Courtesy The Hindu dated 28th January 2011
With 2G, Radia, illicit funds, and a stubborn CVC, the UPA government's scams
are multiplying faster than Lemmings, the little rodents that live mostly in
and around the Arctic.
One of the most enduring of media-created myths is that of mass suicide
amongst
Lemmings, the little rodents that live mostly in and around the Arctic. A 1958
Disney documentary film staged scenes of large numbers of Lemmings marching
mindlessly off a cliff to their doom in the waters below. Actually, Lemmings
can swim. The rodents see major migrations when they multiply rapidly and
their
population grows. And when this dispersal finds big numbers crossing large
bodies of water, some of them drown by accident, not by intent. However, the
Disney film — where they were actually forced off a cliff — and earlier
articles, created a false notion that still holds: that Lemmings commit mass
suicide by leaping off cliffs and drowning in the waters below. This is also
the origin of the political slang: ‘Lemming-like behaviour,' to describe a
suicidal course of action.
Political scientists in India 2011 can now be forgiven a rethink on the whole
fraud. You begin to wonder if there was some truth in it, after all. The
ruling
United Progressive Alliance (UPA) seems determined to prove that this instinct
of the little creatures was no myth. The race off the cliff is real, with
Congress Lemmings leading the charge of the light-footed brigade. The massive
hike in petrol prices at a time of raging food inflation was merely one among
such efforts. In just seven months, the price of petrol has gone up by over
Rs.
10. The new hike came even as the government announced that it was taking the
price rise seriously and has formed yet more panels and Groups of Ministers to
study the problem.( Another Group of Ministers was to have met in December
2010
to decide on whether to hike diesel and LPG prices as well. Yet another was to
take a call on raising APL foodgrain prices.) Lemmings, after all, mostly act
in large groups.
Now that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has rearranged the deck chairs on the
Titanic, the impression of a collective rush to mass drowning only grows.
Handing the rural development portfolio to a man just trashed by the Supreme
Court for protecting moneylenders in Vidharbha while he was Chief Minister of
Maharashtra, has a Kamikaze-like courage about it. Not only did the Court
admonish Vilasrao Deshmukh in scathing terms, it also enhanced the fine levied
by the Bombay High Court's Nagpur bench on the government of Maharashtra in
the
same case from Rs.25,000 to Rs.10 lakh. Now in normal and non-Lemming circles,
this would have led to his unaccompanied exit off the Cabinet Cliff.
Justice A. K. Ganguly in his judgment on the case involving Mr. Deshmukh says,
among other things: “The message conveyed in this case is extremely shocking
and it shocks the conscience of this Court about the manner in which the
Constitutional functionaries behaved in the State of Maharashtra.” The
judgment
goes on to say “it is clear that the Chief Minister was aware of various
complaints being filed against the said family [the moneylenders: PS]. Even
then he passed an order for a special treatment in favour of the said family
which is unknown to law.”
The judgment notes the debt-induced plight of farmers in that very region and
also says of Mr. Deshmukh's action: “This amounts to bestowing special favour
to some chosen few at the cost of the vast number of poor people who as
farmers
have taken loans and who have come to the authorities of law and order to
register their complaints against torture and atrocities by the moneylenders.”
Obviously, in Dr. Singh's view, the perfect candidate to preside over the
destiny of rural India and its development. A man during whose eight years as
Chief Minister of Maharashtra, well over 30,000 farmers took their own lives
in
the State — a feat unrivalled anywhere in the country. Mr. Deshmukh's most
famous remark on the farmers: “Committing suicide is an offence under the
Indian Penal Code. But did we book any farmer for this offence? Have you
reported that?” (The Hindustan Times, October 31, 2007). Just after the terror
attacks of 26/11, he went to the Taj hotel, with his actor son and Bollywood
filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma in tow. This provoked outrage in a public which saw
them as disaster tourists checking out the rich cinematic promise thrown up by
the tragic events. Sacked from his post, Mr. Deshmukh spent some months in
cold
storage before being elevated to the Union Cabinet.
