The rot is wide and deep

The sordid degeneracy of the ruling coterie that Mrs Gandhi heads has been exposed in all its nakedness by Arun Shourie in the Indian Express and by the press generally. The illegal and illegitimate was glibly and brazenly defended in Parliament and elsewhere and a Pyrrhic vote of confidence was won in the Lok Sabha.Mrs Gandhi's sense of confidence unfortunately seems to lie largely in her feet -an easy ability to walk away from things that matter and the facility of having any number of doormats-which is what the Antulays, Jagannath Mishras, Arjun Singhs, Gundu Raos and others have reduced themselves to by their own servile admissions. (Samples: "As far as I am concerned, my politics begins and ends at the doorstep of Mrs Gandhi." And, "I enjoy the confidence of the electorate as long as I enjoy the confidence of Indira Gandhi." Thus Arjun Singh and Jagannath Mishra, respectively, toSunday.)Condoning Criminality: Mrs Gandhi has certainly done the State some service. But the tendency to turn a blind eye towards, and even to legitimise, all manner of questionable practices has not come newly to her. The rot started with her decision to centralise party fund-raising in the early '70s after the ouster of the so-called Syndicate, and the growing equation of power with money that followed. Witness the Chimanbhai Patel oilseeds rake-off in 1974; the stoic defence of an alleged forger, Tul Mohan Ram (a Congress MP) in Parliament for all of that year; the strange and unsatisfactory parallel inquiries into the murder of L. N. Mishra who was known to have feared for his life at the hands of his friends; and the deafening silence, more recently, on the giant Thai Vaishet fertiliser plant contract fiddle, to cite but a few examples.Witness again an open example of condoning criminality. On December 20, 1978, an Indian Airlines Boeing 737 with 132 passengers on board was hijacked while on a scheduled flight from Lucknow to Delhi. The Lok Sabha had just expelled Mrs Gandhi and imprisoned her. The two hijackers, Devendra Nath Pandey and Bhola Nath Pandey, shouted slogans and distributed leaflets demanding Mrs Gandhi's immediate release and the withdrawal of all prosecutions against her and Sanjay Gandhi. The aircraft was diverted to Varanasi where the hijackers insisted on negotiating with none other than the Uttar Pradesh chief minister. The incident fortunately ended without mishap with the two hijackers being talked into surrendering after several hours of suspense. The two men were said to be Youth Congress(I) members but this was vehemently denied by Congress(I) functionaries who described this as part of a smear campaign against the party. Mrs Gandhi and Chief Ministers (from left) Antulay,Mishra, Singh and Rao: Double standardsR. Venkataraman was among those Congress(I) stalwarts who, while disowning responsibility, admitted that the hijacking was a "heinous crime". The culprits were arrested and charged. In June 1980 both Devendra Pandey and Bhola Pandey were elected to the Uttar Pradesh Vidhan Sabha on Congress (I) tickets. On November 30, 1980, the state Government finally withdrew the criminal cases still pending in court against the pair for the 1978 hijacking. So the reward for hijacking, a criminal act, was elevation to elective office. Mrs Gandhi batted not an eyelid. Loyalty had been recognised; criminality forgotten.This episode has a contemporary echo. An Indian Airlines Boeing was recently hijacked to Lahore. Gajendra Singh's best defence would be that he and his friends be officially treated in the same manner as Devendra and Bhola Pandey - with honour. That would be grim humour indeed.The Lok Sabha debate on the Antulay affair focussed excessively on whether or not Indira Gandhi had consented to the Pratibha Pratishthan being named after her and whether this was a public rather than a private trust. The fact is that the Pratishthan remains a fraud, even if it was never named after Indira Gandhi and was a genuinely public trust, in view of its dubious operations amounting to taxation and extortion through blackmail and pressure.Money from the state exchequer was sanctioned-that is, misappropriated-even before the trust had been registered, and weighted tax exemption under Section 35 CCA of the Income Tax Act had been granted for vague, miscellaneous objectives-and all in a day-even before the Pratishthan and five other Antulay trusts had formulated a programme.The result is that while the six trusts netted an estimated Rs 30 crore (as reported) in "donations" within the space of weeks, the national exchequer was deliberately robbed of its dues, as 35 CCA donations qualify for a 100 per cent deduction and more from income, thus lowering the tax slab.Hapless cane growers found that Rs 2.50 per tonne was involuntarily deducted from their payments; industrial alcohol went off the market in violation of officially planned allocations and commitments; cement went underground. The premia on all these illegitimate transactions were shared between Antulay and his 'benefactors". The discipline of essential supply regulations and the price line could go to hell even if under-the-counter rake-offs fuelled the parallel black money economy.The scale of these illicit exactions can be seen when juxtaposed against the Maharashtra budget. The Rs 5 crore collections to the Pratishthan's coffers would have wiped out the 1980-81 budget deficit of Rs 4.68 crore while the aggregate loot garnered in all the six trusts would exceed the state's estimated budget deficit of Rs 29.10 crore for the current year after the imposition of additional taxation of Rs 31 crore. Trustee Antulay is obviously doing better than Chief Minister Antulay - and both tell us that they are working solely for the poor as loyal soldiers of Mrs Gandhi.Contrast this with the case of scores of other honest and devoted voluntary agencies and workers who have by deliberate and conscious acts of the Government been denied assistance - as for example, under the former National Adult Education Programme (NAEP) - on inexplicable and totally unverified grounds.Agencies that genuinely strive to serve the poor like the Gandhi Peace Foundation, the Association of Voluntary Agencies for Rural Development and other Sarvodaya bodies are hounded and reviled, even as Antulay's trusts flourish and are shielded by Mrs Gandhi when their criminality is exposed.A fact-finding committee set up by the Government found much merit in the NAEP and made various recommendations for its strengthening and improvement. Its report has been suppressed these past 18 months. Why? Only for reasons of political malice and at the cost of a truly nation-building scheme.Likewise, to cite another example, the Deendayal Research Institute, which is executing the Gonda District Minor Irrigation Project in eastern Uttar Pradesh planned and motivated the drilling of over 27,000 tube-wells benefitting 95,000 farmers owning 100,000 hectares of land in the space of two years. 