Radia Gate: The Kaleidoscopic Spectrum

The mother of all corporate lobbies, Niira Radia now cries foul, evading the hard evidences against her in the 2G spectrum scam. The most interesting fact is that she even doesn't care to call her a “small fry” while she was the queen bee in webbing the most complex nexus in the biggest ever scam in India. Everyone from politicians to bureaucrats, businessmen to journalists were the sober listener of her music, and the miles of tapes capturing her conversation with various big shots at different points are a reminder of her lobby power in the power circle, which she claims now a concoction. But the contrast here is that when her big boss Ratan Tata starts becoming candid about his relations with Raja and implicitly explains the “chemistry problem”, she still thinks to bamboozle the Public Account Committee (PAC), not a bad try at all. She is again spelling the abracadabra and thinks she could start playing her generic PR tricks.

Well, there is something beyond the Radia's lobbying magic. Radia as a PR strategist has played her perfect bit everywhere, whenever she sensed the corruption quotient in an official is at threshold to her lobby trap. She used her PR skills with extreme dexterity, like any other advocate protects a criminal client in the court of law, by swearing his or her professional ethics. Sounds irony, but the democracy has a room for everyone, that's the alluring angle of this system. But the contrast here is that Radia just now tries to disown her profession and even she doesn't bother to claim her a bumpkin who is too small an influential person in this world of networking.

Now I have a piece of advice for Radia: Why doesn't she close all her PR shops and start venturing into politics? I am sure she can be a better contender in this ball game, and certainly she can easily get a ticket from the Congress too. She has done a lot for the party and every citizen of this country knows it well. Never mind, she can even take the role of Pranav Da for managing the numbers for UPA. After all, it's all lobby. Huh!