How #SwarajForLalit busts Modi sarkar's corruption free claim
Whether or not the minutiae of technicalities add up to corruption, Union minister of external affairs Sushma Swaraj helping the former IPL commissioner and a graft-accused Lalit Modi on "humanitarian grounds" is perhaps the least of the BJP's crimes against institutional integrity. Clientelism and nepotism, two allegations so often hurled at the Manmohan Singh-led United Progressive Alliance government, haven't quite died a salient death under Prime Minister Narendra Modi-driven National Democratic Alliance regime at the Centre. In fact, they exist as strong shadowy networks operating beneath a thick and almost impenetrable crust of information control, whose reins are most tightfistedly held by the PMO itself.
Sushma Swaraj, whose familial proximity to Lalit Modi is an open secret, has been accused of coming to the aid of the former IPL commissioner and throw her weight behind to help him fetch travel certificate from the British government even though the latter's passport had been revoked by the Government of India. Because, in August 2010, Modi had failed to comply with Enforcement Directorate's summon asking him to answer questions on a multi-million dollar scam over broadcasting rights of the premier league, his passport had been cancelled. After the NDA government came to power in May 2014, while Swaraj used her powers as the foreign minister to reverse India's stance on Lalit Modi's travel liberties, the Delhi High Court reinstated his passport saying that the earlier revocation was an infringement of his freedom of travel and expression. Such sweet coincidences had a precedent in Swaraj's nephew gaining admission for a law degree at the University of Sussex in England after Modi put in a words with Keith Vaz, a Labour Party member of UK parliament. The London-based Sunday Times "broke" the story, picked up a day later by Indian news media, showing a chain of emails linking Vaz, Modi and Swaraj in a cute little crony circuit of run-of-the-mill favouritism.
For now, Swaraj is hiding behind the flimsy veil of "humanitarian grounds", saying Modi needed the travel papers to be able to sign the consent papers for a crucial surgery on his wife, Minal Modi, who's long suffering from breast cancer. However, the geometric progression of sweetheart deals between the duo (with the minister's daughter Bansuri Swaraj being a constant presence in the former cricket impresario's legal team, whose close ties with the minister's husband Swaraj Kaushal is another obvious sand in the eye) has now compounded into a peculiarly lethal variety of political tailspin that threatens to bring the quiet yet formidably stellar stint of the foreign minister crashing down.
The seeming unity amongst BJP stalwarts and ministers over the #SwarajForLalit row obfuscates the seething tension between various factions in the NDA camp. Whether the exposé is targeting Lalit Modi (whom the BCCI wants kept at bay), or Swaraj (she outshone a number of far more vocal, visible and powerful cabinet ministers, despite being reduced to playing "second fiddle" to PM Modi in matters of MEA and foreign policy), or both, it is obvious that the scale of culpability is miniscule when compared with the degrees of transgressions by others in the central government. However, there's little furore in mainstream media over the constant strikes at the heart of institutions that collectively constitute and fortify our democracy, politically and symbolically.
Sample these.
Environment minister Prakash Javadekar's super-efficient clearances of hundreds of held-up industrial projects, while being lauded in the first few months of his ministry, has now come under scanner for heavy lapses. While the desk of the minister is squeaky clean - there's no unseemly file overload - dirt is emerging from a "flurry of executive orders diluting and changing environmental norms" giving go-aheads to questionable projects. It is a delicious irony that the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change actually views environment and the affiliated green concerns as hurdle for India's unbridled growth story. The recent crackdown on Greenpeace and other NGOs is a corollary to this bent of mind. Yet very little has been said of Mr Javadekar's modus operandi while handling this delicate ministry.
While India is riding high on yoga, and the ministry of AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga, Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy) is giving structural support to the largely loose but expansive capillaries of the so-called traditional forms of healthcare in the name of Indian culture, Union health minister JP Nadda has attracted some criticism from a few unquiet quarters. Nadda has been accused of "protecting the corrupt" by AIIMS whistleblower Sanjiv Chaturvedi, who served as the chief vigilance officer at the Institute between July 2012 and August 2014. Where is the faintest voice questioning Nadda's role in l'affaire AIIMS, or at least a vote to initiate even a preliminary form of internal inquiry?
Union minister of road transport and highways, Nitin Gadkari, came under CAG fire last month when the auditor's report said that norms were violated in a loan worth Rs 48.6 crore given to Purti Sakhar Karkhana Ltd (which had Gadkari named as one of the promoter/directors of the company) by the state-run Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA). Though Purti group explained its position saying it has since then paid off the outstanding loan, Rajya Sabha proceedings had come to a grinding halt, with the Opposition, particularly the Congress, demanding his resignation and a subsequent judicial inquiry. But the brouhaha over Gadkari was nothing compared to what's plaguing Swaraj at present, which, ironically enough, is being presented as the first obvious instance of corruption and culpability within the NDA government.
In addition to the alleged ministerial slippages, a slew of recent appointments by the NDA government has been widely criticised but not seriously challenged enough. Appointments, such as picking Pahlaj Nihalani as head of the film censor board; putting a battery of RSS-affiliated men at the top of delicate educational institutions, including Y S Rao as chairperson of Indian Council for Historical Research, Baldev Sharma - former editor of Panchajanya, an RSS mouthpiece - as head of National Book Trust; or the most recent and easily the most outrageous choice of longtime BJP member Gajendra Chauhan, a television actor of little merit who had essayed the role of Yudhisthira in B R Chopra's Mahabharat, to head the prestigious Film and Television Institute of India: have called into question just how the Narendra Modi-led NDA government wants to remould the best academic institutions within the country in its own image. Why is that a lesser problem than Sushma Swaraj's "humanitarian support" to an absconding Lalit Modi?
What makes for good television drama need not be the most pressing crisis staring India right in the face. But for the moment, hysteria over #SwarajForLalit row will have its time under the sun, posing a staggering challenge to the perception war on sensitive issues like corruption that the Modi government has been winning hands down until now. However, its immense glare will once again make us forget to ask the slightly tougher questions.