. next. But I will continue to support causes while doing my work. I can't measure up to the 500% expectations that you have of me. I am consistent with what I am committing myself to. It's like I have just said that I will come and have tea with you but it's you who are assuming that I am going to come and live with you for life. If my involvement with an issue seems less to you then why don't you do the good work?

You can question me two months hence that you had done a show on this issue and why don't you remain with it your entire life. According to me it's for the state and administration to take forward the job. You, as an individual, also need to take a call, be responsible and decisive.

There are whispers about your charging Rs 3 crore per episode for a show on serious social issues...
I never discuss my fee. But since you asked I am getting Rs 3.5 crore per episode. Firstly what I get is none of anyone's business. Main apni mehnat ki kama aur khaa raha hoon. [I am earning and enjoying the benefits of my hard-work]. I am not doing anything wrong. Main izzat se, achchaa kaam karke roti kama raha hoon aur mujhe fakr hai is baat ka [I am honourably, by doing good work, earning my bread, and I am proud of it]. Secondly to clear the misconception this amount includes the cost of the episode also. The bulk of the money goes into the cost and some of the episodes may have overshot the amount. Thirdly, I have endorsements deals of about Rs 100-125 crore per year. I have stopped them for a year while the show is on. There's no logic in the decision, it's purely emotional. But tell me who has ever said no to Rs 100 crore for a cause?

So what issues do we see next?
We started off with 20 topics of which we fleshed out 16 and eventually locked in 13. These are topics which affect every Indian. But the topic of next week will not be revealed in advance. Even when I start the episode you wouldn't know immediately. It's not just the topic that's important but also on how I present it and get you engaged and involved with it.

Will you discuss contentious political topics like Gujarat, Kashmir, North East?
The issues will be social more than political. At this point I want to concentrate only on social issues. But it's impossible to cut away political aspects from any issue. Also if we bring about change in the people and their perceptions our political processes will also change over time.
You'll see all kinds of India: the India I have seen. There are heart-breaking and traumatic stories, inspiring stories of great courage and high values and ideals.

Do we see you taking to politics like stars abroad?
I have always been categorical about my no to politics. Political alignments, party affiliations I am not interested in.

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Jump cut - His Star Grounded

He was not aspiring to be Balraj Sahni. He was a superstar and he wanted to be accorded his rightful place.

Bishwadeep Moitra

The summer of 2007 brought me a rather unusual invitation. Unusual, because the round table conference in Florida that I was invited to participate in—pompously called the Leadership Project—had little in common with my vocation. But the real hook for me was the opportunity to meet Aamir Khan, who too had been invited—and had consented to come.

Aamir came across like the character he had played in Dil Chahta Hai, charmingly unassuming. He took his wife Kiran Rao’s environmental concerns seriously. When she objected to the engine of our monstrous safari jeep idling every time we stopped for a sighting in the 7,400-acre Wild Oak park, Aamir dutifully went up to the driver and asked him to switch the engine off.

Finally, after doing our bit to save the world in three sessions, we had some time to luxuriate at the sprawling facility. All of us had been allotted chalets to be shared with a fellow delegate. Aamir and Kiran, of course, had been given a chalet of their own, complete with a swimming pool and a sauna. They very generously invited some of us to hang out in their chalet. And what an afternoon it turned out to be.

Aamir’s entourage consisted of a three-member personal staff. A bodyguard who doubled as a physical trainer, another who did his suitcases, and a third who was his feeder (read on). Aamir was about to shoot for Ghajini and had to look big and brawny. Mr Feeder’s job was to make sure Aamir followed the dietary regimen. Every hour, he would bring an egg yolk balanced precariously on a spoon to pour into Aamir’s mouth. This, a rather strange ritual, went about in a very matter-of-fact way.

All evening, Aamir regaled us with anecdotes about the co-stars, producers, directors he had worked with, and his family with great candour. He told us that when Tahir Hussain (Aamir’s producer-father) offered Jeetendra a double-role, Jumping Jack quipped: “Mujhse ek role ki acting to hoti nahin hai, double role kaise karoonga!” He said he watched few films, but read a lot. He didn’t think much of Sholay or any other film—save his own.

Our adda eventually thinned out and I could feel the star becoming more at ease. But I could also sense a rancour. Aamir could not hide his disappointment that he was still not regarded like a Amitabh Bachchan or a Dilip Kumar despite two decades of stardom and a dozen runaway hits. Ghajini, Taare Zameen Par and 3 Idiots had not yet happened; another Khan was King.

