Waiting for Rahul - Implosion: India's Tryst with Reality - page 176

Politicians around the world enjoy varying degrees of privacy, as The Hindu discussed
on 22 September 2012 when, some weeks after Gandhi's return, it ran an editorial head-
lined 'The omertà on Sonia Gandhi's illness' - mischievously, given her origins, using
the Italian word omertà , which means code of silence 13 . Such scattered coverage scarcely
amounted to a real attempt to discover - either through an official spokesperson or other
sources - the nature and seriousness of the illness. This sort of disregard by the media of
its proper role in guarding the public interest is surely not healthy for a democracy. Even
if one recognizes that politicians like Gandhi will guard their privacy as much as they can,
this still leaves the question of the Indian media's largely hands-off response - a reaction
that enabled the family to ignore the limited criticisms.
Reports on the private lives and personal liaisons of politicians are rare, but that is surely
different from failing to explore why the country's top leader had gone abroad for a pos-
sibly life-threatening operation. Presidents in the US are accustomed to public exposure
and even the illnesses of Cuba's former ruler, Fidel Castro, have been publicly discussed.
In India, a heart bypass operation on Manmohan Singh in 2009 was announced, though the
illnesses of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, 87, have been largely kept private.
The family's wish for secrecy has also blocked information on frequent private visits
abroad by Rahul Gandhi. A right to information request in 2012 failed to produce any an-
swers. 14 Rahul's private life has been a mystery. Everyone, of course, has a right to pri-
vacy, but that surely reduces with increased public importance and responsibility. So little
is known that Delhi buzzes with gossip about where he regularly vanishes - is it abroad
as is often rumoured (Dubai, Bangkok, London?), or just to the homes of friends near his
central Delhi home? Does he have a girlfriend? 15 The only one ever seen publicly was Co-
lombian (or Spanish, as he reportedly said in 2004), but she is rumoured to have married
in Colombia and he was said to have moved on to an Afghan girlfriend or someone in a
south Delhi colony, among others. The most visible side of his private life has been regular
evening exercise sessions at the gym in central Delhi's Lodhi Hotel (previously the Aman),
which is owned by DLF.
The illness saga also underlined how the Gandhis expect favourable treatment in the me-
dia without briefing journalists and editors, and without making many public appearances
or any effort to generate good reporting. In October 2005, I wrote a piece in The Econom-
ist 16 which, I discovered later, the family did not like. I had asked for an interview with
Rahul Gandhi and, if not with him, with someone he nominated, but nothing had been
forthcoming. In the piece I wrote that 'Rahul Gandhi, whose weekend hobby is racing mo-
torbikes with friends on a private dirt track near Delhi, has refused to emerge as an iconic
figure'. He had 'not made much of a mark as an MP, having spoken only once in parlia-
ment' since he was elected in 2004. And he was 'prone to political gaffes'.