DECEMBER 17, 2010

JPC WILL ALMOST CERTAINLY GET NDA BACK TO POWER IN

2014

Arindam Chaudhuri Analyses Why BJP should not and cannot afford to give
up the demand for a JPC Probe

Rs. 1,76,000 crores and counting! The scam is the biggest in the country ever – or
rather, the sum total of all the other scams (that have been exposed) put together,
multiplied by two and more! If not a joint parliamentary committee probe now, then
when? A great democracy is one with a thriving opposition. After the last elections, I had
raised a question. Is this the end of the road for the BJP for long? It looked so. BJP was
stuck on its Hindutva mantra, while the Congress promised youth, which looked
progressive and could connect with the masses better! After all, the Hindus themselves
are so coexistential that they don’t like any communal stress in their lives. But then,
complacency is the mother of all failures. And failure is the mother of all successes!
Congress did two big blunders. Firstly, in a haste to promote Rahul Gandhi as its future
leader – and in its fear that charismatic speakers like Jyotiradiya or Sachin Pilot or
Milind Deora may overshadow the son – the Congress started destroying its biggest
trump card, the youth factor, which had made it look so bright. The Congress saw to it
that none of them had the courage to hog any limelight or be in any platform of
importance; so much so that the public has virtually forgotten Congress’ youth brigade.
And the truth is whatever the slavish media in India writes (it praises every rare semi-
meaningful word that Rahul says as if it’s straight from Julius Ceaser). Rahul Gandhi,
unfortunately, is still not good enough to single-handedly lead the Congress yet. Like
they have done with Dr. Manmohan Singh, the Congress could have made best use of
Rahul as the silent guy, while the other better speakers managed the party.

The second mistake is perhaps bigger and more dangerous. Protecting a dynasty may
ruin a party but abetting corruption ruins the nation. The Congress ruined its Prime
Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh’s personal image of crystal clear integrity by entering
into a series of mega scams. A majority of population in India, being illiterate, doesn’t
understand policies much; but they understand ‘chori’. I believe a conspiracy by V. P.
Singh created a wave in India which made him the Prime Minister from a nobody,
thanks only to an allegation of corruption that he could make the public believe in. Rajiv
was a man of definite personal integrity and was highly progressive and had started an
anti-corruption drive in India against Indian businessmen. V.P. Singh was a friend of
the industry, being a past commerce minister, and catching the moment, he made the
Bofors allegation. Rajiv – a man of great progressive thoughts, great charisma and a
Gandhi who had earlier swept the elections on a massive sympathy wave – lost the
elections. I would say for no reason but a wave around corruption that the masses were
falsely made to believe. Rajiv Gandhi, I believe, was personally not corrupt (for party
funds, even the most honest politician depends on sources; and Rajiv might have
depended on a single alternative instead of a number of Indian businessmen). But can I
say the same about the current Congress? Well, only a joker can. Everyone else knows
what’s happening in the Congress. Yes, there is a Manmohan Singh who is clean. But he
sits atop a pile of corrupt people. CWG, Adarsh, 2G, it goes on... personal wealth
creation at its best; and wealth being stacked offshore. The Supreme Court rightly asked,
was the Prime Minister sleeping? Being personally clean as a leader is only half the job
done. You have to make a system that cleans up the whole system.

And in this failure of Congress to provide clean governance, comes the hope for BJP and
NDA for 2014. Forget Hindutva; concentrate on the massive dacoity of India. In every
sphere. The masses understand it and they are totally convinced today that the UPA has
started rotting inside out. There seems to be a sudden wave in the Congress on why
should Mukesh Ambani remain the only one with 3 lac crore rupees. Gone are the days
of the ‘hundred crore’ ministers. If figures are to be believed, today the key ministers are
raking in thousands of crores. The country is being looted and sold off to the highest
bidder... Oops, I got it wrong here – the lowest bidder, to be precise, who gives the
highest kickback. There is absolutely no reason for anyone to accept and tolerate this.
And this is where the need of opposition in a democracy comes in. The BJP needs to
keep up its demand for a JPC probe. Take to the streets but the JPC is a must. And the
probe must be totally transparent with complete media access during hearings. That’s
the way it happened in Watergate, the Iran Contra, the Clinton case. That’s how it
happens in real democracies. With the Assange case, it’s clear that America is unfairly
using ownership of web domains – controlled by America – to close down various
websites in order to hound and shut off WikiLeaks. India could lead the way in showing
what a democracy is about for a change.

The JPC is also the only way everyone can be brought to the questioning table. Every
other agency can be manipulated and managed in this country by the party in power. As
I wrote in my previous editorial on the Radia tapes, the Indian media is right now too
busy doing what it does best: go behind glamourised cases and magnify them to grab
eyeballs and totally mislead and misinform the public. The part which was leaked till
then proved nothing. There are lobbyists everywhere. The real issue here is that the
government is caught in a web of corruption – perhaps facilitated by a lobbyist. Here we
are talking about the issue of Rs.1,76,000 crores; and there we are speaking of a few
stories that were being attempted to be planted here and there... What a mind blowing
diversion from the real issue. It’s hilarious the way the media is happily going on and on
bashing individual journalists (glamourous, easy preys and perfect vent for pent up
jealousies), who cannot hit back, instead of hitting out at the real people who are behind
this scam. What the opposition and media need to do right now is demand for the JPC
probe, for that’s what the Indian masses need and want. Of course, a few weeks back, I
myself wrote that our Parliamentarians have no right to waste the taxpayers’ money due
to non-functioning of the Parliament. But as the magnitude of the scam gets unearthed,
it’s clear that there’s more of tax payers’ money at stake in the scam than in the non-
functioning of the Parliament. The masses, the tax payers, they have a right to a clean
regime and the opposition must help them get their rights. That’s what makes a
functional propeople democracy. And why not? After all, this perhaps is the sure-shot
route for the NDA to be back in power in 2014 – as I said, nothing works with the aam
junta better than the corruption plank.