Aamir felt Shahrukh Khan managed the media very well, giving the impression that SRK’s movies were all superhits. He rattled off box-office figures to prove that all of his movies had fared better than SRK’s. The Aamir Khan I was now chatting with had shades of Satyajit Ray’s protagonist Arindam Mukherjee, played by Uttam Kumar, in Nayak. A superstar at the helm of stardom, struggling to be at peace with himself.

I then advance a meek defence, saying, “Outlook has put you on its cover twice.” To which Aamir charged, “But India Today had me on its cover three times.” I said, “Look Aamir, the dignity and gravitas you bring with the characters you play and the high probity you display in public life makes you the modern-day Balraj Sahni, a fine actor and an exemplary citizen.”

The moment he heard the B-word, Aamir’s expression changed from an accommodative amiability to a grim grey.

By way of placation, I attempted another salvo. “When Amitabh Bachchan, hailing from a literary family, wanted to join the debauched film industry, his first director in Saat Hindustani, K.A. Abbas, cited Balraj Sahni to AB’s father Harivanshrai: ‘An industry with which a man like Balraj Sahni could associate himself, your son too should be able to survive honourably’,” I said.

Aamir saw red. He was not aspiring to be Balraj Sahni. He was a superstar and he wanted to be accorded his rightful place. Saat saal baad, surely he has got it?

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Bishwadeep Moitra is executive editor, Outlook

An Article against MBAs

Bloodless bean-counters rule over us – where are the leaders?

The inexorable march of the managerialists is creating resentment and social division. 

Charles Moore in The Telegraph

Recently, a man got in touch with me who works for the defence services contractor QinetiQ. He wanted to complain about the way it was run. The company, in his view, suffers from “managerialism”.

Managerialists, he says, are “a group who consider themselves separate from the organisations they join”. They are not interested in the content of the work their organisation performs. They are a caste of people who think they know how to manage. They have studied “The 24-hour MBA”. There is a clear benefit from their management, for them: they arrange their own very high salaries and bonuses. Then they can leave quickly with something that looks good on the CV. The benefit to the company is less clear.

I also spoke to a former senior employee of QinetiQ. He corroborated my informant’s points with gusto. He said managerialists were particularly unsuited to industries such as QinetiQ’s, where scientific knowledge is all. He put it simply: “People who are making bits of technology, or servicing them, should know about technology.”

Skills are not infinitely transferable. “You used to be the editor of a broadsheet newspaper,” he said to me. “How do you think a former chief executive of Ford would perform if he suddenly came and edited a national title?” (or, he politely didn’t say, if the reverse were to happen).

The lack of knowledge at the top of a firm obviously creates a practical problem – “You don’t have people to get under the bonnet. They can only kick the tyres and change the oil.” They don’t understand the needs of the core customer. It also, in his view, creates a moral problem. The workers cannot respect their bosses. Management becomes “not symbiotic, but parasitic”.

I do not know whether these men are right about QinetiQ. I have no experience of the company and no technical expertise. One must also allow for the fact that, in any organisation, there are people with axes to grind. But I did find the way they talked striking. It seemed to accord with so many things I hear about life in so many organisations.

It is a big complaint, for example, about the modern National Health Service. Nowadays, on the dubious principle that all businesses and services are essentially the same, managers are a non-medical breed. The effect can be laughable. I heard of a case in which the managers told the doctors in a big hospital to save money by sending all their instruments away to a centralised off-site sterilising unit. Fine, said one mischievous consultant, but in that case may I have a second set of instruments so that I can work on my patients in emergencies? The managers, having no idea about his instruments, thought he probably could. “That’ll be £2 million then,” he said.

Comparable problems afflict the Armed Forces. They have fought several wars in the past 15 years, dealing with a Ministry of Defence staffed by people who know nothing about war. More generally in the Civil Service, it has become common to reduce specialist skills – language training in the Foreign Office, for example – and to move able people around from department to department. The present permanent secretary of the Home Office had never worked there before she took her present post at the beginning of last year. Since it is a department of fantastic complexity, it is perhaps not surprising that it has recently taken a series of tumbles on such issues as deportations and borders.

You find this hollowing-out everywhere. In schools, the head who does not teach is now a familiar, indeed dominant figure. University vice-chancellors, instead of being dons who move from their subject into administration for a period of their lives, are now virtually lifelong managers, with hugely increased salaries to match. It is even commonplace for charities to be run by people with no commitment to the charity’s specific purpose, but proud possession of what they call the necessary “skill-sets”, such as corporate governance.

