Come the season of hustings, it is clear now what ammunition the ruling BJP means to hurl at the opposition: cult and corruption, even as relentless communal polarisation will continue to be pressed into service to deflect attention from common miseries of the masses – and from the Adani affair.
Indeed, the prime minister has publicly urged the Central Bureau of Investigation to go hammer and tongs at the corrupt, sparing “no one”.
That last flourish – “spare no one” – is of course most intriguing; one imagines that had Jawaharlal Nehru used those words, he would have added—“not even me”, something he used to tell the cartoonist, Shankar.
These, however, are not the days for either self-flagellation or the ease of caricature.
And thereby hangs an unlovely tale.
Corruption
Now this corruption thing is interesting.
If propagated with a brazen gusto, the accusations do influence the public perception, whether or not facts bear them out.
Remember the much-touted 2G scam during UPA rule (2004-2014).
A canny Comptroller and Auditor General opined that the exchequer had suffered a loss of Rs 1,76,000 crore due to corruption in the sale of spectrum.
A joint parliamentary committee was demanded by the then political opposition – the rulers of today. The demand was granted.
Also read: ‘Tum Ab Chup Raho’: Interrogating the Enforced Silences of the Modi Government
At the end, the courts ended up acquitting those accused, including a minister who spent a long time in jail.
But to this day, the so-called “2G scam” continues to be alive in popular memory, thanks to a relentless campaign of vilification.
Having tasted blood in 2013-14, the trick is sought to be replicated now.
The point to note, however, is that in our day, instances of graft are sought to be deployed to camouflage a far more consequential systemic corruption – one that carries the potential of transforming the realm into a banana republic.
Adding cult to the “corruption” agenda
The renewed hullaballoo about corruption – which as you know happens only among those in the political opposition; the clever ones who switch to the ruling party are at once washed clean with an unfailing saffron detergent – is, crucially, sought to be peddled with the stamp and seal of the Dear Leader.
Having become an unquestionable cult, he is to be understood never to be disingenuous, and always to be followed without demur by private and public entities alike, just as the devout follow the gospel.
As Shakespeare wrote, “When Caesar says do this, it is done” so with our own oracular leader.
As to cases on the books against many who switched to the ruling BJP, including stalwarts, these will remain on the books, as knives hang on walls, ready to be called into play should any such satrap have a change of heart.
Indeed, nothing illustrates the dark comedy of this new political and administrative culture better than the case of Ajit Pawar of the Nationalist Congress Party.
To recall: when government formation last happened in Maharashtra, this most imaginative politician crossed over to the enemy, had all cases against him withdrawn, and promptly crossed back home to the NCP. What a splendidly creative manoeuvre was that. However, three days ago came the news that one of his companies has been charged by the Enforcement Directorate. Triggering speculation that he may, once again, be tempted to flirt with the BJP.
Corruption that destroys raison d’etre of republic
Throughout the last nine years, however, corruption of a more sinister, totalised form has been creeping into the constitutional order.
And, like it or not, it is sourced in the power of cultism.
A strikingly emblematic expression of this form of corruption – one that goes beyond the quotidian notion of merely personal aggrandisement – comes from the outlandish story of the so-called con-man, Kiran Patel.
The mind-boggling dimensions of this act of systemic corruption have now appeared in a remarkable investigative report by The Indian Express.
Also read: ‘Corruption’ Is the New Dog Whistle
Briefly, for six long months, over four visits to the valley, Patel, a Gujarati, with connections within the Gujarat chief minister’s office, succeeded in befooling the authorities in Jammu and Kashmir from end to end of the power structure.
Did you ask how?
Well, by simply flashing a visiting card that spoke of his so-called identity as an “additional director for planning and strategy” in, guess what, the PMO in Delhi.
At the mere sight of that card, it is now clear, all processes and procedures that should lawfully have come into operation to determine his authenticity came to be abandoned.
Without a demur, security vehicles, other details of power, five star hotel rooms, what have you were at his disposal.
No one thought it fit or necessary to verify his identity, given the power of the cult he was claiming to be so proximate to.
Not surprisingly, as per the report, the local contact who facilitated his ins and outs was a satrap of the RSS, one Trilok Singh Chauhan – a circumstance that could not but have clinched his status, since party, Sangh and government have fused in irrefutable authority.
On his visits, he carried with him some Gujarati business people so as to explore for them avenues of prospering in the new dispensation within the supine Union Territory.
The conman had a free run of areas normally closed to visitors of any sort. He was, after all, a scion of the sanctum sanctorum of cultism, all by his own unverified claim.
In short, the Kiran Patel episode may well be seen as but an understudy to bigger things, where leaders of other countries – what to say of our own administrative and other structures – like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Australia, earlier France in the matter of Rafale – reportedly found it impossible to deny lucrative contracts to the lucky ones (or one) who rode piggy-back on the Modi cult.
How then could the findings of a Mediapart or a Hindenburg be allowed to be handed over to a joint parliamentary committee?
Yet, none of this qualifies as “corruption” in the national media’s – and public’s – mind. And the powers-that-be know this only too well.
Once a political persona in this our land of great religious iteration attains to the status of deity, all adjuncts to the constitutional system must yield, and all nay-sayers be designated apostates.
Reason, after all, why so many famous god-men and women in India-that-is-Bharat continue to flourish, even when provenly mendacious.
However, as corruption comes to be bandied about as a uniquely oppositional malady – to be ruthlessly eradicated by self-evidently pristine and patriotic agents – we may reserve a thought for a much higher order that bids fair to diminish the realm into a banana republic.
This systemic order of corruption must remain the chief focus of those who continue to set store by the principle of the rule of law, the independent remit of institutions, the role of the fourth estate as watchdog.
This commitment must, most especially, remain alive where it concerns the degradation of a lawful republic under the corroding power of the nexus between private wealth and structures of governance.
Badri Raina taught at Delhi University.