Suspicious Minds & Remix of gali gali me shor hai

Suspicious Minds & Remix of gali gali me shor hai

“She was with Big Jim but she was leaning to the Jack of Hearts”
Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts- Bob Dylan

No one can prove the effects of influence, ephemeral and elusive. More so, in a Court of Law. No matter how high the stack of circumstantial evidence may be. Unless, that is, one has been silly enough to leave a paper, audio, DNA, smoking gun or bloody knife trail that serves up the proof. Some very intelligent people routinely make this mistake, confused between the DIY doing, and the once removed having it done.

That is how a smooth operator like Rajat Gupta, erstwhile of McKinsey and Goldman Sachs, was convicted. Mr. Gupta was convicted on three counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiracy for passing along confidential boardroom information about Goldman and Proctor & Gamble companies to the Galleon Hedge Fund.

By way of contrast, despite the sensational nature of its contents, the Radia Tapes of former PR Consultant Nira Radia have become mired in multiplicities of interpretation. Hours of interrogation of the lady herself has proved inconclusive too. Other bits of proof though saw both the Telecommunications Minister A Raja and DMK Supremo M Karunanidhi’s daughter and Lok Sabha MP Kanimozi spend longish spells in jail.

But then the DMK didn’t, and still doesn’t have the influence that certain other players in the game of influencing outcomes do. And no flashmob posse of Union Ministers came to Raja or Kanimozi’s defence either.

There is, it is seen, a voluntary and reactive aspect to influence mongering and peddling, a judgemental consequence, that can be viewed in a number of ways. So most such wrong-doing wears the garb of reasonableness, selflessness, feigned innocence, even virtue. It exploits and brazenly feeds off the fact that, conducted well, it can’t be proved. And if challenged, reacts with disdain, outrage and defiance and the sure knowledge that others live in glass houses too.

The Bofors Saga is still unproven in many of its aspects with many henchmen of the powers that be burying and burning any evidence that had the temerity to threaten the citadel. As are the Sikh massacres of 1984 or indeed its bête noire, the Godhra Riots of 2002.

But then, maddening as this subterfuge of working the cracks and crevasses of the system may be; most suspicions of being wronged, as in betrayed, are not particularly settled in a Court of Law.

Crimes of passion by definition cannot wait. And blatant wrongs done to the electorate in a functioning democracy like ours usually results in electoral defeat.

Politicians and senior bureaucrats, satraps and nawabs, know this, but the possibility makes them either insecure or complacent, and so they get on with their  paisa wasooli anyway.

The logic being that power, like youth and beauty is fleeting and waits for no man. So making the most of the present situation is not only sensible but appropriate. And what is the harm in diluting one’s integrity a little, or even a lot, in the greater cause of security and pragmatism?

Electoral politics, and hanging on to one’s perch on the greased pole of bureaucratic or corporate power, they say to themselves, is an expensive business, and needs to carry many people, along with their goodwill.

And money for the purpose certainly does not grow on trees. No one in politics or in the exercise of power can afford to have empty coffers and still be in a position to influence outcomes. And here we go, the crux of the issue, there’s that influence word again.

 Besides, in principle, there is nothing illegal about it. It may be unfair advantage to some, but influence mongering is what makes the world go around. That the powerful everywhere give their own both special privileges and easy passage is a routine thing.

 And so, Arvind Kejriwal’s decision to “expose” the shenanigans of the son-in-law of the Congress President is probably the best bangs-for-the-buck strategy he could have adopted. Besides, our notoriously ponderous legal system is not above being influenced a little itself. And the tag of sub judice puts paid to most controversies almost as effectively as sending controversies to parliamentary or judicial committee.

Mr. Kejriwal and his rag-tag band of IAC activists may be a nuisance to some but he and they are providing a very important constitutional role of oversight that has been given short shrift lately. Instead they, that is the powers, have become a law unto themselves, immune from the wants and needs of the populace that they rule in the name of.

Kejriwal & Co may be seeking “publicity” as their uncomfortable critics like to sneer but they are providing some of what the checks and balances in the system were supposed to. Likewise, the CAG, under its unusually active current Chief Mr. Vinod Rai, has been less than pliant of late. Predictably, it too is receiving a lot of flak and ridicule from the political establishment named in its indictments.

The fact is, the ruling dispensation is now childishly allergic to criticism from within or without. It counters each barb with a counter barb aimed at the perpetrators via its spokespersons. And these talking heads are sounding more and more beleaguered and under siege by the day.

And this, whether it is being attacked by its own uneasy allies such as the SP or BSP, or former ones such as the Trinamool Congress or the Left. Not to mention the legitimate Opposition, the less than compliant elements in the media, ostensibly “social” activist/critics such as Baba Ramdev and Anna Hazare, or those in Kejriwal’s  bus about to plunge into the electoral fray themselves.

More and more it looks like a leadership crisis, with the Gandhi family “High Command” no longer able to either provide the electoral dividend or the strategic direction to hold the UPA II coalition together till 2014.

The Gandhi family’s likelihood of leading the electoral battle successfully, when it comes, is in some doubt too. But to be fair, as declines and falls go, this was inevitable. Most dynasties tend to flounder in the third generation and this is already in extra-time trying to establish the fourth.

Perhaps the rampant and competitive corruption everywhere in the Government and its friends is of a piece with the realisation that the game is drawing to its inexorable end. The political discourse may be about to undergo a substantial change. And not just because of a vociferous Opposition. The ruling UPA, it appears, is overdue for some radical overhauling of its own.

(1,098 words)

15^th October 2012

Gautam Mukherjee