Beware of BJP’s double standards on corruption!

Interestingly, two of our major national parties have finally found a common ground in one thing. Corruption! It seems that their fight is not limited to the race for power in Delhi. Sharing of booty (it is known in many names now such as swindled money, kickbacks, Swiss money, black money, stashed away funds and many more) is also one of their prime targets. For the last one month, both the print and visual media is giving running commentary on the corruption details in India. Prominent among them are the smoky CWG deals, Adarsh Housing scam and the most recent and bigger in proportion, the 2G spectrum scam. My countrymen, if you are fed up with this one-sided show (or you can call them Congress shows), here is a good news for you. The rival to the Congress one-upmanship is none other than the major opposition party, the BJP.


Obviously, the BJP is showing double standards as far as the corruption is concerned. Here we have a chief minister in the south who publicly declares that he has helped his son (this help is deliberate and blatant violation of all the moral laws) acquire acres of land worth crores of rupees. What a daring admission!  And the same BJP which supports this chief minister is clamouring for the head of one of the cleanest (or the only one) prime ministers of India. Yes, we understand that Manmohan Singh should be held accountable for the wrong doings by A Raja, the former telecom minister for quietly sitting over the spectrum scam. However, we know he is in no way personally (or financially) benefitted from the entire episode. (There are other benefits such as the survival of his government.) He was helpless because the DMK was an important ally in the UPA and he had to play his coalition dharma.

However, the BJP, by supporting a corrupt man in the south, has committed a more heinous crime than that of the prime minister. (I don’t give a clean chit to his party.) And they don’t have any moral right to speak about corruption during the Congress regime. I wonder if any party other than the Left parties (Even the CPI-M is stinking in Kerala due to its state secretary’s alleged role in the Lavalin scam.) have the right to speak about corruption in our system.

I wonder if in the long run, these two parties would come together to get a legislation passed to legalise corruption in the country.  Birds of the same feather flock together!

Manmohan Singh's questionable silence over Raja's misadventures in the telecom ministry. Should he quit?

Manmohan Singh, who is hailed as the statesman of the world, appears to be a failure back home. A man known for his integrity and probity in public life, is facing one of the toughest crises as prime minister of India. Honestly, I don't doubt his calibre and integrity as PM, but personally I think that he should quit over the 2G spectrum scam. I believe that he is not personally benefited from this scam which is notoriously labelled as the 'mother of all scams and we have to give him a clean chit. But for years, he has remained silent over one of the biggest scams ever to take place in the country right under his nose. A Raja, as telecom minister, is reported to have cause around Rs. 1.76 lakh crore to the exchequer by allotting the rare spectrum waves to a few players with doubtful credentials. In doing so, he is learned to have snubbed directions from the PMO, Finance Ministry and the Law Ministry.

Is Raja so powerful to take on the prime minister himself? Or, is DMK such an indispensable ally? Yes, numerically it is. Even a layman of the country knows that our prime minister succumbed to the pressure of his ally just for the survival of his government. Then, what we call this integrity of the prime minister becomes a farce. However, I know he alone cannot be blamed because as we know he is a 'yes' man to someone who is wielding a powerful control over him. Yes, something like an extra-constitutional authority. It is obvious who I am aiming at. Unfortunately, our prime minister is being made a scapegoat.

However, being the head of the government, he cannot blame anyone else? That is the problem with this extra-constitutional power points. They enjoy all powers, but seldom made accountable. Manmohan Singh is our prime minister and he should answer why he sat silent all these years fully knowing that someone in his Cabinet is corrupted. We need not care about those shadow power centres who are behind the PM and obviously pulling the strings of power.

 Even the Supreme Court wondered why PM took almost fifteen months to respond to a petition filed by Subramanian Swamy seeking permission to prosecute the accused A Raja. His reply was not convincing. He is reported to have cited the CBI enquiry and CAG report to hinder a probe against the tainted minister. I remember him giving clean chit to this tainted minister a few months back. That was his offence. He backed a minister fully knowing that he is not acting as per rules. So, he cannot claim the benefit of doubt. Since it all happened right under his watchful eyes (we call it the PMO), he is responsible for his 'questionable' silence. It will be foolish to assume that he did not anything of this magnitude happening in his ministry. Then, where is this so called 'accountability of the minister to the prime minister'?

