It has been raining scams now for several months. Lately, it has also begun to leak, what with the Wikileaks India cables published by the Hindu last week. At first, the government seemed to be in much trouble when the paper published accounts of Congress insiders telling US embassy officials that they intended to bribe their way through the nuclear trust vote on July 22, 2008, which UPA-I had won amid charges that opposition MPs had been bought.
But in the eye-for-an-eye politics now being practised in New Delhi, in a matter of days, the government managed to strike back: the weapon was a story published by news magazine Tehelka alleging that a so-called sting operation by a TV news channel about the offering of bribes to opposition MPs to muster the numbers for the confidence vote was not an independent journalistic exercise but an attempt by the BJP to entrap senior Congress leaders. UPA-II used the story to launch a counter-attack on the BJP and force a debate in Parliament.
In short, the mud flew in all directions. But the public was no wiser as to who was bribing whom and for what. There was, however, a lot of rhetoric and flourish. After a long spell during which he appeared disheartened and low, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh uncharacteristically took recourse to an Urdu couplet, and even took a dig at L.K. Advani’s unfulfilled ambition to be prime minister. He denied that any MPs were bribed and soon found a chink in the BJP’s armour: Advani had reassured the US that if the NDA came to power, it would honour the Indo-US nuclear deal and the opposition to it was just political positioning. In doing this, Manmohan showed he too could hit back when pushed to the wall.
Earlier, Sushma Swaraj, the leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha, made a stinging speech attacking the PM. She too used an apt Urdu couplet, pausing for the right dramatic effect before several sharp thrusts at the PM. But a caveat that was also significant was Sushma’s argument that electoral victory was no excuse for criminal acts. This was in response to the PM’s earlier remark that the UPA had won a national election after the scandal over the trust vote. To shore up her arguments, Sushma asked, “If the people’s mandate invalidates all criminal acts, then why are the 2002 Gujarat riot cases still being tried despite Narendra Modi having won two elections following those incidents?”
Sushma’s dwelling on this point was interesting. Was Sushma accepting that Gujarat was a blot on the nation’s history despite Modi’s electoral success? Was this indicative of her future positioning within the NDA and the BJP when the leadership question comes up before the next general elections? Arun Jaitley, the leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha, also asked whether “criminality gets extinguished because of electoral wins”, but he did not elaborate on this point or mention Modi.
Meanwhile, questions have been raised about the timing and selection of certain media disclosures. BJP spokesperson Rajiv Pratap Rudy accused Tehelka of “being an investigative arm of the Congress government”. There were suggestions too that the Wikileaks cables were timed and selectively chosen in order to embarrass UPA-2 on the eve of assembly elections, in which they take on Left Fronts in two states—West Bengal and Kerala. Says Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari, “I would ask if it is appropriate for a newspaper to editorialise on hearsay? Then, since the newspaper is selective about the identities they reveal or the stories they choose, I would ask if this is about the freedom of the press or about the freedom of the owner of the press? And would Wikileaks be different if they came out of China and Russia?” Still, what is clear is that the Wikileaks aftershocks will continue for some weeks in Delhi’s chattering classes, since there are apparently US cables on conversations with politicians across the spectrum, intellectuals, and several bigwigs of Delhi journalism that are yet to become public.
Is there a political cost to all these leaks and investigations that are now erupting like a virulent rash on the body politic? The hard-nosed political view is: not really. Politics in India is increasingly becoming state-specific and people tend to vote on issues, and on incumbency and anti-incumbency in their states. Since critical elections will be taking place over the next two months, the political narrative will shift to the regions while the centre will continue to hold together as long as UPA-II has the numbers.
Yet, embedded in these debates and controversies are larger, and troubling, national issues. All the heat and furore has been generated over a vote in 2008 that UPA-I had to pass after the Left withdrew support over the Indo-US nuclear deal. Should India be debating a sensational controversy that has passed or the issue of nuclear energy itself after the nuclear disaster in Japan? And why should we stop national business because of some US diplomatic cables?
There is the other, inter-linked issue of parliamentary conduct. The house has been stalled and a fiery debate over US cables taken place while Parliament’s own recommendations on events preceding the July 2008 trust vote do not appear to have been taken seriously. Now, Union home minister P. Chidambaram has promised Parliament, during a spirited debate in the Rajya Sabha, that the Delhi police investigation into the cash-for-votes scam will be over soon. Indeed, now that the police will also be investigating the BJP’s role in setting up a sting operation with a TV channel, it would be in the government’s interest to speed up the probe.
All this reinforces the view that Parliament has become a platform for sectarian politics, sensational disruptive slogans and rhetoric instead of a forum for serious debate on critical issues. Several important legislations are pending but all we have got from this session is a few great speeches and some cut and thrust. It’s been quite a spectacle for MPs to have been a part of, before the action moves to the assembly elections, being seen as a mini-referendum for UPA-II.