With the rise of the managerialist comes a special language – a weird combination of semi-spiritual banality (“unlocking energies”), euphemism, and legalese. If you want to see the difference between people steeped in their trade and people steeped in managerialism, compare the testimony, at the Leveson Inquiry, of the Murdochs, father and son. The wicked old man spoke in the language, simultaneously sharp and blunt, of people who know and run their business. The evasive son adopted the locutions taught in business-school courses, honed by big law firms, footnoted by anxious compliance officers.

My friend at QinetiQ draws my attention to some of the usages which predominate where managerialism rules. The system of internal communications becomes a platform not for sharing knowledge but for propaganda. Human Resources invent things like the Personal Improvement Programme, which is really a means of punishing staff. “Consultation”, he says, is a word meaning that managerialists “tell you what they are going to do, 30 days before they do it”.

These habits are now pervasive across industry and the public services. “Diversity” is always “celebrated”, but it never means diversity of thought. The people who tell you they are “passionate about” X or Y are usually the most bloodless ones in the outfit.

In such cultures, just as the experts, the professionals and the technicians bitterly resent the managerialists for neither understanding nor caring, so the managerialists secretly detest the professionals who, they believe, get in the way of their rationalisations. They are desperate to “let go” of such people. Very unhappy organisations result.

A few weeks ago, after Dr Rowan Williams had given notice of his retirement as Archbishop of Canterbury, there was a story about his potential successor, Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York. Dr Sentamu’s critics, apparently, had been saying that he was too much like an African tribal chief. Friends of Dr Sentamu were angry at what they saw as a racial slur.

But it struck me that the qualities of a tribal chief are now shockingly rare in big modern organisations. They might be just the job, and not only for the poor old C of E. The point about a tribe is that it unites its members by ties that are very hard to break. Tribalism, for sure, can be a bad thing, but a tribe understands matters of life and death. It recognises the importance of yesterday and tomorrow as much as today. It maintains the interest of the whole over that of a particular part. The chief of the tribe is not a manager: he is a leader.

No one sensible thinks that a large organisation can exist without being managed. Old stagers in companies, regiments, professions and, in my own experience, newspapers, easily over-romanticise their achievements and are unfair about the poor “bean-counters” who make the sums add up. But management should not dominate. As Lord Slim, who brilliantly led the British Army through the Burma campaign, put it: “Managers are necessary; leaders are essential.” We now have unprecedented numbers of the former, not so many of the latter.

Because, since the credit crunch, Everything Is Different Now, this problem is causing real social division. It explains much of the rage about executive pay. It is not so much the numerical difference between the top and the bottom which causes the anger, as the sense about why that difference exists. It has been arranged by the managerialists. It may even be the chief purpose of the managerialists’ working lives, as they edge towards the exit with the largest portable share of the takings available.

The Five Best Ever Spinners according to Ashley Mallett

 Ashley Mallett in Cricinfo

Shane Warne's star illuminated the cricket firmament, inspiring generations with the majesty of his art. When Warne reigned supreme on the Test stage, you'd see kids in the park and in the nets trying to emulate him. They got the saunter right, but what they didn't see was Warne's amazing strength, drive and energy through the crease. Watching him, it all looked so easy. They would emulate his approach, release the ball, and more times than not watch it disappear out of the park. There was a general lack of understanding about energy and drive through the crease. 

Warne turned up just when we all thought legspin had gone the way of the dinosaurs, who were bounced out when Earth failed to duck a hail of meteors. Sir Donald Bradman said Warne's legspin was the best thing to happen to Australian cricket in more than 30 years. I, along with thousands of television viewers, watched transfixed as Warne weaved his magic. Poor Mike Gatting, poor, hapless Daryll Cullinan.

I was in the South African dressing room when Warne destroyed them with 6 for 34 in their second innings at the SCG in 1998. And we all remember the time he got seven wickets for 50-odd at the MCG against West Indies, getting Richie Richardson with a flipper. Before that grand performance, which sparked his career, the camera focused on Warne in the field, and Bill Lawry said on air: "Now there's a young man who won't get much bowling today." The Phantom was right: Warne bowled 23 overs; not a lot of work for a slow bowler, but that was all he had to get seven wickets.

Warne's genius got him 708 wickets in 145 Tests. His physical skills were matched by an incredibly strong mind. He was frequently in a lot of controversy off the cricket field, but he managed to focus totally on his cricket when it mattered on the field of play. As with Don Bradman and Garry Sobers, he was a cricketing phenomenon.

