Word: tehelka
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...Tehelka is a delightful Urdu word, difficult to translate. It refers to that special kind of tumult provoked by a daring act, or a sensational piece of writing. And that's exactly the effect that was provoked in India's government this week by a group of young Indian journalists who last year chose the word to name their web site...
...ranks of Indian cricket, the national sport. Now the fledgling web site has stirred an even bigger storm by secretly filming politicians, bureaucrats, army officers and business touts as they boast about fixing defense deals and, in some cases, are seen actually pocketing bundles of banknotes offered by Tehelka reporters posing as representatives of a fictitious British manufacturer of thermal imaging binoculars...
...Maseeh Rahman: Not really. In fact, this is not the first time Tehelka has caused a national sensation with its spy cameras. The cricket-match-fixing scandal that has rocked India's national sport began with the same dot-com, which sent well-known cricketer Manoj Prabhakar and some of their own journalists out with spy cameras to meet leading players and officials and get them talking about all the sleazy dealings. And what they uncovered forced the government to launch an FBI-type investigation, which led to some of India's leading cricketers, such as Ajay Jadeja and Mohammed...
...Well, Tehelka has certainly changed the rules of the game, bringing in miniature spy cameras where previously journalists had relied only on tape recorders and notebooks. And both times, the site conducted extensive investigations over a number of months. But while one hopes this will usher in a new era in investigative journalism, corruption has become so endemic in our system that people generally see it as just one more scandal - a few heads will roll, and then it's back to business...