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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win - Mahatma Gandhi
The Congress would do well to introspect on this quote by the Mahatma. Not only is it seeped in wisdom, it is also ominous.
Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal accused the government of a witch hunt yesterday after the centre ordered a probe into the source of foreign funding received by his party. The probe of course, was first ordered by a Delhi High Court last month and was initiated a day after Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit questioned the source of AAP’s funding.
Nonetheless there are reasons to believe Kejriwal’s charge of persecution by the Congress party. Because the court has given innumerable directives recently - it ordered the government to unshackle bureaucracy, or for that matter directed it to carry out police reforms 7 years ago. On none of these ‘orders’ did the UPA jump with such alacrity, in fact giving them a royal ignore. Why then the selective earnestness in probing a budding political opponent?
To use an oft repeated cliché, the Congress really must not throw stones at others while living in a glass house – and a very fragile one at that. Because this finger pointing only bears out how rattled the government seems to be by the headway Kejriwal and co are making, forcing it to make extraneous allegations and turn them into campaign issues. They could have taken on Kejriwal instead, on a myriad other concerns including his preposterous ideas about doling out freebies. But then, who is the Congress to point fingers at hand-outs, and why must we be naive to expect a rational issue based debate from them?!
Kejriwal of course, has welcomed a probe, but has sought a concurrent investigation into the funds generated by the Congress and the BJP, which too has enthusiastically backed the idea mooted by the government. “Finish the probe in 48 hours. But let them also probe how Congress got funds worth Rs. 2,000 crore. Let them also investigate the BJP’s funding” Kejriwal was quoted as saying.
Will the government agree to this demand? Of course it won’t. This is the same government that has resisted attempts at being brought under the RTI and has itself been accused of availing funding from a foreign company—Vedanta— which is not allowed under Sections 3 and 4 of the Foreign Contributions (Regulation) Act 1976. Moreover when it comes to the issue of campaign funding, no mainstream party barring the CPI perhaps, can claim to be anything but opaque.
Of the total income of Rs 4,895.96 crores earned by 6 mainstream political parties between FY 2004-05 and 2011-12, a monstrous 75% chunk comes from unknown sources according to a September study done by the Association of Democratic Reforms, as political parties are not required to reveal the name of individuals or organizations contributing less than Rs.20, 000.
The Congress and its ally NCP top the charts when it comes to opacity. 82.5% of the Congress’s funds are from unknown sources while 91.5% of NCP’s funds cannot be traced to known sources. The figures stand at 73% for the BJP, 61.8% for the BSP, 14.7% for the CPI and 53.8% for the CPI (M).
The ADR study also quotes an International Institute of Democracy and Electoral Assistance analysis which says India is among a mere 10% of countries in the world to allow either political parties or candidates to receive anonymous donations. Such cloudiness in funding sources is not prevalent even among our neighbours like Bhutan and Nepal or BRIC associates like Brazil.
Contrast these practices with those of the AAP and you recognize why a probe into its accounts is entirely unwarranted. AAP has collected just Rs 19 Cr for the Delhi elections and unlike the mainstream parties, it has records of the names of all donors, even those who contribute less than Rs 20,000, notwithstanding the fact that extant rules allow it to conceal the names. Moreover AAP has said its NRI donors are all Indian passport holders and hence their contribution cannot be tagged as foreign.
The question now is - does ‘NRI’ also imply ‘foreign’? If the government has its way, such pedantry and technicalities will in all likelihood prevail over the larger design of transparency which the AAP has vociferously exemplified. But such attacks are not about to fool voters, they will only further alienate an electorate that’s already fed up with a government that’s been dogged by corruption and scandal for the better part of its rule.
