DELHI-GATE: WILL UPA- CONGRESS SURVIVE A BOFORS AFTERMATH LIKE ELECTORAL BACKLASH
The Delhi-gate (the sum total of the scams haunting Delhi today) is creating conditions more serious than what the Bofors+ scams created in India in the 1980s. With Bofors, Rajiv pioneered a permissive version of ‘secularism’ unrestrained by dharmic (moral) considerations for scams to flourish with scammers escaping accountability to be emboldened enough to take the scam culture to outrageous heights destroying India’s image. The invasion of the Mafia version of this ‘secularism’ buttresses UPA-Congress political power base allowing most of its politicians to plunder the public and amass wealth with impunity all at the expense of the common man. Deceitfully using the instruments of state power not only frustrates the due processes meant to discourage scams but also silence those that campaign against corruption.
Morality for the UPS-Congress is, ultimately, whatever it interprets morality to be; a morality that is detached from its roots, dharma. In Indian philosophy morality is treated as dharma. Parleying untruths and encouraging acquisitiveness have no place in the actions of truly dharmic persons; only the selfless can best perform service for humanity. ‘If we lose the morality base in our life, ..we get separated from dharma’.
In ‘With Indian politics, the Bad gets Worse’ Emily Wax, ( Washington Post of July 2008) quotes Jagdeep Chhokar’s comments on the Congress pay off to win a confidence vote in 2008… ‘This just happened to be a stark reality for the world to see..It’s stupefying. And as an Indian, it’s shameful’. Chhokar a founding member of the Association for Democratic Reforms, a watchdog group that tracks criminality in India’s Parliament, adds ‘It was also a reminder to the rest of the world that in Indian politics – seen here as the fast track to wealth- is a no-holds-barred affair’. These comments were directed at the UPA-Congress crowd, all deeply involved as they are in scams/cheating while they should be serving as trustees of the public. What will be the reaction of the public?
Senior BJP leader Advani aptly describes the public reaction: ‘The common people will soon want to give the government a holiday’. ‘Loot India. Salt it abroad’ is the behavior condoned by the politicians mostly in UPA-Congress scrupulously following the pathway that Bofors Rajiv showed; stash away all the ill gotten wealth abroad. ‘…There is no nation other than India which has been so shamelessly looted by its citizens. And this insidious saga is continuing..the total black money parked in various foreign banks by Indians is more than our entire national income..a staggering $1,450 billion. An evil nexus between businessmen, politicians and the rentier-class (babus) ran mayhem across the country..it is the political class which has been the biggest offenders..politicians (not only) plundered for themselves but created an enabling environment for the (scam enterprise) to thrive..’ Morally the latter is a serious political crime, the guilty verdict on this only the electorate has to pronounce.
Indian black money in 1968 was a minimal 3,034 crores a small per cent of GDP; by 1979 it was Rs 46,867 crores or 49 per cent of GDP. This was three decades ago. But ‘both the frequency and magnitude of scams have multiplied with every passing year’. The amount involved in a single scam (the 2G) recently was a mind boggling Rs 176 379 crores (US$38.27 billion). In the 1980s there were 8 scams, 26 in 1990s now it is at an abysmal level that the public suspect scams in every major project in which the politicians have a hand in. An innocent looking housing project for the Kargil martyrs, the CWG and the famous 2G Spectrum licence take on the scandalous character of a crime against the nation.
Instead of firm and decisive action to bring the criminals to account, the UPA-Congress casual charade is that the scammers will face due processes and account for their crimes.. In the Bofors case though 25 years passed, the due process interfered with by politicians, failed to produce any tangible outcome. Full accountability failed miserably beginning with Rajiv’s Bofors case that the opposition’s call for a JPC has merits. This will prevent a UPA-Congress fudging a Bofors outcome for the far more serious 2G+ case. The JPC probe involves a broader group of leaders who would provide the checks to ensure that the process is not fudged, more so by the principal beneficiaries of the scam (a closed group) associated with the scam who are also JPC members.