Should I say he needs to quit? Shouldn't he relinquish his post as PM taking the what we call the moral responsibility for helping a tainted minister of his Cabinet with his silence? It is for you to think.

Arundhati Roy a non-entity!

Arundhati Roy (the lone booker-prize winner from our country) recently made some scathing observation about India’s role in Kashmir has obviously outraged a large section of Indians within the country and outside and no doubt, I am one among them. I attribute her statement to the usual cheap tactics cleverly employed by some our unscrupulous politicians (there are many) to make headlines. Otherwise, what are her credentials to make such a statement? Is it winning a Booker Prize and going into oblivion forever? Or, is it cleverly crafted attempts to project herself as a champion of the masses by leading a few campaigns to raise some environmental issues? I find her struggling to be in the news always. She was recently come out strongly in support of the Maoists (specifically against a few reported human rights violations and restriction on freedom of speech.) Yes, I must admit that she is entitled to speak on anything, like any other citizen of this country, but I feel it must be genuine and sincere and should be directed against the government (I mean the establishment), but not against the country.

Who is she to say that Kashmir was never an integral part of India? If that is the case, which of the country was always an integral part of this nation? The very concept of India, though existed as an abstract concept in the minds of our countrymen earlier, materialized only after the coming of British or the Europeans in general. It was never united as a single entity ever in the history. However, after attaining Independence, there was a deliberate attempt to develop this abstract concept of nationhood into something concrete as we see today, and I think Kashmir is not an exception.

Her statement hurt me personally. I never considered her as an important personality in Indian social or political arena. I considered her a person who is always trying to capture media headlines using her clout as an academic prize winner and an international celebrity. This is the real thorn in the flesh. Since she is an international celebrity, the world over at least listen to what she says and this emboldens this writer to say anything.

Her opinion is obviously skewed. By watching a handful of hooligans, inspired and cleverly taught by a handful of selfish men, protesting against Indian state (our very identity), she came to the conclusion that Kashmir is not an integral part of India. I think she should have done her homework well before making such comments again.

After all, she is non-entity in Indian politics. We need to reject such persons and their utterances with contempt they deserve.

Corruption! Corruption! Corruption!

Just imagine a family where everyone is but corrupted. More precisely, what will you think of them if they are morally corrupted. And our bane is living in a country where most of them are corrupted. Corruption is not limited to financial transactions or details. What about moral corruption? Our nation is not an exception with regard to corruption, but that is not an excuse for bailing out our corrupt leaders and bureaucrats. You may say every nation is corrupted and the only difference is the relative differences in corruption index. I am sorry, my countrymen, if you continue to believe so.

Let us take a look at the recent newspaper exclusives. I wonder if you can pass a day without hearing the word ‘corruption’ either in print media or mass television media. Why does it happen? The recent incidents of corruption are Commonwealth Games financial irregularities, Adarsh Housing scam and the 2G spectrum scam. There were many earlier like the Bofors payoff deal (during Rajiv Gandhi’s regime), the hawala transactions and JMM bribery scandals (during Narasimha Rao’s regime), the Kargil coffin scam (during Vajpayee’s regime) and now the recent three (during Manmohan Singh’s regime). There are many other scams happened within state limits with national implications, but I don’t mention any now. The most notable thing is most of these scams or corrupt details took place when the Congress party ruled out nation. It doesn’t mean Congress party per se is corrupted, but the point is corruption was institutionalized the most during their rule.

Let us come back to the present regime. Manmohan Singh, personally, is one of the cleanest politicians or prime ministers to rule our country. (Or, is he the only one?) However, it does not mean that his government as a whole in sanitized against corruption. Of course, none of his party colleagues in the Cabinet were involved in any mass visible corruption. We must appreciate him for that. Or, we have to wait for a few more years before the skeletons tumbling out of the cupboard.The most recent 2G spectrum scam is a thorn in Manmohan’s flesh. Poor Prime Minister! He is helpless owing to the coalition compulsions. But to protect his credentials as a clean man, he needs to act and act urgently by sacking the tainted minister. We have to wait and see if he can ever do that.