Let’s get in a little bit of analytics here. There are two ways in which Congress can hope
that UPA comes to power in 2014 with Rahul Gandhi as PM: first, it takes the ekla chalo
route and either gets 272 seats or gets very close to it. The second is through allies. The
ekla chalo route looked very promising in 2009 when the Congress won 22 Lok Sabha
seats in UP. But that magic figure of 272 now looks unattainable. Look at some numbers
first. The Congress has 7 out of 7 seats in Delhi, 9 out of 10 in Haryana, 5 out of 5 in
Uttarakhand, 8 out of 12 in Punjab, 33 out of 42 in Andhra Pradesh, 30 plus out of 48
along with NCP in Maharashtra, 11 out of 26 in Gujarat, 6 out of 26 in Karnataka, 13 out
of 20 in Kerala, 12 out of 29 in Madhya Pradesh and 20 out of 25 in Rajasthan. The only
states in which Congress can improve its tally is Bihar (now 2 out of 40), Jharkhand
(now 1 out of 14), Orissa (now 6 out of 21). In West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, it will play
second fiddle to allies.

The fact is, a resurgent NDA could actually lead to Congress losing seats in many states.
Then, it has a virtually zero base in Bihar, Bengal and Tamil Nadu. It will suffer from a
huge backlash in Andhra. In Orissa, Jharkhand, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar, it
has been out of power for so long that it has forgotten how to win. Most importantly, in
key states like Bihar, Chattisgarh, MP, Gujarat, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, Bengal, Jharkhand,
it has absolutely no state level mass leader who can capture imagination and votes. YSR
in Andhra, Amarinder Singh in Punjab, Ashok Gehlot in Rajasthan and Sheila Dixit in
Delhi did the trick in 2009. YSR is gone and the others can only do so much. In the
event, it appears very unlikely that the Congress will get more than 200 seats in the
2014 Lok Sabha elections. So it has to depend on allies like Trinamool, DMK (or
AIIDMK), JMM, NCP and assorted communal parties – all of whom have strained ties
with the Congress.

In contrast, the NDA alliance looks formidable and could gain members by 2014. The
Bihar election has been an eye-opener for parties who thought they will lose minority
votes if they ally with the BJP – the stigma of the 2002 Gujarat riots. This had prompted
allies like AGP, BJD, Trinamool and Telugu Desam to ditch the BJP. But Nitish Kumar
has clearly demonstrated that Muslims can and will vote for the NDA. Why, even
hundreds of Muslim candidates have won local elections in Gujarat on a BJP ticket! If
the UPA 2 keeps getting mired in scandals and problems created by allies, a chastened
BJP might just go back to rope in strong allies like Telugu Desam, BJD etc. If the BJP
manages to do that, sheer arithmetic of vote percentages will also ensure that the NDA
will head for a majority in 2014. A strong stance against corruption of the current
government will only make the case stronger.

The key issue is: The Congress has two great nationwide vote catchers; and popular
figures in Rahul and Sonia Gandhi at the centre. But barring isolated cases like Ashok
Gehlot, they have hardly any charismatic state level leaders with a mass base. The
reverse is true of the BJP – they have very popular mass leaders like Raman Singh, Prem
Dhumal, Shivraj Chauhan, Narendra Modi etc at the state level but no Vajpayee-like
charismatic leader at the centre. While for Congress, the job is far tougher (that is, of
finding local leaders), for NDA, it’s just about coming to a consensus and rallying behind
one leader like Narendra Modi or Nitish Kumar etc.

Then again, an NDA victory could be a blessing in disguise for Rahul Gandhi who is still
very young by Indian standards – and as I have said in the past as well, he needs to learn
a lot about communication techniques looking at videos of his father, grandmother and
great grandfather. People will forgive an ageing Vajpayee or Manmohan Singh for their
lack of powerful communication, but never a young man his age. A prolonged absence
from power at the Centre has helped Sonia Gandhi rebuild the Congress step by step the
hard way. If Rahul Gandhi gets the PM’s throne on a platter, there is a danger of him
going further on the current waywith cronies abusing his personal repute and ultimately
damaging him. A stint as opposition leader will give him time to finish the party
rebuilding process that he has started.

All in all, given the massive corruption and scams that the UPA is getting drowned into,
perhaps we should get used to the idea of an NDA government in 2014. And going by the
performance of the earlier NDA government, there is nothing wrong with that. The only
thing it has to do is grab the opportunities – like enforce the JPC – and of course, the
magnitude of the scam being so big, they should not have some of their leaders sharing
the booty and being bought off for a price; then the loot will continue in peace. Else, it
could be NDA in 2014!