The UPA-Congress action against offenders (high ranking Congress Ministers) who relished the extravagance of five star hotel life amounts to tokenism where it is the permissive culture that the UPA-Congress nurtured that needs to be eradicated. Under the permissive UPA-Congress secular culture such behavior is common place until they are exposed. An important avatar of the culture that Rajiv pioneered produced a breed of public servants called ‘babus’ who accumulated wealth far beyond their means. These babus’ orchestrated policies with politicians to further their personal agenda/commitments. The South Block sectarians are exemplary products of this phenomenon. Except for headlines most of the offending ‘babus’ escaped punishment. The common man is left behind despite the ‘high voltage jargons like ‘Garibi Hatao’, Aam Admi ke live’. Will not the common man wake up to the scandalous UPA-Congress record to deliver it the shocking 1989 electoral defeat.
Though UPA-Congress argues hard for the due process to take its course in the 2G case Kapil Sibal a well known associate of the Rahul establishment attempted to discredit the CAG itself a non political body that unearthed the scam by ridiculing its estimate of the 2G notional loss claiming there was none. Over a much less controversial matter, a stock market crash in 2001 the Congress demanded a JPC to which the then PM Vajpayee promptly agreed to. Congress and other parties were members of the JPC. The scale and nature of the 2G scam has graver implications namely the plunder of national wealth by politicians compared to the least controversial stock market crash. In clarifying their opposition to the JPC, UPA-Congress spokesman Tiwari cynically trivializes the 2G scam by repeated reference to the scams under NDA whose level was inconsequential to explain why there should be no JPC now.
How would the voters respond to such UPA-Congress charade including that of the PM on the 2G case before the television editors’ panel recently? Duty bound voters are most unlikely to compromise on the rampancy of corruption and their more serious versions, ‘deals or scams’ under the UPA-Congress rule. PM’s promise that the government is ready for a JPC probe was meant as he claimed not for the merits in the JPC probe but merely to disabuse the perception that he was blocking the JPC because he did not want to appear before a JPC. This argument sounds weak from a PM widely perceived as weak. So why all this JPC haggling over 3 months. Incidently the PM claims that ‘My conduct as a Prime Minister must be like Ceasar’s wife above suspicion’. The PM accommodated the pressure that resisted the removal of Minister Raja earlier as ‘coalition politics’; now it apparently is from those in UPA-Congress who had their hands in the 2G pie and fear a JPC probe.
That the PM claims that he wrote in 2007 on the guidelines that Minister Rajah has to follow in the 2G case and stops at that, is amusing especially when the 2G controversy was raging since. Hence the court’s censure of the PM’s inaction. Writing such letters were empty rituals to fool the public, unless it was ensured that it was acted upon. He selectively omits to mention subsequent letters the two exchanged, that implicitly accepts Raja’s actions. The 2G case was brewing since 2007 and for the PM instead of asserting leadership and acting to correct the misdemeanors of his Minister(s) now complains of being unable to act on account of ‘coalition politics’. This sounds pathetic.
Such behavior causes concern in the public mind whether the numerous letters written to the PM were meant to be acted upon or were mere rituals. Was it a coalition politics ritual that required the TN CM to write letters to PM Manmohan on SL’s conduct of the war against the Tamils in SL and regular attacks on the TN fishermen by the SL navy periodically not expecting them to produce any results? If they were rituals these are deceits not righteous acts that secular UPA-Congress is unfamiliar with. Viewed in this light the PM’s response in notes to and visits by Delhi officials to Colombo are a total farce. These ritualistic motions instigated by the South Block ‘babus’ were not meant to be acted upon or produce results that involved saving lives of thousands of innocent civilians in SL though as Tamils whether they deserved to be saved has a humanitarian dimension as well. This was UPA-Congress politics at its worst; hence the suspected Delhi’s involvement in the Narayanan Mullivaykkal massacres of over 40 000 civilians and the internment of 320 000 civilians behind barb wire fenced Menik camps since 2009. Now the TN fishermen also Tamils are abused by the SL navy, letters and official visits are routinely exchanged to no effect. Will the PM cite ‘coalition politics’ for his inability to act to prevent such atrocities occurring? TN voters do now have the opportunity to act to end the hypocrisy behind the ritualistic posturing of the UPA-Congress politicians with a state election in the offing.
The Indian voter including TN voters have a dharmic duty to end the secular adharmic rule of UPA-Congress since 2004.
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