His successor lost his job over the Adarsh episode and also earned notoriety
over the ‘paid news' scandal. On the latter, Ashok Chavan faces a case in the
Election Commission and might run into yet more trouble. His successor,
imported from New Delhi, gives non-entity a bad name. The NCP, once a
declining
force, gets a new wind with his arrival. And that party gets more aggressive
towards the Congress at the Centre as well, sensing the mess it is in. In
Andhra Pradesh, two successive Chief Ministers have spent over a year fighting
their own party in a State that contributed 33 MPs to the Congress at the
Centre. In West Bengal, the Congress has written itself, with almost
Lemming-like fatalism, into a distant third place.
If you watch your Animal Planet you'd expect that, like in other social
hierarchies, there are alpha male Lemmings. It requires rare qualities of
leadership to guide a bunch of sharp front-toothed mammals off a cliff.
Heading
the charge means there are lots of large gnawing incisors just behind you.
This is no role for the faint-hearted, as Kapil Sibal demonstrated in his
stinging attack on the CAG. This was also what happened in the Bofors case, a
blistering attack on the then CAG (among other things). The results of that
strategy included a government drowning. But history is not the Lemming's long
suit. Mr. Sibal might yet learn that the CAG is not a cowering witness in a
court room, but the drowning will probably have begun by then. Meanwhile, with
2G, Raja, Radia, illicit funds, and a stubborn CVC, the UPA government's scams
are multiplying faster than Lemmings.
Pranab Mukherjee, meanwhile, has made it clear — wagging a finger while doing
so — that the government is not about to reveal the names of any tax evaders.
Mr. Mukherjee, who heads more Groups of Ministers than have ever been
Empowered, suggests there might be one more group soon. That is, to work out
Amnesty schemes for tax evaders and those who have illegally siphoned funds
out
of the country to secret offshore accounts. No one can be named till they are
prosecuted, says he. In other words, we will never know the names of those the
government chooses not to prosecute.
A Global Financial Integrity Report (The Hindu, Nov. 17, 2010) estimates that
India has lost almost half a trillion dollars in illegal capital flight since
Independence. As much as $125 billion, or more than a fourth of the total,
vanished between just 2000 and 2008. The government plans amnesty for such
offenders and arrests for those protesting high prices.
The line has also been laid down on food security: forget about it. There will
be neither a universal PDS nor even an enhanced one. Feeding a hungry
corporate
world takes all the resources we have. Things are about to get much tougher
for
the whole team. India's premier Lemmings are simply too busy to pay any
attention to their day jobs. Even as the onion season winds down, the World
Cup
Cricket and IPL seasons are about to begin. This means, of course, that we
will
still see no Agriculture Minister for a further two months. (Unless someone
provokes him with a comment on Lavasa.)
Back in 2008, as global food prices soared, Mr. Pawar revealed to the daily,
DNA
(Page 1, April 2), that the real reason why wheat prices were soaring was that
south Indians were eating too many chapathis. In this, he echoed the view of
noted nutritionist George W (then also working part-time as President of the
United States). Mr. Bush declared that the world food prices were soaring
because millions of Indians and Chinese were eating so much more. (Global
prices fell sharply just months later. Were millions of Indians and Chinese
suddenly starving? Or were big-time speculators giving prices a yo-yo ride?).
Dr. Singh and Montek Ahluwalia have also bought into the Bush Food Doctrine:
the huge price rise in food items suggests that the poor are doing better,
eating more. The cliff runway is free and the Lemmings have been cleared for
takeoff.
Keywords: Manmohan Singh government, Sonia Gandhi, 2G spectrum scam, Radia
tapes
controversy, illicit funds, CVC issue, CAG scam, Indian Penal Code, Adarsh
Housing Society scam
