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If Smt. Gandhi is half serious about this, she deserves nothing but our full throated applause and more importantly, our support. But how exactly she intends to do this or the issues involved in changing this unfortunate civic opinion; she regrettably did not mention.
Lest myriad preoccupations that go with running a paradoxical United Progressive Aalliance makes
Smt. Gandhi forget her promise made before a group of people who intrinsically trust her, I will try and help by
listing down for her, just a few essentials of how the ‘aam aadmi’ will begin to see us differently.
Since the Volker report is about money, let me first talk about it. It needs zero head to understand the kind of money political parties require running themselves or its candidates require contesting elections. The United Progressive Aalliance chairperson should know this only too well and thus oil or no oil; her party like all others will require money. Period. And if a benevolent Saddam does not oblige, some Sikorsky or Embraer will.
And with apologies to Smt. Gandhi, as long as such money is taken and used, sleazy we will remain in public mind. Not a rupee will I charge Smt. Gandhi as royalty, should she accept my suggestion to begin her well meaning cleansing operation by getting her party treasurer out of clandestine existence.
Indubitably, most others would follow; for let’s not forget, Congress is all of 10 seats larger than its nearest challenger. And the only way to prevail on treasurers to leave their undercover habitat would be to allow them to accept money in Mr Chidambaram’s favored form — an ‘accounts payee
cheque’.
But unless the Finance Minister too forgets about collecting taxes on these
cheques, their weight would be mere paper-weight. Tax exempt contributions to recognized political parties is the only way forward to making all parties financially accountable and I do confess that this idea is not my original!
Let me assure Smt. Gandhi that though financial decadence does tell on a party’s eminence, it is debauchery of another kind that does us most damage. Moral depravity amongst politicians which till recently was most brazenly visible in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh is now on display in New Delhi too.
This adds force to a feeling of cynicism amongst our people. I wonder if Dr. Manmohan Singh will ever be at peace with himself for having had to back an unconstitutional decision to dissolve the Bihar Assembly and at midnight too. And I speculate whether Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, whose name is invoked by Congress persons without faltering, would have approved of his granddaughter-in law and political successor sharing pulpit with
Shri. Lallo Yadav, albeit, in the name of safeguarding ‘secularism’.
Like everything else, honesty too should begin within a person. Would
Smt. Gandhi care to tell us if there were any pangs of conscience while addressing Biharis in the company of a couple proven to be responsible for denying seventy million people their chance to move on with the rest of India?
Did the thought ever cross her mind that she was holding hands of, and garnering support for, people who for better or worse, were being prosecuted on serious and monstrous criminal charges?
Sagging under political compulsions is surely not the way of becoming a role model, a position
Smt. Gandhi’s admirers would have her occupy. Criminals of any assortment do not belong in politics and the definition of a criminal in this case needs to be more moral than legal.
Certain things are considered perennially fashionable politically. Those who for the first and only time destabilized our democracy are the ones who today hector most about democratic values. And those who lent their active support to this subversion automatically see themselves as the title holder of all democratic rights.
Adding insult to injury, if Smt. Gandhi’s one-man certifying agency; the Prime Minister himself, issues certificates of excellence to such persons, can we escape being reviled by people. This should be
Smt. Gandhi’s other challenge. Can she prevail on her government to bring back to life the long pending counsel of the Election Commission lying with the government to improve the Representation
of Peoples Act? In fact there is more than a critical need to go much beyond the original Election Commission recommendations to ensure that only persons of excellence can become our law makers.
I do not for a moment doubt that Smt. Gandhi has completely assimilated in our culture and adopted our customs. But she does have the advantage of having spent her formative years in Europe where she could not have missed innumerable indelible marks of how Europe suffered from an overdose of the ‘Big Lie’ syndrome, as espoused by
Goebbels. Repeat a lie enough times and it will have the ring of truth, said the theory.
I honestly believe that Smt. Gandhi has fallen prey to the Indian version of the ‘big lie’ in accepting twisted definition for the words ‘secular’ and ‘communal’. How else can one explain that a philosophy of treating all citizens of a country as equal irrespective of their religion or caste is dubbed communal and a policy of unfair and legally untenable reservations on religious considerations hailed as secular?
Only when Smt. Sonia Gandhi has begun to address such issues in right earnest, signaling her belief in building a better future, can we start to accept that
Smt. Gandhi is indeed a cut above us and talks only after thinking rather than the other way round.
Uday Singh is a Member of Parliament representing the Purnea Lok Sabha constituency of Bihar. He can be reached at
uday.singh@sansad.nic.in or at uday@scci.co.in |
