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VIEWPOINT: FIFTH COLUMN
The Glasshouse Gag
In its inimitable way the Congress
has taken the sting out of the Tehelka story.
By Tavleen Singh
 It
took me a few minutes to work out whether the Signora was speaking English,
Hindi or Italian as she tossed her carefully coiffured head and spat out
her accusations against the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Government. But when
I overcame this initial linguistic uncertainty, I listened fascinated
to the charges: corruption, venality and treason. ''For a fistful of riches,
the men and women who rule in the name of high principle have sold the
honour of the seats they occupy. There can be no forgiveness. There can
be no mercy.'' Wow! And, wow again when you consider that these eloquent
words come from a lady whose ex-best friend, Ottavio Quattrocchi, is even
at this moment fighting extradition to India on charges of taking bribes
in our most famous arms scandal to date. A scandal, lest we forget, whose
shadowy trail allegedly leads all the way to Sonia Gandhi's own door.
But the Tehelka.com revelations have pumped such a sense of false security
into the Congress and its leader that she appears not just to have forgotten
Bofors, but also to have not noticed that seated beside her throughout
the All India Congress Committee (AICC) meeting in Bangalore was her new
friend, P.V. Narasimha Rao, who is not only on trial for corruption but
is also remembered for one of his ministers being caught with Rs 3 crore
lying around his house as if it were small change. Other memories come
to mind of ''suitcases'' mysteriously finding their way to the prime minister's
residence.
 When
it comes to corruption, the Congress is in no position to throw stones
at anyone. And, because it has chosen to embrace Tehelka as if it were
the gospel, it has succeeded, in a remarkably short time, in taking the
sting out of the story. The Congress is not a party used to sitting in
the opposition and this time, because the Government seemed so stable,
it was beginning to languish and fade, and to clutch desperately at every
passing straw-farmers' problems, economic reforms, BALCO. So, Tehelka
was a gift from the gods. But instead of using it sensibly, the Congress
has chosen to squander it in rhetoric and noise.
Could it be that it refused to allow a debate
in Parliament because it fears that its own skeletons would suddenly come
tumbling out of forgotten cupboards? Could it be that it was interested
not so much in fighting corruption as in bringing the Government down
once more on an emotional issue? Much help has come from the same old
troopers who brought Vajpayee's previous government down and they even
said the same old things. Last time it was Laloo Yadav who pronounced
that once the government was removed they would form an alternative in
''five minutes''. No elections, of course not. This time it was Mulayam
Singh who said it, only he was more cautious and said it would take an
hour. Like last time we saw ageing, decrepit Marxists resurrect themselves
on our television screens and disappear into huddles in Delhi bungalows
from which they emerged to announce that they had formed yet another Third
Front. It is not just deja vu but high farce and it is a serious disservice
to the country because the issue of corruption has disappeared and grubby
politics has taken over as this time Vajpayee has enough seats in the
Lok Sabha to more than survive. So there is going to be no repeat of ''272
and many more coming''.
Corruption, though, remains an issue and it
must be discussed in Parliament. Once our representatives find their way
into the Lok Sabha they quickly forget that corruption is a very important
issue for the average Indian because he faces it virtually every day of
his life. It sucks the blood out of the smallest efforts at enterprise
and ensures that India will always remain a poor country because it eats
into every attempt at development. If it continues to flourish in high
places, there is no chance of fighting it at lower levels and yet we see
no attempt on the part of any government to try and clean things up. That
is the real issue here and the prime minister must accept responsibility
for the ugly face of his Government that Tehelka revealed.
Vajpayee has been good enough to admit that
what we saw on the Tehelka tapes amounts to a ''wake-up call''. He now
needs to go further and tell us what he plans to do to clean up a system
that is rotten to the core. The situation is not much better at the political
party level and the problem is even more complicated because, despite
their sanctimonious pronouncements, every political party relies on black
money to conduct its election campaigns. What can be done about this?
And while Sonia Gandhi is angry about ''corruption
and venality'', would she like to tell us how much the AICC meeting in
Bangalore cost and where the money came from? It might make her realise
that every politician sits in a glass house, the walls of which are really
thin.
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