Cong's self-destructiveness
Men, Matters & Memories

By M L Kotru

There is little one can do for someone so singlemindedly determined to destroy himself and the institution from which he or she derives strength. Every time the once mighty Congress Party suffers a set-back we are assured by the old men and women who preside over the crumbling destiny of the party that they are going to introspect. Sankalp or something, they call it. The last sankalp, if I remember it right, had the party finally discovering that if it is to survive it must learn the art of coalescing with like-minded parties. Yet, every time there is a new challenge the old men of the party, all of them at varying stages of senility, decide that the grand old party must go it alone.

Until the recent poll debacle in Rajasthan, Chhatisgarh and Madhya Pradesh their refrain would be ''we are still ruling in 14 odd States''. The BJP, leading the National Democratic Alliance in Delhi ruled less than four States. They would also fondly remember how they ousted BJP from Himachal Pradesh not so long ago.

Their self-destructiveness, which is tom-tommed as the party's self-confidence, persuades them always to rush to the leader, rally round her retailing the familiar line ''the leader is right, the future is bright''.

And Sonia Gandhi, prone to lending a receptive ear to such pathetic sycophantic chants, has never failed to oblige. The poor woman just cannot ask them to stop. I am sure her own parivar, her daughter especially, must be trying to tell wrong from right but then the din of the flatterers and courtiers apparently is too loud to allow any other voice to be heard. That is if the daughter is at all offering counsel to her.

One would have imagined Sonia Gandhi using the big broom to throw out all the dead wood that forms the sycophantic council of her advisers (the Congress Working Committee) in the wake of the latest poll debacle a monumental one regardless of Judaes and Jogis- but no, Soniaji will not hear of it. Ambika Soni have owned moral responsibility for the debacle but Sonia doesn't have the heart to ask her to go.

Her other principal counsellor Ghulam Nabi Azad, who, we are told, is the campaign incharge for the Andhra poll, due early next year, is living in a cuckooland of his own creation. He seems content with issuing threats to the State Chief Minister, warning him of his imminent doom, without caring to assess the newly emerging political trends in the State. If he is aware of the imminence of a tie-up between the BJP and TDP in the upcoming poll in the State one would have expected him to be doing better than making his touristy trips to Hyderabad.

Like Ms Soni, Mr Azad does not have a political base worth mentioning. Azad, for some unexplained reason, gives credit to himself for the ephemeral victory which his party scored over the BJP in the Jammu region a year and more ago.

The BJP was apparently bitten by the Congress bug for it to have lost the Jammu seats and, lo and behold, Mr Azad, who has never won even a municipal election in his home State, Kashmir, was projected as the party's nominee to share the six-year Chief Ministerial term in the State with Mufti Mohammad Sayeed who had defied the odds in overcoming the National Conference challenge in the more politically volatile Valley. And thanks to Azad's stewardship of the State Congress, the party has had to issue a warning to its MLAs about the consequences of their trying to defect during the Assembly session.

Personally, I have nothing against Mr Azad. I do not question his right to have his own political ambitions. After all hasn't he served as a Minister at the Centre as a duly elected Lok Sabha member from somewhere in Maharashtra where, as the story goes, he was projected as Maulana Azad's nephew. Likewise Ambika Soni is a political loner with no place to call her own.

There are others in Sonia Gandhi's advisory council, men like Arjun Singh, Natwar Singh, Ahmed Patel, Oscar Fernandes, Moti Lal Vora and the rest whose only claim to fame is their proximity to the dynasty. How come, may one ask, that one didn't notice any of the so-called Congress stalwarts in the poll fray just ended except, of course, when they were campaigning for their kin? Sonia Gandhi, unlike her BJP opponents, had to campaign/almost alone against BJP top guns including Prime Minister Vajpayee and Lal Krishen Advani, with the second rung comprising Venkaiah Naidu, Pramod Mahajan, Arun Jaitley, Narendra Modi of Gujarat ill-fame criss-crossing the battlefield.

The BJP, of course, had the added advantage of having RSS cadres, Shiv Sainiks and the VHP men manning the campaign at the grassroots. Nothing of the kind in Sonia Gandhi's fiefdom. Apart from Sonia, the embattled Chief Ministers were severelly left alone to fight their own battles. For the rest the party stalwarts in the three States maintained an amazing disinterestedness (except, to repeat, where their kin were involved); so unusual for a party fighting for its survival. Sheila Dikshit retained Delhi largely because of her own and her Government's clean image.

Which brings one back to where exactly does Congress go from here. One thing is sure that the party can longer hope go alone and win. The BJP, even when it boasts that it will take 300 seats in the next year's Lok Sabha elections, is being very circumspect in keeping the NDA flock together. It is indeed trying to get some other parties into the NDA fold, some even more formally than before. The Telugu Desam Party of Chandrababu Naidu appears to be one such.

The Congress must let go of the high horse that it has made its own and take a hard look at ground realities. These would seem to suggest that the party must forge alliances with all like -minded parties. Personal ambitions of the old men and women who constitute the Sonia advisory council should not be allowed to come in the way of such future partnerships. That I should be commending the pattern to the party sounds odd considering that the AICC itself had not so long ago accepted the dawn of coalition era in the Indian polity.

If references to Kashmir occur in this column fairly regularly I cannot help it. The place is so very close to my bone. This particular incident speaks of the day when Sonia Gandhi had been advised to visit a place in the State where one of the worst terrorist carnages had taken place. Obviously it was a well publicized visit and every Congressman worth his salt was at hand to receive Sonia when her helicopter landed there.

