That unpleasant smell

0Few can beat politicians at the game of inventing euphemisms and coded language. Thus, an utter lack of principles becomes the art of the possible.

To tell a lie became being economical with the truth. Raiding the fisc became competitive populism. The list is long. So it is not surprising that persons with criminal backgrounds should be referred to "" rather daintily "" as "tainted".

It is clear that the person/s who thought this one up did not know the exact meaning of the word "taint". The Oxford dictionary describes it as "a trace of decay, infection or some bad quality; an unpleasant smell." The question arises: if such men become ministers, can the government be free of decay, infection and an unpleasant smell?

That question must be answered by prime ministers. Their deodorising effects have limits. Atal Bihari Vajpayee discovered that. Surely Manmohan Singh will, too.

The country expected better from him than a repetition of the old distinction between being charge-sheeted and being convicted. It not only showed him to be a prisoner of circumstance in choosing his own ministers, it also reduced his moral stature somewhat.

It isn't difficult, of course, to understand the compulsions of coalition politics, and the imperfect choices offered by alliance partners. But the opposition's willingness to capitalise on the issue is equally understandable. This issue will balloon till the government finds a way out.

The issue is not a trivial one. When politicians, including chief ministers, routinely use their power to arrest political rivals, a police case by itself has no great sanctity.

But charge sheets are issued through a judicial process, and cannot be dismissed so lightly. Which is why the BJP argument that the charge sheet against L K Advani and others in the Babri Masjid case stands on a different footing, does not wash.

Inciting communal violence and bringing down a place of worship is of course different from rape or murder, but opinion on which is more serious may differ. Incitement to riot carries a lighter punishment than rape or murder, to be sure, but what if riots end up in multiple murders and rapes?

It is of course possible that a charge sheet does not lead to conviction "" as various people have argued in the current context; and it is entirely possible that all magistrates are not equally careful while framing charges and the standards applied may be highly variable as a result.

The question turns more tricky if one asks whether the standards for qualifying as a member of Parliament should be any less rigorous than for being a minister.

In other words, should those with charge sheets be disqualified as electoral candidates? After all, if the Supreme Court can stay Rajya Sabha elections on the issue of domicile, is this issue not more serious?

The deeper one gets into it, therefore, the more the spotlight shines on the quality of our parliamentarians and how lax voters have become in the standards of conduct that they expect from their elected representatives.

But having said that, the issue of the tainted ministers boils down to one of propriety. The dictionary describes propriety as "fitness, rightness and correctness of behaviour or morals."