Ah, October in Delhi: a nip in the early morning and late evening air, cool breezes, blue skies; and all around, the acrid but always invigorating smell of schadenfreude.
Mangogate is proving to be a wonderful lightning rod for the national grumps about power and privilege. The danger is that the lightning rod might work only too well, providing catharsis for Congress-bashers but distracting attention from a systemic problem to one individual that many people are delighted to be able to hate openly.
Illegality is off the table so far, in the case of Robert Vadra and DLF vs. Arvind Kejriwal. But it’s still awfully shortsighted of Mr Vadra to have made sweetheart deals, if that is what he did, because those who want to be seen as clean have to adhere to scrupulous standards of propriety, forget illegality. This isn’t the sort of dirt that the Congress can afford to have stick to the shoes of its superbrand. There was only one way to make it worse, and Congress party ministers duly did, leaping to Mr Vadra’s defence on television.
Then again, that makes sense in one way — the same way that it makes sense that most other parties who fight expensive election campaigns have been leery of going after Mr Vadra the way that India Against Corruption has gone after him — they’d rather not kick the hornet’s nest because they are perfectly aware of how few can claim innocence themselves on this score.
By far the most amazing thing about the Vadra-DLF controversy is how everyone, from the primary protagonists to the ringside viewers to the commentators, is behaving as though influence peddling and mysterious land deals are suddenly worth talking about, when it is nothing short of boring convention in the workings of political-industrial India. The question is, why not before?
If you cast your eye over the declared assets of most people the year they accede to power and the year they waltz out, what jumps out is something very like the 600 per cent profit that Mr Vadra is alleged to have made on the strength of his name. The average salaries of elected government officials and appointed bureaucracy do not support land acquisition, let alone prime land, on the scale that they seem to manage with such ease. But politicians and bureaucrats are fabulously well placed to indulge in a sort of land insider trading. They know how and when land use will or will not change, where a road or a metro stop or a mall is being planned, and therefore where, when, and why land prices are likely to skyrocket. They legislate this stuff. The great jump in wealth that we’re now frothing about happens in the life of virtually every person in politics. Why isn’t there quite this frisson every time assets are declared?
Unexplained wealth is largely attributed purely to personal greed. But land use and land reform (or lack thereof) probably makes up a large part of the murky world of political finance. Where do political parties get their funding? How much of it is in black, and where does that come from, and where does it go? Why is so much of the land economy in black? Why isn’t the political and bureaucratic structure interested in regulating it?
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The elephant-in-the-room story is campaign/electoral finance. It’s a huge, astonishing media blind spot. There is a very good reason, of course: even if somebody wanted to tackle that beast, it would be difficult to get anybody to talk about it, because the political system cannot afford to have its back broken, and it doesn’t want it curtailed. It doesn’t help that media is heavily implicated via paid news, corporate ownership-and in fact, in certain cases, stakes in land ownership.
One of the most painful things about this present fuss (after the fact that neither Mr Kejriwal’s moustache nor Mr Vadra’s deserves this much air time) is that unless people get over their delight about just who is currently squirming, the actual upside of the episode — the chance to investigate and perhaps better regulate — the quid pro quo between power and money, will slip by yet again.
It’s clear that Arvind Kejriwal's baby political party will grow up quickly, nurtured on enormous amounts of press-which, between his electrical work and taking straight shots at thus-far untouchable political personalities, he has demonstrated a penchant for getting. Kudos to IAC for pressing their questions, regardless of the outcome, but this is just the tip of a very ugly iceberg. The fact that Robert Vadra is in the hot seat may be delicious to those who don’t care much for him, but it’s as piffle to the endemic problem.