Why AgustaWestland scam will hurt Modi far more than Sonia
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah's agenda of a Congress-mukt Bharat might look rosier to them after the mention of Congress president Sonia Gandhi's name in the AgustaWestland chopper scandal. But what does it entail for the Modi sarkar?
If the Congress gets further weakened in the near to medium term, how much does Modi hope to gain? Putting aside semantics and sophistry, the one basic question one must ask is what political gains the BJP hopes to garner by pursuing its stridently anti-Congress strategy.
Not much to gain, I would say and a lot to lose. It's a strange paradox but that's what it is. Two years into power, the Modi government has put governance and development on the backburner. So obsessed has the government and the BJP been with pushing the anti-Congress agenda.
Let's examine how much political damage the AgustaWestland scam can inflict on the Congress to help Modi achieve his objectives. To understand the political ramifications of the chopper scam, let's draw a parallel with the Bofors scam because the two have uncanny similarities.
To begin with, the AgustaWestland expose hasn't made the sort of impact on the political class, the media and public opinion that the Bofors scandal made soon after the Swedish Radio story hit the headlines.
VP Singh, the then defence minister, in the Rajiv Gandhi government had ordered an inquiry into the Bofors pay-off. With his squeaky clean reputation, he had become a darling of the middle class. Rajiv's decision to sack him for ordering the inquiry shocked the people who regarded Rajiv as "Mr Clean".
The Bofors scandal destroyed Rajiv's reputation. Sonia can't claim to match Rajiv's image at least for two reasons: one, she hasn't held any executive position in the government; two, her reputation too had been sullied during the Bofors scandal mainly on account of the Gandhi family's proximity to Italian middleman Ottavio Quattrocchi.
Politically, the Bofors scandal united the entire Opposition, including the BJP and the communists, against the Rajiv government. VP Singh became their rallying point. In contrast, Modi has no backing of non-BJP parties against Sonia on the AgustaWestland issue. He has more foes than friends even on a very non-political issue like corruption.
Purely on the merit of the case itself, the AgustaWestland scam has many grey areas. The timeline of the case straddles both the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and National Democratic Alliance (NDA) governments. The fact remains that the deal was cancelled and some actions were initiated during the UPA government. Until the trail of bribe money is traced and the culprits identified, the scandal will play out as a prime time soap opera and not anything more.
The shock value of the Bofors scandal was unprecedented in post-independence history. None other than the prime minister was being accused of corruption. The expose was documented and reported based on solid evidence. The scam broke midway through Rajiv's term, but because of the stonewalling tactics of the government the mystery of who got bribes and whether the prime minister was a beneficiary kept people interested till the elections and even later.
The AgustaWestland scam doesn't hold the imagination of the people in the same manner. Because Sonia, the chief target of the Modi government, is neither the prime minister nor is she in government or a member of the ruling party. Even though she was the UPA and the Congress chief when the scandal took place, in the public perception, the previous government has already paid a price for its various acts of omission and commission, especially in cases of corruption. Charges of wrongdoing in politics don't stick for the second time or third time in the manner it sticks for the first time.
This point needs elaboration. Indian elections are typically one-issue phenomena, which Modi seems to forget. The most obvious case in point is the BJP's Ayodhya temple campaign. It brought political dividends to the BJP and brought it close to power and then got dissipated even though the issue is far from resolved. The voters got tired of it and the BJP was forced to put the issue on the backburner. Ditto with the Bofors scam. VP Singh could use it once, not the second time.
Modi must remember that the involvement of Opposition leaders in corruption deals doesn't fire up the imagination of the people in the same manner as the involvement of members of the ruling dispensation. People expect the prime minister to be accountable, they expect the government to act morally and set standards in public life. Sonia's role in public today doesn't put her on a pedestal as would have happened if she were in power.
Last but not the least, Modi doesn't carry the respectability that VP Singh did. Modi, though not facing any scandal, lacks the moral authority to rally the people around in any large nationwide anti-corruption movement to derive political gains.
Modi has not much to gain politically by using AgustaWestland against Sonia in the next elections. He is losing the plot by engaging in political battles that are sapping his energies. He is unable to fulfil the promises that he made to the people.
There is total breakdown of communication between the government and the Opposition, as the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar has said. It's not policy paralysis but political paralysis. Modi is marching on a road not to Congress-mukt Bharat but to Modi-mukt Bharat in 2019.