Sunil Sethi: Snoops, sneaks and eavesdroppers

The digital age has turned sections of the ruling class into instant sneaks or snoopers

Depending on which interest you represent, one of the marvels or misfortunes of the digital age is that it has turned sections of the ruling class into instant sneaks or snoopers. Where once the kind of story lately offered by news portals like Gulail.com or Cobrapost.com, of Narendra Modi's notorious henchman Amit Shah stalking a woman architect allegedly on his behalf, would have been the stuff of hearsay or intercepted conversations and transcripts, it is now surreptitiously captured on smartphones and uploaded for our immediate delectation. We, the people, are complicit, and also in danger of becoming compulsive eavesdroppers.

"Breaking news", that horribly shop-soiled flashing TV sign, has lost much of its glow and credibility. By that token, former Gujarat minister Amit Shah - the least of whose crimes is to be jailed for ordering fake "encounter" killings - badgering IPS officer G L Singhal to chase his "saheb's" alleged love interest back in 2009 smacks of outdated burlesque. Even avowed Narendra Modi-haters may be persuaded that it's the sort of tale to make a Bollywood baddie look cool.

Why has it taken Mr Singhal, who is one of several suspended police officers in the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case, four years to leak the Amit Shah tapes? Similarly, why is IAS officer Pradeep Sharma, also suspended on corruption charges when he was collector of Bhuj and became acquainted with the woman architect, using the tapes to seek justice in the Supreme Court? The case is being pumped up as a potential "Amitgate", but the murky saga, supposed to hold our prurient interest, in fact suggests a couple of other things before next summer's general election: the extent to which Mr Modi and Mr Shah (the latter is the Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate's chief strategist in Uttar Pradesh) divide opinion, and the bitter deterioration in the relationship between political leaders and civil servants.

IAS and IPS officers were trained for another, higher calling, but what some of them apparently do for a living is to act as go-betweens in romantic dalliances. All they have to do is to buy a smartphone and switch on the "recorder" button each time the boss calls. Former Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi's driver reportedly did better last year by learning to press "video" on his phone and catch his "saheb" in flagrante delicto. The one thing the two cases prove is that when it comes to snooping and snitching, there may not be that great a difference between senior government officials and domestic staff.

To use the current demotic, such tapes now routinely "go viral". In Mr Singhvi's case, the Congress party's official stand was that the "sex tape" was a "personal matter of the senior lawyer". The difference in Amit Shah's tapes is that he misused state machinery - a host of official snoops - to tail the woman architect at taxpayers' expense. The snoops had every right to decline, just as Mr Shah could have hired private sleuths to do the job. No harm done to anybody.

Innumerable bigwigs lose their jobs for much less - or much worse. Two recent cases in the United States are those of CIA head David Petraeus for having an adulterous affair, and International Monetary Fund boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn for assaulting a hotel maid. Mr Strauss-Kahn got away because the charges didn't stick legally, but General Petraeus' illustrious career as a soldier was ruined. Democrat Congressman Anthony Weiner's entry into politics was cut short only because he propositioned women with suggestive photos of himself on Twitter - a proper study on social media as destroyer. The outcome in each case depended on the public perception of the offence and prevailing social and political climate. The media had a field day, but, in the end, it was an aggrieved party that pressed charges.

In the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah case, no one seems disaffected except for some IAS and IPS officers. The woman architect hasn't said a word - only her father in a lame defence. Ah, but that leaves the matter of misuse of public money and services! But don't politicians abuse that privilege anyway? As a nation of eavesdroppers, we have every right to feel short-changed by a scandal that never was.