Tokenism Backfires

Getting rid of Ashokrao Chavan and Suresh Kalmadi will not help the Congress

About an hour before Parliament convened for its winter session on 9 November, the Congress High Command decided to accept Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashokrao Chavan’s resignation for his alleged involvement in the Adarsh Cooperative Housing Society Scam. Also, Suresh Kalmadi was dropped as the party’s secretary. Chavan’s resignation, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee says, was accepted pending enquiry because “sometimes such decisions are taken based on perceptions”. Mukherjee suggested that, for a political party, it was just as necessary to address the perceptions of people. The hoots that Kalmadi received at the Commonwealth Games (CWG) closing ceremony in New Delhi from the crowd were enough to gauge what people thought of him.

In both the CWG corruption cases and housing society scam, there is enough to suggest that just one individual each is not the only beneficiary or perpetrator of the corruption. Yet, by targeting these two, the Congress had hoped this would be enough to largely contain the public outrage over the two matters and turn the opposition less hostile in Parliament. But in taking token action against the two, the Congress has given a handle to the opposition to demand real action on corruption. The Comptroller and Auditor General’s (CAG) report, submitted to the Prime Minister’s Office a day before the session began, points out that the 2G spectrum scam alone during the UPA 1 regime could have cost the exchequer anywhere between Rs 90,000 crore and Rs 140,000 crore. That is nearly double of what the UPA doled out in the name of its unprecedented-in-scale farm loan waiver. The opposition is united on the matter and wants Telecom Minister A Raja’s scalp. The CBI is already investigating the scam. That the Congress acted against Kalmadi and Chavan on the basis of perception but will not against Raja, despite the CAG indictment, is only going to ensure that the winter session generates a lot of heat. Given the UPA’s delicate alliance balance, it cannot easily get rid of Raja. Caught between its allies and a united opposition, the Congress will soon realise that tokenism against corruption is as bad as no action at all.

About The Author

Jatin Gandhi

Jatin Gandhi has covered politics and policy for over a decade now for print, TV and the web. He is Deputy Political Editor at Open.