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# Personal notes on the Vinod Dua case
- URL: https://balaustine.mymagic.page/personal-notes-on-the-vinod-dua-case/
- Published: 2018-10-21T12:23:28.000Z
- Updated: 2018-10-21T12:23:28.000Z
- Author: VM
- Tags: Life notes, #Migrated-1787483357778, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-08-23 11:09

Background information + *The Wire*'s statements on the issue:

1. [Panel Headed by Former SC Justice Aftab Alam to Examine Allegation Against Vinod Dua](https://thewire.in/gender/nishtha-jain-me-too-vinod-dua?ref=balaustine.mymagic.page)
2. [The Wire’s Handling of the Sexual Harassment Charge Against Vinod Dua](https://thewire.in/gender/vinod-dua-me-too-sexual-harassment-jan-gan-man-ki-baat?ref=balaustine.mymagic.page)

§

1. I strongly condemn Vinod Dua's statements vis-à-vis the #MeToo movement and the women who have spoken up against men and toxic masculinity. This is irrespective of *The Wire*'s position on this issue.
2. I deeply resent that Dua has been attempting to defend himself by claiming the allegations against him are efforts to malign his programme, 'Jan Gan Man Ki Baat', with *The Wire*. I hope he understands that I (and I suspect my colleagues, though I **do not** speak for them) will not defend him or his actions, irrespective of their legitimacy, if he cannot separate himself from his professional responsibilities.
3. *The Wire* has not succeeded in claiming ownership of the narrative with the same vehemence that Dua has demonstrated.
4. The moral and ethical impetus to suspend Dua became overshadowed by a processual constipation. There was no clarity on how to proceed from the beginning, and as the deliberations dragged on, I – as a member of an organisation, not as an individual – found it increasingly difficult to separate right from wrong and/or became increasingly bewildered about whether my own choices were consistently justifiable, from one day to the next. In other words, while an overarching compulsion to act against Dua persisted, I could determine neither its provenance nor its foundation.
5. The Dua episode highlighted a central quasi-paradox of the #MeToo movement: its calling out of the failure of due process (excluding public naming and shaming in this definition), and therefore its rejection (starting from Raya Sarkar's List), whereas the institution/reinstitution of due process was the sole recourse readily available to many managers. This conflict is not insurmountable but it required managers – men, in most cases – to introspect through neural pathways that in many cases did not exist.
6. I will never understand why *The Wire* allowed Dua to record a video on its platform wherein he would be allowed to speak of the complaints against him. His seniority and his longstanding association with *The Wire* don't matter to me and should not, in fact, to anyone in this context.
7. What *The Wire*'s statement denouncing Dua's words in the video has failed to mention is that the week's time Dua set for *The Wire* to conduct its investigation is nonsensical insofar as it wasn't his place to do so, and it should have been openly refuted.
8. To be a committed Indian left-liberal is not easy. If you are a man in particular, be ready to regularly confront – and be expected to resolve – cognitive dissonances, (inadvertent) hypocrisies and forgetfulness. If you are not familiar with the lingua franca, invest efforts to master it.
9. English is an artful language. It is a weapon but it is more resourceful and effective as the sallet, pauldron and sabatons within which you will always be a knight in shining armour. Learn to use it as much as to see past it.
10. If there is to be one concrete outcome of #MeToo as a sociopolitical movement, though I hope there is more than one, then it must be for employees at all manner of organisations to remake the work-space to eliminate these structural issues, and in the process better organise themselves as units that transcend the formal hierarchies within the organisations themselves.