The BJP occasioned no surprise when it sought to flag the issue of corruption at its recent national executive meeting in Guwahati. After all, only weeks earlier, the Congress — against whom all of BJP’s exertions are understandably tilted — had focused on the same question at its Burari conference near Delhi. The principal

Opposition party would not have lived up to its billing if it had not accorded the subject of institutionalised corruption — which casts a lengthening shadow on our public life — the significance it deserves. However, it was the manner in which the issue was broached in Guwahati that is likely to raise concern. So long as the BJP shies away from even acknowledging that rampant corruption, said to involve the most prominent elements of the government the party runs in Karnataka, is making a mockery of governance, democracy and justice in the southern state, a call on its part to cleanse the system and to interrogate the UPA government at the Centre is likely to carry little weight. It is doubtful the party’s own rank and file will be persuaded by the doughty words and the lofty language its leaders employed at the national executive to corner the Manmohan-Sonia duo.
Even while the BJP conclave was in progress, an empowered committee of the Supreme Court recommended the cancellation of mining licences of a Karnataka company owned by two ministers of the state government. Except for those who are in the dock, no one from the party or the state government has had anything to say about this. On the ground the BJP appears to be in double jeopardy on the corruption issue. It has few allies at the Centre outside of the parties of the National Democratic Alliance. The Left, while demanding a JPC probe on the 2G spectrum affair just as the BJP does, sharply demarcates itself from the saffronites on the corruption matter, and arraigns it. In Karnataka, the state that matters to the BJP nearly as much as Gujarat, the corruption question provokes disquiet. Within the state BJP, some have harboured the view that corrupt ministers in the Yeddyurappa government are being sheltered by the most senior elements in the party’s national leadership. It is not far-fetched to imagine that strong words issuing at the Guwahati conclave against the Prime Minister and the Congress’ “first family” are a thin attempt to put up a brave face in the backdrop of a deeply embarrassing home front, and to paper over leadership factional squabbles sharpened on account of the corruption-related goings-on in Karnataka. Resurrecting the ghost of Bofors to do battle against the Congress is to tilt at windmills. Realistically speaking, that subject is archival material. Re-makes of movies are not known to be box-office hits.
If statesmanship had prevailed in the country’s principal Opposition party, it might have taken up the government’s challenge to have a special session of Parliament on the question of the utility of a demand for a JPC on the spectrum scam, with the proviso that such a session also debate the nuts and bolts of how to checkmate institutionalised corruption in the country. Political partisanship does not point the way to defeat systemic corruption. If democracy and parliamentary give-and-take have any meaning, then there must be a consensus on overarching national issues that threaten to hold back our progress. Corruption is certainly one of them. With its own backyard emitting a disagreeable odour, the BJP’s bravado in announcing a programme to run up and down the country crying foul about corruption might render the party a laughing stock. It will, of course, be laughable if the Congress seeks to prise partisan advantage out of the situation. It is incumbent on the ruling party to devote attention to building a working consensus on dealing with corruption, not merely talking about it at convenient forums.