VIEWPOINT
AMITABH SHUKLA
The VVIP helicopter deal and the associated
kickback are set to become a political thriller in the days to come. More so,
as it precedes a series of Assembly elections this year and then the Lok Sabha
elections in April-May next year.
Could this deal gone horribly
wrong become the Bofors of the Manmohan Singh Government? This is precisely
what the Congress is thinking and the party managers are correct in their
assessment that fire fighting efforts have to be doubled and even trebled. They
cannot leave anything to chance as BJP is pressing the accelerator and wants to
convert the helicopter deal into the Bofors of UPA-II. You don’t have to be a
student of history to recall that VP Singh felled the mighty Rajiv Gandhi
Government in 1989, largely on Defence kickbacks and Bofors had become a
household name, a name synonymous with high-end corruption in which the big and
mighty were involved.
Many in the countryside at that
time did not know what Bofors exactly was when the issue rocked the nation. But
the way election campaign was run and the issue used, they knew one thing for
sure that the word meant that the ruling Congress Government was involved in
some murky dealing and had to be taught a lesson for the wrongdoing. This is
what they did when the Congress with 400 plus seats was reduced to a figure
below 200 in the polls, sending Rajiv Gandhi packing to the Opposition benches
of Lok Sabha.
A quarter of a century later,
AgustaWestland could be a tongue twister and a difficult name to remember as
compared to Bofors, but by and large, the message which VP Singh then conveyed
through a series of rallies, has been conveyed instantly by the 24x7 news
channels now. The vertical and parallel links, explored so far, point out
towards the involvement of ruling political bigwigs apart from those in the
command of the Air Force. As the entire plot of the helicopter deal is yet to
be unearthed, more skeletons from the cupboard of the ruling party would tumble
in the coming days and weeks to come. You cannot keep saying for eternity that
the case has been handed over to the CBI for investigations and action would be
taken once the investigations are complete. People now know from their
experience of high value corruption involving politicians that it is a
diversionary tactics, meant to delay and manipulate inconvenient facts.
AgustaWestland is not the last
one has heard of big ticket corruption which became a hallmark of the ruling
UPA in its second term. More could tumble out in the remaining 14 months of the
Government. The Commonwealth Games scandal, 2G Spectrum scam, Coalgate — all
saw serious acts of omission and commission by the UPA-led Central Government
in which the amount of money involved was astronomical.
Then, there were a host of other
cases where a case was made out of misuse of power and authority like the land
bought by Robert Vadra in Gurgaon and diverting the funds of the Congress for
National Herald.
In fact, people would be wondering
how many scams of UPA-II remain “unexposed” as of now. They are wary of
anything which the Government purchases or schemes it spends on simply saying
that wherever there is money involved, there is invariably a leakage. If the
money is big, the leakage is traced to the big and mighty like in the
AgustaWestland deal or the 2G and Commonwealth Games scam, if the money
involved is small, the leakage is traced to junior officials — lower level
revenue and civic officials, clerks, section officers, Under Secretaries and
IAS officers.
One could criticise Anna Hazare’s
concept of Jan Lokpal as a guardian of checking corruption terming it
dictatorial, but the support it got suggests what people genuinely feel about
all pervasive corruption and inaction of the Government.
Clearly, there has been a
governance deficit in the second term of Manmohan Singh as the economist turned
Prime Minister has simply looked the other way even when one issue of
corruption to the other rocked the Government for the better part of his
tenure. What is the use of hiding behind the guise of “integrity and honesty”
when you cannot control colossus corruption all around you? This is what people
are asking now at the fag end of the political career of Singh when he is about
to complete nine years at the helm. It will indeed be difficult for Rahul
Gandhi, Congress vice president and the Number two to carry the legacy of Singh
— “tolerance to corruption” — on his soldiers as and when the situation
warrants.
CPI (M) politburo member Sitaram
Yechury says that UPA-II is the most corrupt regime since Independence .
Obviously, Congress would not agree to it. But get a calculator and do a simple
sum of adding the amount involved in all the scams which took place in the last
45 months and you would start believing Yechury even if you do not agree with
the policies of his party.
By going slow on the helicopter
deal, the Congress Government has already triggered speculations that it has a
lot to hide and the links could go right up to the top.
BJP has a valid point when it
asks that when the bribe giver has been arrested, why can’t the investigating
agency arrest the bribe taker in India .
As per Indian law, both bribe giver and taker are guilty but everyone knows who
carries the bigger guilt in the eyes of the people who vote in elections.
Obviously, Congress chief Sonia
Gandhi and heir apparent Rahul Gandhi would not take the blame saying that the
onus of governance lies at the doors of Manmohan Singh and they never held any
Government office.
Last year in May, when UPA
completed three years in office, the Congress president said tough action will
be taken against all those who are found to be involved in corruption. Does the
party believe that transferring a case to CBI is indeed a “tough action”?
I wonder what the Congress would
sell in the next election. It has run out of issues to highlight and instead
bogged down by a series of corruption at all levels of governance.
Cash transfer of subsidy, being
billed as the “game changer” has so many loopholes ingrained in it that it
would be foolhardy to believe that it would pay electoral dividends the way
NAREGA did in the last tenure of UPA. Bribing the voters work, but not always. (February 18, 2013)
http://www.dailypioneer.com/state-editions/dehradun/128393-bofors-gets-a-new-avatar-in-agustawestland.html
http://www.dailypioneer.com/state-editions/chandigarh/128245-bofors-gets-a-new-avatar-in-agustawestland.html
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