Corruption is now the political game-changer

Corruption is now the political game-changer
Chandan Mitra

Congress's too-clever-by-half strategy is floundering in the face of public anger and India may be headed for turmoil by August. That’s bad news for an embattled Government

A rather mystifying news item was published widely last week. A senior Congress spokesperson declared with a straight face that his party would shortly launch a mass movement against corruption! They would hold rallies in various cities to heighten awareness about the need to combat this scourge and list all the efforts made by the UPA Government to tackle the problem of graft. Needless to add, the Congress worthy also said their awareness campaign would include “exposing” the RSS-BJP combine and underline civil society’s links to these organisations. This is amusing because the Congress’s track record on tackling corruption is next to non-existent. And scandals involving Congress Governments, both at the Centre and in the States, date back to 1948 when some 1,400 Jeeps were ordered from a British company, which shortchanged India, supplied reconditioned World War II vehicles that reached Chennai long after the conflict in Kashmir was over. Jawaharlal Nehru stonewalled the Opposition’s demand for his friend, then High Commissioner to London, Krishna Menon’s scalp and prevailed upon Parliament to drop the matter despite the PAC’s adverse report.

Corruption in Congress-run State Governments, particularly Punjab and Odisha, reached gigantic proportions under Nehru’s benign hand-wringing helplessness. Finally, shortly before his death, and following humiliation at the hands of China in 1962, he was forced to drop Krishna Menon from the Defence Ministry and subsequently undertook a fruitless exercise called the ‘Kamaraj Plan’. Under that scheme, many Ministers were made to shift to party responsibilities, to make way for impatient new entrants. The Plan, ineffective anyway, got a quiet burial within a few months once Nehru passed away.

In fact, barring Lal Bahadur Shastri’s short-lived regime, every Congress Government at the Centre has been rocked by corruption scandals, most of them too well known to merit recollection. But none has been shaken to the extent that Mr Manmohan Singh’s successive regimes have. This is not to suggest that other political parties are squeaky clean; even relatively transparent BJP Governments have been periodically tarnished by similar allegations. The less said about regional satraps like Mr Mulayam Singh, Ms Mayawati, Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav et al, the better. Yet, it can be asserted without fear of contradiction that the Congress is the fountainhead of India’s culture of corruption. To that extent, its resolve to launch a campaign for its eradication would seem laughable to most, including Congressmen themselves.

However, the concern with the mounting tide of popular anger against venality and graft is not confined to the Congress alone. The concern emanates from people outside organised political space, loosely and perhaps erroneously described as civil society, gaining support from largely apolitical people across the spectrum. Faced with a serious challenge to its authority, the Congress has reacted with the only weapon it knows to wield — force and defamation. Although public reaction to the forcible eviction of Baba Ramdev’s sleeping followers from Ramlila Ground on the midnight of June 4-5 has been extremely negative for the Government, the party has not relented in its onslaught on the yoga guru. In the days to come, every effort will be made to discredit the Swami who, admittedly, may have bitten off more than he could chew and is currently nursing a deflation of status that he had not anticipated.

Left-liberal secularists may be exultant over the Government’s physical and verbal assaults on Ramdev, imagining these to be signs of a hardline stance against Hindu religious leaders, but the fact is that the Congress has surreptitiously attempted to use men in saffron robes to undercut its opponents for decades. Even this time, party leaders sought to use the services of Dwarkapeeth Shankaracharya Swaroopanand to pull down Ramdev, but wiser by past let-downs, the usually pro-Congress Shankaracharya refused to play ball. In the past, the Congress had built up Puri Shankaracharya Nischalananda to counter sadhus involved in the Ram Janmabhoomi Movement.

In the immediate aftermath of Ramdev calling off his fast, the Congress made a strenuous attempt to embarrass the BJP by pointing to the unfortunate death of a fasting swami, Nigamananda who, incidentally, was lodged in the same hospital as the Congress’s bete noire. The effort may have carried greater credibility had Congress leaders highlighted the issue while Nigamananda was still languishing in hospital and not post-facto. The swami’s death after 114 days of fasting was unfortunate and unnecessary, but to suggest that as an example of BJP’s hypocrisy was ridiculous because when the issue came into public focus most Congress leaders were busily asking around for the dead sadhu’s antecedents for they had not heard anything about him till he died!

While the Congress may have temporarily succeeded in arresting Ramdev’s rising popularity graph, it has no reason to congratulate itself because another wave of civil society unrest is building up. Anna Hazare’s threatened fast from August 16 will pose a challenge as big if not bigger than what the Government experienced on the first occasion. Emboldened by the relative ease with which the police evicted Ramdev from Delhi, the Congress mounted a fierce attack on Team Anna, calling them BJP groupies, apart from “unelected and unelectable”.

Clearly, the Government has no intention of conceding this group’s suggestions on the Lokpal Bill. Arguably, some of what Mr Prashant Bhushan and Mr Arvind Kejriwal are demanding is quite preposterous, but it hardly behoves a Government that has included them in a joint panel to run them down by heaping scorn and derision. Evidently, the Government is trying systematically to get Team Anna to walk out of the talks; floating a suggestion that eventually rival drafts may be circulated by the panel.

It is easier for a Government to use strong-arm measures against the ‘great unwashed masses’ from Middle India that congregated at Ramlila Maidan. But most of Anna’s crowd comprises ‘people like us’, English-speaking, professional, celebrities and chatterati. Their numbers may be smaller than what Ramdev could assemble, but their influence, particularly in the virtual world, immensely more. Assuming that a mutually satisfactory Lokpal draft does not emerge from the last meeting of the panel on June 20 (and this is a safe assumption), the Government must brace for Anna, Ramdev and other wannabes coming together to mobilise people for the August 16 fast.

The Congress’s too-clever-by-half leaders will meanwhile try to table a sarkari Lokpal Bill as soon as Parliament’s Monsoon Session begins mid-July and get it passed unanimously. The attempt will be to pit the entire political class against ‘upstart’ civil societywallahs. But given the level of bitterness between the insensitive, bulldozing Congress and the rest, notably the BJP, this strategy is most unlikely to succeed. In all probability, the Bill will have to be sent to Parliament’s Standing Committee and that will delay its passage by many months. Meanwhile, if Team Anna uses its brains and enlists political support instead of showering abuse on politicians across the board, the movement could assume dimensions way beyond the Government’s rosy calculations. India seems headed for turmoil and that is bad news for an already embattled Government.