The Indian offspinner Erapalli Prasanna was a small, rotund chap, with little hands and stubby fingers. Not the size of hand you'd think would be able to give a cricket ball tremendous purchase.

Pras, as he was affectionately called, bounced up to the wicket and got very side-on. He was short, so he tended to toss the ball up, and he spun it so hard it hummed. Unlike the majority of spinners, he could entice you forward with tantalising flight or force you back, and often got a batsman trapped on the crease. His changes of pace weren't always as subtle as Warne's, but Pras broke the rhythm of batsmen better than any spinner I've seen - especially with that quicker ball, which perplexed the best players of spin bowling in his era.

He possessed a mesmerising quality in that he seemed to have the ball on a string. You'd play forward and find yourself way short of where you expected the ball to pitch. In Madras once, I thought I'd take him on and advanced down the wicket only, to my horror, find that Pras had pulled hard on the "string" and I was miles short of where the ball pitched. I turned, expecting to see Farokh Engineer remove the bails, only to see the ball, having hit a pothole, climb over the keeper's head for four byes.

Pras was one of the few spinners to worry the life out of Ian Chappell, for he could trap him on the crease or lure him forward at will. Doug Walters, on the other hand, played the offspinners better than most - perhaps because his bat came down at an angle and the more you spun it, the more likely it was to hit the middle of his bat.

In 49 Tests Prasanna took 189 wickets at an average of 30.38. For a spinner who played a lot on the turning tracks of India, his average is fairly tall, but Pras was a wicket-taker and he took risks, inviting the batsman to hit him into the outfield. He always believed that if the batsman was taking him on and trying to hit him while he was spinning hard, dipping and curving the ball, he would have the final word.

For his tremendous performances in Australia in 1967-68, I place Prasanna if not above, at least on par with another genius offspinner, the Sri Lankan wizard Muttiah Muralitharan.

Murali's Test figures beggar belief - 133 matches for 800 wickets at 22.72, with 67 bags of five wickets or more (though, for some reason, he didn't shine in Australia).

He operated from very wide on the crease - which would inhibit the ordinary offie - but got so much work on the ball and a tremendous breadth of turn that he got away with bowling from that huge angle. At times he operated from round the wicket to get an away drift. Murali had the doosra, which fooled most batsmen, although the smart ones knew that his offbreak was almost certainly going to be a fair way outside the line of off stump to a right-hander and that the doosra would come on a much straighter line.

	His changes of pace weren't always as subtle as Warne's, but Prasanna broke the rhythm of batsmen better than any spinner I've seen

Saqlain Mushtaq lost his way over the doosra, the delivery he created, because he ended up bowling everything on too straight a line, and thus his offbreak became far less effective at the end of the career than it was when he began.

As with Saqlain and Warne, Murali made good use of his front foot. When any spinner gets his full body weight over his braced front leg at the point of release, he achieves maximum revolutions.

As a youngster Murali attended the famous St Anthony's College in Kandy, and every Sunday morning he trained under the tutelage of Sunil Fernando. Ruwan Kalpage, who also trained under Fernando at the time, and is the current Sri Lankan fielding coach, maintains that Murali always had the same action that he took into big cricket.

As with Warne, when bowling, Murali had an extraordinary area of danger, as big an area as your average dinner table. The likes of Ashley Giles, say, on the other hand, who didn't spin the ball very hard, needed to be super accurate, for their area of danger was about as a big as a dinner plate in contrast.

The key to spin bowling is not where the ball lands but how the ball arrives to the batsman. As with Warne and Prasanna, when Murali bowled, the ball came with a whirring noise and after striking the pitch rose with venom. Throughout his career and beyond there has been that nagging doubt about the legitimacy of Murali's action, but the ICC has cleared him and that is why I place him among the best five spinners I've seen.

My No. 4 is Derek Underwood, the England left-arm bowler, who has to be categorised as a spinner, although he operated at about slow-medium and cut the ball rather than spun it in the conventional left-arm orthodox manner. On good wickets Lock was a superior bowler to Underwood, but on underprepared or rain-affected wickets, the man from Kent was lethal.

He had a lengthy approach, a brisk ten or so paces, with a rather old-fashioned duck-like gait, and a hunter's attitude, along with a keen eye for a batsman's weakness. In August 1968, Underwood demolished Bill Lawry's Australian team on the last day of the fifth Test. Heavy rain gave the Australians hope of escaping with a draw and so winning the series 1-0. But Underwood swooped after tea and cut them down, taking 7 for 50.

