It is not every day that the first rank of political leaders in the country dilate on the subject of corruption, unless they happen to be making a glancing attack against opponents. That surely cannot be the case with Congress and UPA chief Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who are running the show and suddenly
find themselves enveloped by the Opposition clamour that they are presiding over a power edifice in which the corrupt have thrived. Clean government, above all, appeared to be the unwritten code the Congress gave itself when it unexpectedly overhauled the NDA in the 2004 general election and then repeated the feat in 2009 although it was the incumbent. It must therefore hurt a lot for its top leaders to be told that they run a corrupt system although no one has yet summoned the nerve to accuse them personally of wrong-doing. Getting rid of Mr Shashi Tharoor over an impropriety was well thought of by the country. Subsequently, jettisoning Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan over the Adarsh apartments affair and Suresh Kalmadi on account of the widespread perception of sleaze in the preparation for the Commonwealth Games — before investigations began — helped the cause of the Congress along. The 2G spectrum episode appears to have now undone what the Congress leadership, and the PM in particular, had done hard to build — a reputation for probity for themselves and for their dispensation.
On the occasion of the 93rd birth anniversary of the late Indira Gandhi, Mrs Sonia Gandhi spoke of our “shrinking moral universe”, noted that “graft and greed are on the rise”, and called for “greater probity, more transparency”. Her sentiments will be endorsed by all. However, her taking a laudable public position even as her party and its government are engulfed in a situation of quasi-crisis on account of corruption charges might appear to some as extravagant. The corrective lies in the government, of which she is the real master, bending its energies to rectify procedures to make the environment less prone or hospitable to wrong-doing, and effects a choice of personnel all around that would give confidence to the system. All the material in the public domain on the 2G spectrum allocation affair cannot fault either Dr Singh or Mrs Gandhi. But none of it helps make the case that they managed their administration and coalition structure with élan. The compulsions of coalition politics have taken a toll of the administrative and political acumen of PMs and ruling party chiefs since the era of multi-party rule dawned. None, however, was confronted with such putative losses to the exchequer as the CAG’s report on the 2G spectrum suggests.
The pity is that the top guns in the government could not have been caught unawares by the development. Indeed former telecom minister A. Raja appears to have overlooked their counsel and command, taking advantage of coalition politics. Pushed to the wall the PM did eventually ease out the offending minister. But he acted much too late, politically speaking. Even as Mrs Gandhi spoke of graft in the system eventually alienating the poor from the country’s resources, the PM from the same forum noted that disbursements by the Centre for development plans will go down a corruption tube if the state and local governments do not change their act. He may be right but the time for such an observation was hardly apt when his own government is being called inept. This is the lesson to be learnt for UPA-II for the remainder of its time in office. Coalition politics cannot be an excuse for diffidence in administration when public funds are sought to be encroached upon.