By Prem Chandran
Election time, for politicians, is time when the proverbial chickens come home to roost. Time for the deeds of the past to catch up with the present. Time for public memory to sharpen. Prime Minister Narendra Modi whipped up the public mood against corruption in 2014 by promising he would end the scourge if his party was given a majority of its own in Parliament. The people listened, and gave him and the BJP a comfortable majority. The wheel is turning full circle. Modi has just four more months before the next polls are called. Juxtapose his promises with what happened to one of his own council of ministers, YS Chowdary — who quit government just recently.
Chowdary, a close chum of Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu and a TDP member of Rajya Sabha, was subjected to a raid by the Income Tax department and the Enforcement Directorate the other day, not very long after he left the Modi government. He is facing fraud charges of Rs 57,000 crore. Chowdary is a controversial figure and heads the Sujana business group, he having had recorded assets of over Rs 100 crore in 2010, it having doubled by year 2014. He is also seen as a front for Naidu, who claims Chowdary is the main financier for his party. Despite expression of reservations by PM Modi, Chowdary was inducted as minister of state for the department of science and technology etc. How he qualified to lead this department was itself a big question. Naidu had insisted that his chum be made a minister. Modi compromised on his stand and took Chowdary in.
At this late hour too, Naidu has tried to protect Chowdary – and himself, one must surmise. A week ago, the CM invoked a legal provision and ordered that the CBI is barred from entering the state. CBI on its own can investigate matters in capital Delhi, but requires “general” nod from a state government when it goes to investigate matters there. Instead, the IT and ED held the probe. Likely, Naidu is cornered by Modi and the Centre for the Telugu Desam’s break-up from the NDA and the CM’s effort to cobble anti-BJP front at the national level. One can only imagine this: if Naidu has more clout at the Centre after the next polls, what more could happen to this nation!
Back to the central point, what of Modi’s promise to root out corruption? What message goes out, now that one of his own in the council of ministers is belatedly caught – that too, after he quit government? Inference is that if he had not quit, and if Naidu had not parted ways with the BJP and NDA, Chowdary would still have continued in Modi’s government. If this was one case of a bad apple in Modi’s basket, what of the rest?
Modi failed on some other fronts too. See how the RBI story unfolds. See how the CBI is fighting a battle within itself, with corruption and exchange of crores as bribes further denting its image of being a “caged parrot.” No institution of governance is now above board; and even the judiciary no more retains the halo it once held. The graph of corruption is on the ascendant in every sphere of governance and public administration. Modi, like his predecessor, too sat watching the scenario. Whether he was amused or bewildered, one does not know. More importantly, there now is the Rafale story.
Demonetisation was a well-intentioned decision, but things went terribly wrong due to lack of proper planning and execution. GST, a unique market reform measure aimed at the goal of “one nation, one tax”, has been rolled out despite irresponsible blockade of its passage for many months by the Congress-led Opposition. It showed how politics should not be played – to the detriment of national interests. GST would take time to stabilize markets and plug its loopholes. It has helped in raising the tax revenue for the nation, and much more could come out of it for national good in due course of time.
Several sectors under the Modi government are ailing, just as some of his ministers themselves were. The minister for Railways has been changed repeatedly; and the lack of continuity has affected its functioning. It is another Eldorado for those who are bent on looting public funds and wealth. The big talk about bullet trains of the Japanese style, and other high-speed trains matching the Chinese rail service, are still a far cry. Long years of neglect of the Railways has had a telling effect on the functioning of what came as a great gift to this country from the British Raj. It will take years of concerted efforts to get the nation’s top mass transport and freight service back on its legs. Not many new trains have come in; railway services remain worse; and this is true of its catering services as well. More of track length, yes, but this happens in normal course. What difference did Modi make to the Railways?
Or, take the aviation scene. Air India is in deep debt and ailing for long. The likes of Praful Patel — of what Modi once called the Nationalist Corruption Party (NCP) — left it in a mess. Modi, thus, had a point when he pleaded with the voters in the 2014 campaign that he wanted a majority of his own for the BJP, so that he could keep the corrupt regional and other satraps under check.
Expectations were that Modi would effect a major turnaround. It would now appear that, despite his initiatives to clean up the system, the system turned its head on him. The systems undercut Modi’s efforts because it, over the years, acquired an evil clout of its own. Take the NPAs, for instance. Non-performing assets of banks is a euphemism for bad loans – loans not repaid by big sharks, mostly businessmen, and this includes a large number of those wilful defaulters. These are mostly those who have the capacity to repay the huge loans they have taken, but will not. Why? Because, they can go on fighting such cases for years and for decades, and in the end get away with their act without paying back a penny. India’s judicial systems and company laws would ensure as much. They would function with the speed of a snail.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s stand is that much of these bad loans, running into some 10 lakh crore by now, interest included, “were taken during the UPA periods.” The mischievous businessmen managed to fool banks and got money without sufficient guarantees for repayment. It happened because those in the ruling dispensation were there to push banking honchos to relax rules for these crooks. They took the money and scooted from the scene, reaching the ill-gotten funds to tax havens abroad and foreign banks with rare frenzy. Again, what did Modi do to get back this money, something he had promised during his 2014 campaign? What did he do to speed up recovery?
Modi might have understood by now that there are limits to what a Prime Minister can do even if he has the best of intentions. The rotten system will block every such effort. India cannot carry on in this fashion for long. See how China functions. At the height of its economic prosperity and military might, China has granted more powers to its leader, Xi Jinping, by making him President for Life – a rare distinction once held by Mao. With a free hand, he can concentrate on nation-building. An Indian PM, or its elected leader, instead, would be booed at every turn, blamed for every step he takes, and pilloried for even the best efforts he takes for the nation’s well-being. Fighting is what Indian politicians excel at, though the days of freedom fighters are over long ago. When someone else steps into Modi’s shoes, he would face the same charade. India has a large breed of wayward, undisciplined politicians.