	Murali: his extreme spin allowed him to get away with operating wide of the crease © AFP Enlarge

A week later he joined John Inverarity, Greg Chappell (who had just completed a season with Somerset) and me on Frank Russell's Cricketers Club of London tour of West Germany. We stayed in a British Army camp just outside the old city of Mönchengladbach. We played a cricket match against the army, using an artificial pitch and welded steel uprights doubled for stumps.

A huge West Indian came to the crease and we pleaded with Deadly to "throw one up". Having faced him over five Tests in England, where his slower ball was about the speed of Basil D'Oliveira's medium-pacers, we were keen to see how the batsman - any batsman - would react, when Underwood gave the ball some air. He eventually did. As the ball left his hand we could see a hint of a smile on the batsman's face. The ball disappeared and was never retrieved. Underwood's face was a flush of red as he let the next ball go, and what a clang it made as it hit those steel uprights, while the West Indian's bat was still on the downswing!

Apart from his destructive ability on bad or rain-affected tracks, Underwood was also a brilliant foil for the fast bowlers on hard wickets. He kept things tight as a drum when bowing in tandem with John Snow during Ray Illingworth's successful 1970-71 Ashes campaign Down Under.

My fifth choice might surprise some for I've gone for Graeme Swann, the best of the modern torchbearers for spin bowling.

I first saw him with Gareth Batty and Monty Panesar, fellow spin hopefuls, in Adelaide in the early 2000s. Swann had energy through the crease, he spun hard, and he tried to get people out. At that time some of the coaches leaned towards Panesar and I couldn't understand it, for Swann wasn't just a fine offspinner, he could bat when he put his mind to it, and he was an exceptional slip fieldsman. In comparison Panesar did not seem to have the same resolve or the cricketing nous.

When he was finally recognised as a top-flight spinner, Swann proved himself straightaway. He was 29 years old when he played his first Test, against India in 2008-09, and in the four-odd years since, he has played 41 Tests, taking 182 wickets at 27.97. Swann doesn't have the doosra, but he does have the square-spinner, which looks like an offie but skids on straight, and he can beat either side of the right-hander's bat.

There's a cheerful chirpiness about him that may annoy his opponents, but that is part of his make-up, just as the aggression of a Bill O'Reilly, or the cold stare of Warne, helped them dominate batsmen. Statistically Swann's record so far compares well with Jim Laker's (193 wickets at 21.24 from 46 Tests) and Tony Lock (49 Tests - 174 wickets at 25.58 with 9 five-wicket hauls).

There are lots of good spinners who I have had to omit, including Lock, Laker, Abdul Qadir, Lance Gibbs, Richie Benaud, Daniel Vettori, Anil Kumble, Sonny Ramadhin, Intikhab Alam, John Emburey, Pat Pocock, Ray Illingworth, Fred Titmus and Stuart MacGill. But the five I did pick - Warne, Prasanna, Murali, Underwood and Swann - would do well against any batsmen in any era.

Religion for Atheists

Institutional Racism in the UK - the case of the Met Police

'If you complain about racism, your career is finished,' says Met detective

New Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe has promised to drive racism out of the force. But one officer, sacked after being smeared by his colleagues, believes his words are hollow

Nina Lakhani

Wednesday, 9 May 2012

An Asian police officer whose career was thwarted by institutional discrimination has dismissed promises by Britain's highest-ranking officer to drive out racism within the Scotland Yard as mere "lip service".

Detective Sergeant Gurpal Singh Virdi will today hand in his warrant card and become what he describes as one of only a dozen or so ethnic-minority police officers to survive 30 years with Britain's largest police force.

Last month the Met's Commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, vowed to become an "implacable enemy" of racists within Scotland Yard, promising to "drive them out of the Met". But DS Virdi, whose career has been defined by a racially motivated character assassination and a subsequent smear campaign by his own colleagues, says he doesn't believe the Met has changed.

Speaking to The Independent, the retiring officer said: "The Met never wants to learn lessons from people like me."

The 53-year-old was sacked in 1998 after being erroneously charged with sending racist, National Front hate mail to black colleagues at Ealing police station. His house was searched for seven hours in the presence of his children.

DS Virdi says the raid, authorised by then Deputy Commissioner John Stevens, came weeks after he had threatened to go over the head of his superiors regarding what he felt was a sloppy investigation of a racist, near-fatal stabbing of an Iraqi and an Indian boy by five white males. DS Virdi had pointed out the parallels between the investigation and that into Stephen Lawrence's murder five years earlier; weeks later he was arrested and suspended.

