Why BJP ministers accused of graft don’t resign

As an observer or an active participant in Indian politics, it is important to focus on the longue durée and not get lost in the clamour around immediacy. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), holding office at the Centre, understands this very well. It is time the Opposition learnt it too.

I will elucidate this point through a couple of examples.

Anti-corruption and efficient governance was the plank on which Narendra Modi was elected to the highest office. His tenure, however, has been mired in controversy, not only due to rising cases of lynching and vigilantism but also numerous corruption allegations against those close to him.

The way his government has dealt with all this is, however, markedly different from the approach of his predecessor, Dr Manmohan Singh.

Even when the clamour around the Vyapam scam or Chikki scam became deafening, the Modi-Amit Shah combine refused to engage with the issues. Nobody was asked to resign and no inquiries were ordered. As a result, in today’s television-and app-based news age, with its yearning for a new story every hour, Vyapam and Chikki soon became yesterday’s news. 

While the morality of this on the part of the governing party, which enjoys and wields undue power over media houses and constitutional authorities, may be questioned, it still amounts to clever politics. In striking contrast, Congress chief Rahul Gandhi was swift in suspending Congressman Mani Shankar Aiyar for a comment, with the hope of pinning on him the blame for the Gujarat poll defeat in December 2017.

Earlier, politicos PK Bansal, Dayanidhi Maran, Ashok Chavan, Kanimozhi and Shashi Tharoor were all made to resign at the drop of a hat whenever there would be a hullabaloo over an alleged corruption. While it may have been morally right to do so, it is also a question of optics at the end of the day.

BJP leader Nitin Gadkari, despite allegations of wrongdoing as director/promoter of Purti Group and having written a letter in support of release of Rs 400 crore for a mega dam project in Maharashtra with BJP’s Ajay Sancheti as the major contractor, has been rewarded with the ministry of road transport and highways. Loans from the Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA) have been increasingly under the scanner with the recent tipping point being the shining fortunes of Jay Shah, Amit Shah’s son.

Despite all this, no BJP minister facing allegations of corruption – and there are plenty -has been asked to resign so far. The resilience of the BJP has been tested and full marks to them for brazenness, if not integrity.

As for the Indian National Congress, it is surprising that a party which has been in power for more than five decades has lost out on the art of influencing and controlling the variables that govern popular perception. What happened to the pre-1990s Congress which would cry for “due process” on most things?

The opposition in India has mastered the art of crying over spilt milk. Let’s take another example: The Vivekananda Vidyavikas Parishad (VVP) affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) runs 326 schools in Bengal. Most of these received affiliation post 2011 after the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress assumed office.

In February 2018, state education minister Partha Chatterjee announced that 125 such schools had been issued notices of disaffiliation. But the waters have now been muddied with the VVP, which runs 12 of these 125 schools, rushing to the courts.

What was the government doing granting such schools affiliation in the first place? Equally problematic is the rise in the number of unaffiliated or khariji madrasas in the state, which have their own syllabus and focus primarily on theological training.

That the Sangh Parivar has caught Mamata napping on many occasions is evident. If she doesn’t wake up now, then Bengal would be another dash of saffron to fill up the monochrome landscape that everything north of the Vindhyas has now turned into.

It must be remembered that while the erstwhile Jana Sangh may have come to power based on a popular upsurge, the RSS, which provided the backbone to the movement, bid its time. Then came 1992!

The RSS has always been focused on the longue durée and, therefore, the skill comes naturally to the BJP. The opposition would need to evolve a sustained grassroots policy of weaning people away from the Sangh to counter the RSS on this.

The results of the UP bypolls are out. As the opposition celebrates the defeat of the BJP in Gorakhpur, it is time we understand that these events, unless analysed properly, may reveal nothing, and lead to despair rather than hope.

Some reports suggest it was Yogi Adityanath – Gorakhpur being his own constituency for years – who foiled chances of a BJP victory given that the BJP candidate Upendra Dutt Shukla was from a rival camp. Shukla is a Brahmin and not Rajput, and Yogi had made his preference for the latter known. Gorakhpur has decades-old history of animosity between the Brahmins and Rajputs. Therefore, even as the opposition celebrates this victory without a clear pre-poll alliance between the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party, there isn’t much hope.

That the opposition house is in disarray is clear from their conflicting comments with each passing day. The Congress lost its deposit in Phulpur, a seat held by the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, until his death in 1964.

Any attempt at defeating the BJP would need a strategic electoral alliance among regional parties based on a common minimum programme, where the Congress, instead of becoming the largest member of the coalition, must be prepared to take the backseat.