Finally, the right thing

The departure of Mr Natwar Singh from the ministry of external affairs is unique in that its manner has left everyone squirming. Rarely have so many been so embarrassed by just one man. So it has also led to a collective sigh of relief. The Cabinet, the Congress party, Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, indeed the whole country is breathing easier now, albeit for different reasons. There are two entities that are not so happy. One is the NDA-BJP, which was hoping to make some political capital if Mr Singh had stayed on. The other is the Left, which was hoping to use the occasion to overturn the government's foreign policy. The ministry of external affairs, too, must be relieved because it is difficult to deal with a minister who is shooting off in all directions like an un-knotted balloon. His latest pronouncements on India's policy towards the Iran nuclear issue were the last gasp of self-delusion. Now everyone can get on with the job, most notably R S Pathak, former Chief Justice of India, who has been asked to find out the truth. When he does so, it must be made public and not kept hidden.

The Natwar affair shows that the Congress president has learnt her lessons well, at least when it comes to dealing with scandals involving the Congress and its ministers. All too often in the past, her predecessors would try to cover up and get covered in the malodour, with very adverse political consequences. In her handling of the Natwar affair, the impression has in fact gained ground that the Congress as an organisation may be innocent, and that someone misused the party's name in the oil deals. The Prime Minister too managed to retrieve lost ground after initially stepping out to bat for his ministerial colleague, in what was clearly an ill-advised move. Subsequent steps have been exactly as the situation required: the search for more information from the UN and the Volcker committee, a formal inquiry into the culpability of Indian individuals and organisations, and the sidelining of an indicted colleague. The public satisfaction would be all the greater if the Prime Minister could move with equal decisiveness on the disclosures on others in the UPA camp, like the Communists. Don't the Mitrokhin archival records deserve a formal inquiry? How about despatching a special envoy to British intelligence, to take a look at the purloined KGB records?

There are several messages in the whole episode. First, it is dangerous for politicians to look for easy money in deals involving foreigners. It might look safe, but subsequent disclosures cannot be controlled and also quickly gain credibility in the public mind""as testified to by Bofors (a Swedish radio station spilt the beans), the Mitrokhin archives (a spy stealing and publishing secrets), and now the Iraq oil scandal (through the Volcker report). Second, Sonia Gandhi will not have people making quick bucks in the party's name. And third, competitive politics and 24-hour television make it difficult to hide when one is caught out. We are a long way away from cleaning up political funding, but in some ways the rules of the game have certainly changed. However, because the people who get sacrificed when scandals surface tend to be only the political lightweights, it is too much to hope that the country has reached some sort of inflexion point in probity amongst those in public life.