Congress spin doctors will claim it as the party’s big blow to corruption. The resignation of Communications Minister A Raja on Sunday evening, they are claiming, will help the Congress party counter the charge that it has allowed unhindered growth of corruption in the government. However, a close look at the sequence of events that led to Mr Raja’s resignation will show how hollow that claim is.
Mr Raja’s deeds as a controversial communications minister were out in the public domain for several months. The government was aware of them and so were the investigating agencies, the courts and the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India. Well before the report of the CAG that damned the role of Mr Raja was made public, its main findings were all over the print and electronic media. Indeed, Mr Raja had to resign under pressure from the Congress party even before the government tabled the CAG report in Parliament. Yet, as late as on Friday evening, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was non-committal in response to questions on Mr Raja’s future in the wake of corruption charges against him. “Parliament is in session. It is not proper for me to comment on a subject that is also probably in court,” he said on board his special aircraft bringing him back from the G20 Summit in Seoul to New Delhi.
Why should the fact of an ongoing Parliament session constrain the prime minister from speaking out on the conduct of a member of his Cabinet? It is, therefore, reasonable to assume that Dr Singh was aware of the politics that was in play over Mr Raja. The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) had stood by Mr Raja and opposed any move to dismiss him from the Cabinet. Even Mr Raja thumped his chest and said there was no question of his resigning from the government.
A subsequent observation made by Dr Singh during his press conference on his return flight revealed it all. In response to a question relating to the reported offer made by Jayalalithaa of the All India Anna DMK to support the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) at the Centre, Dr Singh said, “This is a subject I am hearing for the first time. This is for the Congress high command to take note of. I do not know what Dr Jayalalithaa has said. We are in alliance with the DMK and that alliance stands as of now.”
Even Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee remained non-committal on Mr Raja’s future. On Sunday morning, Mr Mukherjee said, “Whatever has to be said, will be said in Parliament... Whatever needs to be said on Communications Minister A Raja will be said in Parliament.”
By Sunday evening, the situation changed. The courtesy that the prime minister and the finance minister wanted to show to Parliament by not doing or saying anything about Mr Raja outside the legislature became irrelevant. On Sunday evening, Mr Raja submitted his resignation letter to the prime minister, which was duly publicised. So, what had actually changed? There could not have been any change in the assessment of the degree of corruption in this period. What may have changed was the equation between the Congress and the DMK. It was a tactical move in coalition politics, which had nothing to do with tackling corruption.
On Monday, when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) demanded that the prime minister make a statement on Mr Raja’s resignation, Congress leaders shot back saying if Atal Bihari Vajpayee did not make a statement in Parliament on the resignation of George Fernandes in the wake of the Tehelka controversy, why Manmohan Singh should do the same now.
The analogy was significant. The Vajpayee government too was an alliance and corruption charges took their toll on a member of an alliance partner. Once Mr Fernandes resigned, the corruption charges too faded into oblivion. Now that Mr Raja has quit, the Congress leadership seems to be arguing with the BJP, that these charges too should be allowed to meet the same fate. Remember that nothing has been done so far to fix the system.
Just as Mr Vajpayee faced problems in dealing with ministers belonging to non-BJP partners of the National Democratic Alliance (remember Jayalalithaa or Mamata Banerjee?), Dr Singh has similar problems with ministers belonging to non-Congress partners of the UPA. Indeed, corruption acquires a different connotation in a coalition government. This is what the Raja affair has brought to the fore so unequivocally.
Successive governments have failed to create a strong institutional system to prevent corruption, punish the guilty and make them an example so that others do not feel encouraged to indulge in corrupt practices. Coalition politics has made that resolve against corruption weaker. Political expediency of keeping a coalition government intact has encouraged political parties in power to become more accommodative of corruption.
Worse, the Congress party may even try to tell the people that it cannot punish the corrupt ministers belonging to smaller coalition partners because it does not have the required number of Lok Sabha seats to form a government on its own. That will be another politically expedient argument aimed at winning a few more votes in the next general elections. That would also be a perverse idea. There can be no compromise with corruption under any rule — be it a coalition or a single-party government.
