RICHARD Nixon was impeached for tapping the telephones of his political rivals, not for committing war crimes in Vietnam. Bill Clinton bombed innocent people in Sudan and Afghanistan at will and forced thousands of Iraqi children to die of starvation and sickness. But he was singled out of all the things for sexual misconduct with a young White House intern.

Trivialisation of journalism is an old and handy tool used by influential people who have reasons to distract our attention from the main story of the day. The Reader’s Digest has triggered a pointlessly acrimonious debate in Mumbai and elsewhere by describing India’s financial hub as the rudest city on earth. Mumbai’s various facets, rude and caring, have been described by veteran lyricists in popular film songs and we don’t need a flimsy Digest poll to sort this one out.

‘Zara hat ke zara bach ke, ye hai Bombay meri jaan’ (Watch out, be careful, this is Bombay sweetheart) was a delectable advice to the newcomer to the city. That was from a 1950s movie. Then a caring almost socialist twang of Sahir Ludhianvi’s lament is captured on the cruel footpaths of Bombay in the song that also turns upside down Allama Iqbal’s lofty vision of a free India: Chin-o-Arab hamara, Hindostan hamara, rehne ko ghar nahi hai, sara jehan hamara. Contemporary director Saeed Mirza thought otherwise though. Amchi Hai Mumbai tumchi Mumbai, jiyo maze se karo naka ghai. (Mumbai belongs to you and to me, let’s live here happily, and if possible take it easy).

Mumbai today is represented by its politico-corporate business captains, avaricious, cut-throat stock brokers, self-absorbed movie stars, myriad kinds of workers daily piling on to the world’s largest slum, and by a total consolidation of an overtly anti-Muslim but covertly anti-communist fascist force called the Shiv Sena. There are people in Mumbai who risk their life and limb to fight this fascism on a daily basis. There are people in Mumbai who collude with it to keep out of trouble. Whether those who fight fascism are rude is as irrelevant as a possible meeting with a Shiv Sena acolyte who may have a polite demeanour.

The Wall Street Journal once described the Digest as “the top publishing success since the Bible.” Over 27 million copies are brought out in 19 languages monthly. It has a shadier side too. Those who have disliked Reader’s Digest will do well to read the “American Dreamers,” a 1997 book from former Digest managing editor Peter Canning. Among other things, Canning details how, in the 1940s and 50s, the State Department and CIA fed content to the Digest and helped its international editions thrive. He also notes the magazine’s numerous pro-Vietnam War editorials, and the way Nixon speeches found their way into the magazine under the byline “The Editors.” Further, Canning dishes a good deal of dirt about founders Dewitt and Lila Wallace’s odd sex lives, and he digs into the story behind the sex discrimination suit filed against the Digest in 1976, among the largest ever, in which 2,600 female employees were awarded more than $1.5 million.

With its overwhelmingly conservative, even reactionary slant the Digest cannot be a source material on any issue objectively. Even its three-point test that it purports to have carried out in 35 countries to assess the citizens of their biggest cities do not come across as an earnest desire to present a truthful picture. In each location the Digest conducted the three tests it walked into public buildings 20 times behind people to see if they would hold the door open for us. Then its reporters bought small items from 20 stores and recorded whether the sales assistants said thank you. And finally there was this enactment in which the reporters dropped a folder full of papers in 20 busy locations to see if anyone would help pick them up.

“Last in our rankings was Mumbai, where courtesy in stores was particularly lacking,” says an explanation to the survey. “When our female reporter bought a pair of plastic hair clips at a convenience store, sales assistant Shivlal Kumavat turned his back on her as soon as she had paid. Asked why, the 31-year-old was unapologetic. “Madam, I am not an educated guy. I hand goods over to the customers, and that’s it.”

In a government-run supermarket, a young female employee lied, according to the Digest, that she hadn’t seen what had happened when asked why she didn’t help our reporter pick up his papers. Another worker stepped on them. “That’s nothing,” said the store’s security guard. “In Mumbai, they’ll step over a person who has fallen in the street.” All this is obviously a lot of exaggeration, not too different from the Digest verdict that describes New York as the world’s most polite city. Going by the nightmare stories of some Indian movie-makers who were shooting there recently but got into serious police trouble the Digest’s conclusions test the credibility of the survey. New York may have its charms as a major city of the world, but getting visitors often strip-searched at its airports does not quite make it the politest place on earth.