It keeps getting better. The promise of more emperors losing their clothing, the promise of more political gossip and media wars and conspiracy theories. More light will be thrown at crony capitalism, sorry I mean economic growth. Outlook is putting out another 800 Radia tapes in the next few hours. There are a total of 5,000 and they’ve already put out 140.
Of those 140, some 36 yet to be transcribed.
If you haven’t, you’ve missed out on a lot. These five links lead you to all the phone calls, and you can even download them. This is history. The tapes are revelatory about the corporate media, but more than that, about the corporates. They have come out due to corporate wars. Internecine corporate wars seem to be our only hope for transparency and accountability in this nation. Please listen to every pause in every audio to for a clear insight into what today’s India is. And lament this Manmohan yug, ghor Manmohan yug. Also see Sevanti Ninan’s excellent analysis of the media black-out of the story.
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Four transcripts that were submitted to the SC along with a total of eight recordings in May 2009 covering the cabinet formation, DMK politics and who’d get telecom portfolio
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The conversations with M.Karunanidhi’s daughter M. Kanimozhi about keeping Dayanidhi Maran out from negotiations with the Congress and to get the telecom portfolio for A. Raja
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In these Radia wants Sanghvi to tell the Congress not to negotiate with Dayanidhi Maran. He tells her that while he has been meeting Rahul and can’t “get into Sonia in the short term” he would “try and get through to Ahmed”
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Recordings of conversations with the likes of Ratan Tata, Ranjan Bhattacharya, Barkha Dutt, Shankar Aiyar, Sunil Arora etc
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The other big ‘national resource’ story involves the virtual who’s who: Ambani V/s Ambani V/s Tata, gas and power sector war involving big name journos, politicians, babus, corporates – this has the largest number of tapes, and perhaps the most important ones.
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It’s always better to begin with a caveat. Sets the tone, and prepares readers for what not to expect. I am one of those self-obsessed people who seldom see beyond their existence. I google my name twice a week, and inevitably find other people getting enriched when conversing with me. It’s an achievement if I could rescue their names from these conversations for my memory. So, you can imagine now my level of awareness.
But once in a while something gets my goat and then I start reading about it. One of those things has been the Nira Radia tapes recently. I first saw a mail from a friend in my inbox with the transcripts and links to the audio versions. I read the scripts and followed the audio links. It led me to more links. And soon I found it was all over the virtual world. First it was Nira Radia and Barkha Dutt, then Nira Radia and Vir Sanghvi, then Nira Radia and Ratan Tata, then Nira Radia and A. Raja, then… I don’t know what else is there. I was like what the f*#@? They just kept stumbling out. I thought Amar Singh was the most tapped guy but then I stopped following politics long back. I am told now that these days he doesn’t even make it to the 7th page. Continue reading Before We Tape Our Mouths Forever…
KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006 