Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s affidavit in the Supreme Court in the matter of the 2G spectrum issue, filed on his behalf by an official of the Prime Minister’s Office on Saturday following the court’s instruction to the solicitor-general to this effect, cannot displease Dr Subramanian Swamy, president of the Janata Party, who had kickstarted the process of asking uncomfortable questions on 2G allocation. Dr Swamy had sought the PM’s permission to prosecute communications minister A. Raja, who was eventually compelled to resign, and approached the highest court through a special leave petition when he did not hear from the PM for a length of time that he considered reasonable. The Janata Party chief’s contention has been upheld that the Prime Minister had communicated with him just once, although he did receive official communications from time to time from different departments of the government. Significantly, the sequence recorded in the much-awaited affidavit also shows that while Dr Singh himself wasted no time in paying attention to Dr Swamy’s letters to him, the in-built process of response in the government is one of inexcusable delay, which partially explains the serious deficiencies of our administrative apparatus up and down the hierarchy, at the Centre and in the states, delaying development, killing efficiency, and yes, fostering the climate for corruption to breed. Dr Swamy is also likely to be pleased that his bringing up the Raja issue at the level of the Prime Minister set a CBI inquiry into motion.
There can be no question that our legislators, and our political and ideas elite, should seek to seize upon disclosures made in the Raja affair to get the panoply of government procedures and rules overhauled to match the challenges of the 21st century so that transparency, and a sense of purposiveness and dispatch, may be introduced into our governance systems which are still mired in the ethos of our colonial past designed to distrust the average citizen. It is plain to see that the system we have inherited and unthinkingly propagated would have slowed down the response mechanism of most heads of government. Our coalition arrangements of today made under political compulsions have served to complicate matters further. All this must decidedly change. The present Prime Minister’s immaculate reputation for probity has stood him in good stead and will be a factor in warding off a sense of political crisis which some in the Opposition may wish to induce. Otherwise procedural delays may have led to unsavoury motives being read into the situation under a leader whose moral compass was ordinary or not so sturdy. Dr Swamy, the petitioner, perhaps appreciates this.
With Mr Raja gone, Parliament will be on the right track if it considers the issue in question with a view to providing the political impetus for a cleanup operation. On the government’s part this should mean a commitment to becoming proactive with prosecutions not only in the case of the former minister but others in government and outside who might have been accessory to the alleged crime.
None of this can materialise if political parties pitched in with demands to secure narrow advantage for themselves and brought upon a sense of foreboding in the country. While resolving to punish the guilty, all of them are called upon to enter into a compact not to rock the boat. If the present government is sought to be placed at risk, there appears next to no possibility of a stable alternative replacing it within the present Parliament. The red lines are clear enough except for the most reckless. For the nation’s interests to not suffer, Parliament must now proceed with its stalled business and get back swiftly to normal functioning.