"My career finished in 1998," he said. "As soon as you raise your head above the parapet, your career is finished, and everyone in the police service knows that... Most people keep silent because they know that, even if you complain, the investigation won't be done properly... That hasn't changed."

It took a year for the Crown Prosecution Service to decide there was insufficient evidence to prosecute him.

Nevertheless, Scotland Yard seemed determined to make an example of him and he was sacked in 2000. Later that year an employment tribunal found that the Met's investigation had racially discriminated against DS Virdi.

Unlike his white colleagues, it ruled, he had been subjected to an entrapment operation, been formally interviewed, had his house searched, been arrested and suspended "without sufficient evidence to support the allegations". He was awarded a six-figure settlement, mainly for the "high-handed" way the Yard had behaved and the way it had manipulated media coverage.

The Independent Advisory Group, which monitors the Met's performance on race crime, described the investigation as "disgraceful" and "a high-profile character assassination". In 2001, DS Virdi and his wife, Sathat, were assured by the then Commissioner, John Stevens, that lessons had been learnt, and he was sent an apology. An independent inquiry by the newly formed Metropolitan Police Authority concluded that there had been a smear campaign against him.

DS Virdi went back to the Met in 2002 against the wishes of his wife. In 2004 DS Virdi was assured by Lord Stevens and Mr Hogan-Howe, then assistant commissioner for human resources, that his career would not suffer as a result of a negative internal report claiming there was still "strong evidence" of his guilt.

For the past five years, he says he has "pushed pen around paper" for the Met's Sikh Association, awaiting a suitable post. "I had to go back and face them; I am not the type of person to run away," he said. "I wanted to do 30 years, and I'm glad that I've done it. I've enjoyed what I've done, but feel sad as I could have done so much more. I have been stopped from reaching my potential." Over the past five years, DS Virdi says he has supported a number of ethnic minority officers, from trainees to high-ranking officials, who have made allegations of racism but do not believe their complaints were properly investigated.

"The majority of allegations of racism and corruption have not been properly investigated – in fact they usually protect the racists rather than the victims," he said. "That has not changed.

"There have only been a dozen people, including mixed-race officers, who have survived 30 years. Most of them realise that their careers will never go anywhere and so they just go."

Born in India, Virdi grew up in Southall, west London. His father served in Delhi police, but when Virdi joined the Met in 1982, it was against his parents' wishes. He had an unblemished career in uniformed, CID and specialist squads until he was arrested in 1998.

Despite all that has happened, he says he has no regrets about returning to the police. "I can leave today with my head held high, as I can honestly say I didn't tolerate corruption or bad practice. There will be no leaving do. It wouldn't feel right after all that has happened."

The officer, or officers, who were responsible for sending the racist hate mail in 1998 have never been found; the criminal case remains unsolved. "There is nothing stopping the Commissioner [Hogan-Howe] from reopening the case should he want to, but I don't think he will, because they won't like the answers."

The Met said it did not comment on individual cases, but pointed to the Commissioner's public statements on driving out racism.

Lawrence corruption review 'imminent'

The Metropolitan Police is expected to make an announcement this week about its review into allegations of corruption within the original Stephen Lawrence murder inquiry.

The review was set up after Doreen Lawrence, the mother of the teenager killed in 1993 by a white racist gang, called for the reopening of the public inquiry into the circumstances of his death.

Mrs Lawrence's request to the Home Secretary, Theresa May, followed publication in The Independent of previously unseen intelligence reports about Detective Sergeant John Davidson, who played a leading role in the hunt for the killers, which said he was involved in "all aspects of criminality".

A former Scotland Yard commander, Ray Adams, was also the subject of an inquiry, but the findings were not passed to the Stephen Lawrence inquiry panel.

Paul Peachey

Extend Freedom of Information to the Private Sector

Freedom of information: my monstrous idea will keep corporate tyrants at bay

Extending transparency laws to the private sector would make the likes of News International think twice before misbehaving

• 
• • George Monbiot
  • guardian.co.uk, Monday 7 May 2012 20.37 BST

Illustration by Daniel Pudles

 

Modern government could be interpreted as a device for projecting corporate power. Since the 1980s, in Britain, the US and other nations, the primary mission of governments has been to grant their sponsors in the private sector ever greater access to public money and public life.

There are several means by which they do so: the privatisation and outsourcing of public services; the stuffing of public committees with corporate executives; and the reshaping of laws and regulations to favour big business. In the UK, the Health and Social Care Act extends the corporate domain in ways unimaginable even five years ago.