1978-80.Despite this splendid record, the grant to this project by the People's Action for Development (India) (PAD(I) has been stopped. Its Section 35 CCA certificate has not been renewed and has in fact been retrospectively curtailed for the earlier sanctioned period. Agencies that genuinely strive to serve the poor like the Gandhi Peace Foundation, the Association of Voluntary Agencies for Rural Development and other Sarvodaya bodies are hounded and reviled, even as Antulay's trusts flourish and are shielded by Mrs Gandhi when their criminality is exposed.Crass Servility: The Antulays are, however, ultimately expendable; but Mrs Gandhi would like to appear to be seen valiantly defending their 'loyally', for this is the credo on which she has rested her political fortunes. Loyalty is indeed a noble attribute. But to demand unswerving loyalty to a person and a family, unrelated to ideology, programme, party or values, is to exhibit advanced symptoms of paranoia; and to extend such loyalty is to betray crass servility.Mrs Gandhi could not afford to disown Antulay loo soon if she expected further unquestioning loyalty in response to her every wish, howsoever foolish this might be or injurious to the public interest. Hence, the pose of haughty unconcern. This must give some kind of Dutch courage and hope to the Jagannath Mishra, Gundu Rao and others of their ilk for whom any means are good enough for any ends, provided they sit pretty. However, the Antulay exposure has been highly damaging-whether he stays or is moved or removed.The problem is not just Antulay. The rot is wide and deep. Jagannath Mishra's record is equally unsavoury. None of those guilty of the outrageous Bhagalpur blindings has been punished. Mrs Gandhi buried the Gupta Commission's report and closed the file on the judicially-established Maruti fraud. Mishra has done no differently.The High Court indicted him in 1978 for "providing a cover for corruption" and the Reserve Bank strongly criticised the nefarious dealings of the Patna Urban Cooperative Bank which had become a conduit for illicit transactions - including the granting of loans against the security of Patna Junction and the Gandhi Maidan! With Mishra back as chief minister, the case has been closed. The Bihar IAS cadre has pro- tested against political interference for sell-centred motives. The depths of corruption and nepotism have been plumbed. But Mishra is loyal.Most of the Congress(I) states are in similar disarray. In Uttar Pradesh, the chief minister has just completed his twelfth cabinet reshuffle in 15 months! Dissidence is surfacing everywhere and more and more Congress(I) workers are getting sadly disillusioned. In this situation Mrs Gandhi needs to drum up alibis such as the imminent danger of war, and other gimmicks like alleged threats to her life, and the need for more powers under a presidential system.Meanwhile, the doctrine of executive privilege is being increasingly used to cover up actions that will not stand the light of exposure. What is denied is public accountability. And the Delhi elections have typically been postponed as Mrs Gandhi fears that her party may be rejected by the capital's electorate.-Moral Bankruptcy: There have been two morbid reactions to the Antulay scandal. The first is a variant on Mrs Gandhi's parting words to the Congress Parliamentary Party last month: "Corruption is a world phenomenon." So now we are really 'with it'! A great many people are corrupt-so the reasoning goes-so why point at Antulay?The man's real problem was that he got caught. In any case, what about Kami Desai, Charan Singh's Kisan Trust. Sharad Pawar, Vajpayee, Shalini Patil and many others? This is an argument of moral bankruptcy. If there is a prima facie case of corrupt practice against any one of these or others, then proceed against them and punish them if they are found guilty.The other defence runs something as follows: "Ah, yes, they are all corrupt. But there is none to replace Mrs Gandhi. If she goes there will be chaos and so we must stand by her." This is the language of despair.The error lies in looking for saviours, so-called charismatic leaders, rather than for values, ideas, programmes and placing faith in the sturdy common sense and integrity of the people. The search for heroic figures who can be deified as political god-men has been a persistent weakness in the Indian political tradition and could be anti-democratic.India is in transition towards a new social and political order. The movement is irresistible; though it might be delayed, it cannot be stopped. The newly emerging forces evoke new values and priorities. Mrs Gandhi and the current opposition parties have misused their opportunity and demonstrated their irrelevance.They are caretakers at best, perhaps not even catalysts. Nevertheless, out of the churning new programmes will emerge and be thrown up a new leadership around which parties or coalitions will grow, in loyalty to the Indian people. This will take time. But the day is not far.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Oct 29, 2013 12:03 IST--- ENDS ---

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The rot is wide and deep

The sordid degeneracy of the ruling coterie that Mrs Gandhi heads has been exposed in all its nakedness by Arun Shourie in the Indian Express and by the press generally.

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