Singh is sinking !

New Delhi

4 May 2013

On 3 May 2013, India went to sleep with the news of the arrest of the Railway Minister’s nephew for receiving a bribe. What should surprise the discerning is not that a politician’s kin was involved in corruption but that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) carried out the arrest, particularly at a time when the country is in the midst of a debate on the independence or otherwise of the premier investigating agency; when the Supreme Court is asking for the agency to be insulated from executive interference; and at a time when the scam-ridden ruling coalition, which is stumbling from one crisis to another, can easily do without another crisis of its own making.

For a government that does not shy away from letting the CBI loose on errant allies to rein them in, and for an agency whose director says it is a part of the government, not an autonomous organisation, the arrest of the minister’s nephew by the CBI should raise some perplexing but pertinent questions. Are we to believe, for instance, that the CBI acted on its own and that it did not take its political masters into confidence before arresting a minister’s kin? Or that the Department of Personnel and Training to which the agency reports and, by extension, the Prime Minister’s office under which the department falls, did not intervene? Or, worse still, the CBI director had an axe to grind with the Railway Board official who bribed the minister’s nephew?

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Singh Yadav was not betraying any secrets when he told journalists at Allahabad in April that anybody who does not act according to the Congress party’s wishes faces persecution through CBI. Neither was his father Mulayam Singh Yadav of the Samajwadi party, who amplified it by saying that the CBI was misused by the Congress the moment any party took it on. MK Stalin of the DMK would not disagree with the Yadavs; the agency raided his house in March barely two days after the party pulled out of the UPA. Finance Minister P Chidambaram disapproved of the action by the CBI, saying it will be misunderstood. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in turn, said that the government did not do it.

Not for a moment is it being suggested here that there is indeed something more to the arrest of the Railway Minister’s nephew than meets the eye. Whatever be the circumstances of his arrest, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh cannot escape the blame for presiding over a tainted government. If his administration can take credit, rightfully, for giving to the nation path-breaking initiatives such as the Right to Information, the Right to Education and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, it must own up to its acts of omission and/or commission, too.

Nobody is yet calling Manmohan Singh corrupt but there is no denying that his Teflon image has taken a beating from his heydays in 2004, when he was pitchforked into the prime minister’s chair. Four years into its second consecutive term, the government has not come out smelling of roses after the various scams in 2G spectrum, Commonwealth Games, Adarsh housing society, coal ‘gate’ and purchase of helicopters. Surely, the Prime Minister cannot possibly blame compulsions of running a coalition on all the scams ! True, as Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi puts it, “One man riding a horse cannot solve the country’s problems”, but try telling that to a Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi or a Nelson Mandela ! Simply put, giving up without trying or looking the other way is tantamount to abdication of one’s responsibilities. Ironically, for a technocrat-turned-politician he has allowed his party to go out of its way to penalise the honest and make an example out of them for all to see. A case in point is the brazen manner in which the party has treated a certain bureaucrat for taking undue interest in a matter. You can imagine what message that sends out to the world at large.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would be doing a singular disservice to his reputation and legacy and that of his administration if he does not rid himself of inertia and live up to the expectations of the New Middle Class, which can be impatient, demanding, unforgiving but generous to a fault, too. Already, his political rivals dismiss him as weak. Some in the media call him an underachiever. If he stays the course, the time is not far when he will be described, not uncharitably, as a Mukhota (mask) for all things corrupt. That epithet was reportedly used for Atal Behari Vajpayee to hide or camouflage the BJP’s proclivities. Manmohan Singh could find it hard to live down that epithet if he does not stop the buck with himself. Silence may not be an option going into an election year, and it certainly won’t help him to win friends and influence people.

The transformation of Manmohan Singh from the proverbial outsider to the consummate insider is complete. Well before the advent of Facebook and Twitter, Manmohan Singh enjoyed enormous goodwill among the Indian middle class. His personal integrity was never in doubt. Therefore, it came as a disappointment to the Aam Aadmi (common man) when scams began tumbling out of the government’s closet. Disenchantment with the political class began manifesting itself in various forms, most recently in the form of a public movement against corruption. That movement spawned many clones across India in its many cities, towns and villages. But as the middle class learnt much to its dismay, Manmohan Singh’s so-be-it attitude on the issue of the India-US nuclear deal did not extend to areas of governance that touched their everyday lives, be it jobs, prices or corruption. Today, he runs the risk of alienating the very people who give him the benefit of the doubt every time his government is embroiled in a new scam.