With these increasing powers come diminishing obligations. Through repeated cycles of deregulation, governments release big business from its duty of care towards both people and the planet. While citizens are subject to ever more control – as the state extends surveillance and restricts our freedom to protest and assemble – companies are subject to ever less.

In this column I will make a proposal that sounds – at first – monstrous, but I hope to persuade you is both reasonable and necessary: that freedom of information laws should be extended to the private sector.

The very idea of a corporation is made possible only by a blurring of the distinction between private and public. Limited liability socialises risks that would otherwise be carried by a company's owners and directors, exempting them from the costs of the debts they incur or the disasters they cause. The bailouts introduced us to an extreme form of this exemption: men like Fred Goodwin and Matt Ridley are left in peace to count their money while everyone else must pay for their mistakes.

So I am asking only for the exercise of that long-standing Conservative maxim – no rights without responsibilities. If you benefit from limited liability, the public should be permitted to scrutinise your business.

Companies already have certain obligations towards transparency, such as the publication of financial statements and annual reports. But these tell us only a little of what we need to know. In News International's annual report, you will find none of the information disclosed at the Leveson inquiry, though it is of pressing public interest. In fact it is only due to a combination of the Guardian's persistence and pure chance (the discovery that Milly Dowler's phone had been hacked) that we know anything about the wide-ranging assault on democracy engineered by that company.

Privatisation and outsourcing ensure that private business is, or should be, everyone's business. Private companies now provide services we are in no position to refuse, yet, unlike the state bodies they replace, they are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. The results can be catastrophic for public accounts.

Just as the Blair government did while imposing the disastrous private finance initiative, the Bullingdon boys now shield their schemes from public scrutiny behind the corporate information wall. Companies are once again striking remarkable deals, hatched in secret, at the expense of taxpayers, pupils and patients. Last week, for example, we learned that Circle Healthcare will be able to extract millions of pounds a year from a public hospital, Hinchingbrooke, which is in deep financial trouble. Crucial information about the deal remains secret on the grounds of Circle's "commercial confidentiality".

The principle of corporate transparency is already established in English law. The Freedom of Information Act has a clause enabling the government to extend it to companies with public contracts. Unsurprisingly, it has not been exercised. The environmental information rules of 2004 define a public authority as any body providing public services, which includes corporations. Why should this not apply universally?

The Campaign for Freedom of Information points out that the Scottish government almost adopted this idea: it proposed extending the transparency laws to major government contractors. But though this plan was overwhelmingly popular, it was dropped last year on the grounds that the contractors were opposed to it. (Who would have guessed?) South Africa, by contrast, provides a general right of access to the records of private bodies. The ANC, aware of how corporations assisted apartheid, recognises that the state is not the only threat to democracy.

Freedom of information is never absolute, nor should it be. Companies should retain the right, as they do in South Africa, to protect material that is of genuine commercial confidentiality; though they should not be allowed to use that as an excuse to withhold everything that might embarrass them. The information commissioner should decide where the line falls, just as he does for public bodies today.

The purpose of this monstrous proposal is not just to shine a light into the rattling cupboards of private companies, but to change the way in which they behave. A body that acts as if the world is watching presents less of a threat to the public interest than a body that knows it won't get caught. Would News International have acted as it did if its emails could have been revealed as a matter of course rather than a matter of chance? If it is true that "governments don't rule the world, Goldman Sachs rules the world", should we not be entitled to know what Goldman Sachs is up to? Is that not the only means we have of preventing its unelected power from becoming tyrannical?

I realise that it is not a good time to be making this request: far from extending our transparency laws, Cameron hints that he wants to roll them back. But unless we decide what we want and how we mean to obtain it – however remote it might now seem – we have no means of making social progress. If we are to reclaim power from the corporations that have seized it, first we need to know what that power looks like.

A web of privilege supports this so-called meritocracy

On both sides of the Atlantic, the social ties that bind our political, legal and corporate forces lie exposed

• 
• • Gary Younge
  • guardian.co.uk, Sunday 6 May 2012 21.59 BST 
  • 
    

‘The meetings, lunches and visits showcase a parallel, unaccountable universe where decisions are made and deals done.' Photograph: Laurence Griffiths/Getty

Shortly after Mitt Romney's failed 2008 campaign for the Republican nomination his son Tagg set up a private equity fund with the campaign's top fundraiser. One of the first donors was his mum, Anne. Next came several of his dad's financial backers. Tagg had no experience in the world of finance, but after two years in the middle of a deep recession the company had netted $244m from just 64 investors.