Among those present to receive were the leader of the Congress legislature Party, Mehbooba Mufti and, who else, but her father, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed who probably was an MP then or, quite likely, was an important party functionary. To the horror of everyone present Soniaji chose not even to exchange glances with the two Muftis, guided straight ahead as she was by her escort, Ahmed Patel, to wit. The wheel has turned full circle since. Sonia's Congress is in the coalition headed by Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and Mehbooba, who, with her father founded the People's Democratic Party, has since emerged as the politically most recognisable face of Jammu and Kashmir. That's why I say Sonia must get rid of the deadwood se is surrounded by and instead opt for a new generation of Congressmen.

This finger points all around!............
Yours Randomly,

By Dr. R. L. Bhat

In the hugely popular Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, heroine Kareena is moving away after photographing Kutub Minar when a tourist-guide hands over her purse which she hadn’t even noticed was lost. Kareena’s hand goes to her pocket and the guide politely tells her that he wants no tip. But Kareena is not going to tip him. She is taking out her autograph book, so that she gets the signature of this extra-ordinary man who returns lost things including purses! Original, isn’t that? Honesty is not a common trait. It is abnormal. It is unique. So unique that it deserves to be recorded in autograph book. For dishonesty is the norm. Cheating, defrauding, snatching away purses is the normal thing. Returning them, preventing fraud and pointing at cheaters, is abnormal. Unheard of. We do not have civil engineers refusing commissions and telling the bribers instead. We certainly do not have them reporting the huge frauds they see everyday. Nexus is the normal. Revealing them is abnormal. Risky. It is only the inexperienced, or foolish who refuse bribes. They may sometimes be autographed like the lucky tourist guide in KKHH. More often they get killed. Like the Bihar engineer who spoke of the deep nexus of corruption.

This engineer was young enough or inexperienced enough or simply his gentle heart bled a little too much to make him write to the prime minister. Then the inevitable happened. The official machinery went into the proverbial nota-noti and the mafia got him. Of course, that is all presumption. The police would soon tell us how it actually ‘was’: that the ‘reality’ was ‘quite different’. That the engineer died because of an ‘accidental bullet’ escaping a ‘casual gun’ in an ‘unfortunate hand’. That there were been other ‘causes’. The investigators may ‘discover’ many things like a troubled family, finances in bad shape, even demands for more commission. Indeed the interregnum is simply a wait for the ‘exact wording and clauses’ the investigation would prefer. As for the rest they have already put the whole blame on the mafia and absolved themselves. And, gone back to their commissions, derelictions and files. Meanwhile scams, commissions, mafia-backs go berserk. The politicians collect their pounds and all revel in the flesh. All!

That ‘all’ includes first of all people the high founts of democracy. They flinch not to see a former chief minister being accused of amassing thousands of Crores. They see not a minister putting bundles of notes on his head. They hear of senior police officers being rounded up for shielding the most devious of criminals and yet go to sleep with an easy conscience. They do not indict, do no pass judgments but wait to see how ‘the game’ ends. They are the ones at whom the finger of suspicion for all that is going wrong with this nation points. One could name the politicians, the police, the criminals and shady elements but that would not avail. For one, they are all parts of the general people.

Then they are all well known. The scamesters live here amongst us. The corrupt and the criminal is not only a part of the social-fabric but is actually the leading light, lauded for guts, gumption and enterprise. Blaming them is only taking an easy route out. Indeed, that is what is being generally done in this country. The ball is kicked around, the files are pushed, notes are written and absolvations of self are sought and secured by all. All, including the people. Especially, the people!

This people are not the lay masses alone but the thinking, acting people who sup with the devil and refuse to see the evil. They are the judges who know the prevarications the defense is playing yet close their eyes. They are the journalists who see and know everything but report only the reportable. They are the professionals: the engineer brethren of the Bihar youngster who promote the contractor-mafia nexus, the doctors who mend the criminals, the lawyers who spin yarns to bail them out, the administrators who drown everything in files. Of course, they are the politicians who have made half-truths and prevarications the life’s philosophy. They are the people in power from Delhi to Maharashtra to Bihar, from BJP to Congress to the ‘regional aspirations’ as well as the messiahs of poor. They are all in it, promoting it, shielding it, and profiting by it. Of course, the Crores for elections, their collection and distribution are all known. But the question is why are not the all-knowing, all-seeing people doing something about it? Why are the professions prostituting themselves, the policemen prostrating themselves, the politicians promoting it all and the people simply standing by?

Why is everybody pointing fingers around and not within? Why is not the blame being apportioned to self? Why is not acquittal for self being sought by and from individual consciences? This is a nation of the people. Nay? This whole corruption is coming back to kill, loot and ravish all. No? Isn’t it incumbent on all of this people, the faceless mass, the vocal face and the façade to work to eradicate it? Yes, corruption is rampant. Universal, too. But is apathy is not. Indifference towards the very nation is not the norm. The nations that want to live are concerned; they act out their concerns too. It does not avail getting clever over the nation.

It does not help to shift blames. Saying, ‘mafia’ and washing ones hands off does not prevent the youngsters being killed. It carries no hope, no redemption. Neither for the nation, nor for the people who are profiting by it all, nor for those who hope to sleep it away.