INDIA SPECIAL/CORRUPTION AND AFTER
Games governments play
India has forced New Delhi to act against corruption and
the ruling party cannot afford to take the country for
granted, says Neerja Chowdhury
cams are suddenly dominating the
Indian political scene.
Gandhian leader Anna Hazare
evoked an unprecedented response
to his fast for the enactment of the
Thanks to a proactive judiciary under the
stewardship of Chief Justice S H Kapadia,
the government has been forced to take
some action, be it in the scam involving the
Commonwealth Games or the allotment of
2G spectrum. As a result, former telecommunications minister A Raja is behind bars;
a charge-sheet has been filed against Tamil
Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi’s
daughter and Rajya Sabha (Indian parliament’s upper House) lawmaker Kanimozhi,
whose Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam props
up the federal government in Delhi.
Half a dozen corporate honchos are in jail.
And finally Congress party lawmaker
Suresh Kalmadi has been picked up in the
Commonwealth Games scam, though many
fear that given the time between the Games
and his arrest, the paper trail would have
disappeared.
Though the government was compelled to
take some action, it has not been able to
notch up the political brownie points it
should have, because it is seen to be acting
under pressure. It has bestirred itself only
when pushed to the wall, and reluctantly,
and when India’s supreme court has
cracked the whip.
At the popular level, the ruling Congress
party is losing ground. The prime minister
was the darling of the middle class but the
scams have dented his image. The Indian
parliament’s Public Accounts Committee
last week indicted Singh and his office in its
draft report, which was leaked, and it had
concluded that the prime minister’s aloofness had allowed Raja to get away with his
‘dubious deals’, and that the Prime
Minister’s Office had not kept the prime
minister in the loop. Though the draft
report had not been adopted at press time,
with sharp divisions surfacing in the PAC
on political lines, it reinforced the impression, yet again, of an honest prime minister
presiding over a very corrupt regime.
This is not to say that the prime minister
S
is about to resign. Or that there is a threat to
the government. The government has the
requisite numbers, as of now, to complete
its term. But there is a loss of authority and
credibility, particularly among the middle
class and in urban India, where the
Congress party had won in both the 2004
and 2009 general elections.
An angered bystander hits arrested lawmaker Suresh Kalmadi with a slipper in the Patiala House court complex in New Delhi, April 26