Tagg insists that neither his name nor the fact that his father had made it clear he would run for the presidency again had anything to do with his success. "The reason people invested in us is that they liked our strategies,'' he told the New York Times.

Class privilege, and the power it confers, is often conveniently misunderstood by its beneficiaries as the product of their own genius rather than generations of advantage, stoutly defended and faithfully bequeathed. Evidence of such advantages is not freely available. It is not in the powerful's interest for the rest of us to know how their influence is attained or exercised. But every now and then a dam bursts and the facts come flooding forth.

The Leveson inquiry has provided one such moment. It was set up last year to look into the specific claims about phone hacking at the News of the World, alleged police corruption and the general culture and ethics of the British media. But every time it probes harder into the Murdoch empire it draws blood from the heart of our body politic, telling us a great deal about how Britain's political class in particular and ruling class in general collude, connive and corrupt both systemically and systematically.

Issues of alleged criminality will eventually be determined in the courts. But while illegality would be more damning, much of what we now know that is legal is no less corrosive. The evidence has laid bare the intimate, extensive and insidious web of social, familial and personal ties between the political, corporate and legal forces that govern a country: a patchwork of individual and institutional associations so tightly interwoven that to pick at one part is to watch the whole thing unravel. The "sit downs", pay-offs and class camaraderie on display owe more to a cross between Downton Abbey and the Sopranos than the functioning of a 21st-century democracy.

The details of the main narrative bear repeating. We now know that James Murdoch met with David Cameron 12 times between January 2006 and January 2010 – eight times for dinner, twice for breakfast, once for lunch and once for drinks. Between May 2010 and July 2011 there were also more than 60 meetings between ministers and either Rupert Murdoch, his son James, the then News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks or James Harding, the editor of the Times. That averages around one a week. We know there were more, but not all were logged as such by Downing Street.

The subplots are stunning. And the forthcoming attractions could yet overshadow the lot. Now that Brooks has agreed to hand over her text messages to Cameron, we are about to learn whether rumours that they exchanged as many as 12 texts a day are true.

Brooks was arrested both on suspicion of phone hacking and corruption last year. She was arrested again this year with her husband, Charlie Brooks, on suspicion of perverting the course of justice. Charlie went to Eton with Cameron – as did the Tory mayor of London, Boris Johnson.

Such is the incestuous nature of the British ruling class and the gene puddle from which it draws its stock. Such is their brazen venality, complicity, contempt and mendacity. Eton, Oxford, Bullingdon, Westminster – if you're looking for a tiny minority who are struggling to integrate, look no further than the cabinet.

Two things make this a matter of import as well as intrigue. The first is the lie it gives to the insistence on meritocracy at a time of acute economic crisis when benefits are slashed, the poor hammered. Cameron and his cabinet insist others pull themselves up by their bootstraps even as they themselves swan around in their parents' expensive pairs of loafers. Today almost 40% of MPs went to private school. In 1997 it was just 30%. In terms of social mobility, we are going backwards. The issue here is not class envy but class entrenchment. The fact that they were born rich is irrelevant. They had no choice in the matter. But the fact that they appear to want to give even more to those who already have a great deal while denying much to those who have little is unforgiveable.

The one job Cameron landed in the private sector was arranged by his wife's mother, Lady Astor, who was friends with Michael Green, then executive chairman of Carlton. Green gave Cameron a starting salary of £90,000. He has no more had to stand on his merits than James Murdoch had to interview for a job at News Corp.

Rocked in the cradle of power from birth so that its rhythms become second nature, these people imbibe their sense of entitlement with their mother's milk. But the personal tutors, private schools, the most expensive universities do not, somehow, suffice. As though the benefits of wealth were not enough, they apparently feel the need to game the very system they already control.

Which brings us to the manner in which these interactions mock the very notion of democracy on which the nation's illusions are based. For the meetings, lunches and visits showcase a parallel, unaccountable universe where actual decisions are made and deals are done. All these informal gatherings took place at a time when the government was supposed to be adjudicating News Corporation's bid to take over BSkyB. With the culture secretary described by Murdoch's lobbyist as a "cheerleader" for News International, it seems as if the takeover was to all intents and purposes a done deal, prevented only by the fallout from the hacking scandal. All the kinks ironed out on horseback and settled in time for the main course. Parliament would have been a mere rubber stamp. Oversight reduced to an afterthought in a House of Commons that may soon more closely resemble a house of cards.