I remember the very first Chinese theatre troupe visiting the US, in the wake of Chairman Mao’s cultural revolution. Its repertoire comprised only comedies. “Why can’t you play a tragedy?” an art critic asked. “All sorrows have vanished,” the manager of the troupe explained, “since Chairman Mao has taken over. China is now full of happiness.”Back in 2014, Modi launched a blitzkrieg against corruption and promised achhe din. So, the bad guys are on the run. Now scams are just impossible. Skeletons will not tumble out of the cupboard, as they used to.
But the Nirav Modi gang has scooted, blowing a lethal hole in the banking system. The theology of achhe din holds, nonetheless. Since nothing can go wrong under Modi, the bloodletting began, we are told to our infinite comfort, way back in 2011. So it is the UPA cancer that continues to metastasize.
I remember discussing the Commonwealth Games (2010) scam—because it stung St. Stephen’s College, on the sidelines—with a UPA cabinet minister, who happened to be an alumnus. When I expressed shock and dismay at what had happened, he said, “Thampusab, why are you upset? The common man is an ass. He won’t remember this ten days from now.” The common man proved this worthy wrong.
I sense the same arrogance, the same power-induced cynicism about the common man today. The paradigm shift that was trumpeted to all of us, which we were only too eager and glad to lap up, now looks a piece of theatrical hypocrisy. And that, not according to the detractors of the present dispensation, but according to its defenders and apologists. Each time they defend an aberration on the predictable lines of: “The Congress has no right to talk about it. You did just the same,” that is exactly what they do.
Yet, the strident assertion of being the saintly alternative to the Congress, enjoying hegemonistic monopoly over all that is clean and righteous in governance, continues. The logic appears to be: “The more I am like you, the better am I than you.” No one will be surprised if it turns out that the trails of this mega crime lead also to the doorsteps of some Congresswallahs. Whether it is Lalit Modi, or Vijay Mallya or Nirav Modi, all are smart enough to know that no gigantic economic crime can be perpetrated in this country without high-level political patronage. They know that the occupants of the seat of power could change. Smart cookies, therefore, invest in both baskets. Now this party is up and that party down. Tomorrow, it is vice versa.
Over the years, Nirav Modi’s fortunes have only swelled—irrespective of who was in power. The differences between parties—treasury benches and opposition—are unfurled only to fool the masses. For blood-letters of all hues, the same show continues. Their theatre ripples with laughter. You can hear it even in London and New York.
See how quickly this nightmare of a scam, which shoots anxiety through the spine of the middle class, is rehashed. As usual, it is choreographed as a kabaddi match between BJP and Congress, both raiding each other’s terrain of pretensions, umpired by the media. That this adds insult to the injury of the common man, is nobody’s concern. The Congress, as is now wholly predictable, is failing the people yet again. That party sees in this humongous crisis only an opportunity to nick the BJP. It is too blind and self-obsessed to read the anxieties of the common man. Here is a classic opportunity for that party to regain its credibility, which can be done only by proving its undaunted commitment to protecting the interests of the people. But that seems to be none of its concerns. The party is exposing its bankruptcy yet again.
The Congress will gain nothing from this anaemic sabre-rattling, especially given its track-record of venality. We are not interested in knowing if the BJP aids and abets the looters. That’s only a moral question. What worries us is the economics of survival. Is the sweat and blood we deposited in good faith with the banks safe or not? All parties seem interested in everything else!
So why shouldn’t the BJP smirk? They know that they can win the war of words. It takes next-to-nothing to deflate the posturings and expostulations of the Congress. Given the image-liability that it is burdened with, it suffices to pull out just a straw and flash it in the wind of popular distrust to ward off any electoral challenge from that quarter.
But the rest of us—whose ambitions are limited strictly to three meals a day and a life free from anxieties about tomorrow—cannot afford any longer to be mute and mindless spectators to this Congress-BJP fencing match. We will destroy ourselves if we continue to sustain the impression that we are happy to be routinely fooled into preferring one school of corruption to another, in a partisan fashion.
No corruption is conducive to our welfare. How is it preferable to have our throats cut by a patriotic knife rather than by a dynastic one? We would rather have the knife off our necks and keep our throats intact. It is high time that this message is sent out loud and clear, if at all we, in our generation, are to see even a semblance of good governance. It is far better, even morally, to be selfish rather than stay foolish. Forget not the adage, “A fool and his money are soon parted”.