Author: Tavleen Singh
Publication: India Today
Date: April 9, 2001
Till last week it looked as if the
Congress party's star, so long in the doldrums, was finally on the ascendant.
The prime minister looked tired, the Government weak, the excuses for corruption
in high places shabby and the Congress, taking full advantage, went on
the rampage. You could not turn on your television without encountering
a Congress leader baying for the prime minister's blood. You could not
open a newspaper without reading an interview with some Congress leader
expounding smugly on the evils of corruption. And, there was Sonia Gandhi
in full battle gear threatening to "fight every battle, wage every war,
make every sacrifice to ensure that the country is liberated from the shackles
of this corrupt, shameful and communal government". So crushing was the
Congress attack that it brought Parliament to a halt and the Government
to its knees. All of which makes it even more amusing that all it took
for the Congress cookie to crumble was the story of another George.
Vincent George, humble stenographer
from Kerala, who came to Delhi seeking his fortune in the early 1980s and
made it and more through a clerical job in Rajiv Gandhi's office. It took
a mere six years, the CBI tells us, for him to become a crorepati and he
did it without even needing to get the answers right on Amitabh Bachchan's
show. Since he had to do nothing more than stenography to make his fortune,
his has to be one of the most extraordinary success stories of modern India.
Till 1984, humble stenographer George had, like other humble stenographers,
a single bank account with Rs 29,523 in it. But within a few years of Rajiv
becoming prime minister, George (and wife Lily) acquired many accounts
into which flowed much foreign money. So much foreign money that humble
George was able to buy himself properties in Delhi, send his children to
a fancy school in southern India and join the ranks of India's rich and
famous. Ostensibly the nouveau riches came through Lily's export business.
Which would have been fine had the CBI not discovered that Lily's companies
existed only on paper. The companies were fake, the exports fake too, only
the money in those bank accounts was real.
Sonia, so vocal and so shrill in
her charges against Atal Bihari Vajpayee's Government, has been remarkably
silent on the CBI's case against her secretary, leaving it to underlings
to offer a feeble defence. These charges, coming at this time, they tell
us in slightly shame-faced tones, is proof that the CBI is not independent
and is being influenced by the Government. Well, hello, would they prefer
that we were a police state in which the CBI would be above the Government?
Jaipal Reddy, who has made a career out of being a moveable party spokesman
and who currently speaks for the Congress, tried dismissing the CBI charges
against his party president's favourite factotum on the ground that the
timing proved they were tinged with politics. So what? Let politics tinge
a thousand more charges if we can catch more Bangaru Laxmans and Vincent
Georges with their hands filled with dirty money.
George's tale is in many ways more
instructive of how the Delhi Durbar works than Laxman's sordid story. The
former BJP president, now forever in the dustbin of history, can at least
whine to those who still pay attention that he was collecting for the party.
Much more interesting would be to find out who George was collecting for
and why so much of the money collected ended up in his private bank accounts.
Also, just think, if a mere stenographer in the Prime Minister's Office
could become so rich so quickly how much more money must be made by those
who are higher up in the hierarchy of the Durbar. It is not an easy thing
to admit, proud of our democracy as we are. But we have had a Durbar in
Delhi for 50 years and not a modern, democratic government. It is because
of this that flunkeys and factotums find it so easy to make fortunes so
quickly.
As in durbars of yore, they are
the keepers of the keys, the controllers of access. So important does this
make them that visitors to Sonia's court at 10 Janpath invariably recount
tales of powerful chief ministers and ministers kowtowing to humble George.
That has always been the way of the Gandhi family and Sonia clearly intends
to keep it that way, that is the Nehru-Gandhi idea of desh sewa.
What is more puzzling is why a BJP
prime minister has been able to do so little to oust the durbaris and end
the durbar. Surely, all those years of singing songs to Bharat Mata in
khaki shorts should have bred a new concept of desh sewa. It is because
the court still exists and courtiers remain powerful that Vajpayee finds
so many fingers pointed at the men on his personal staff. Things need to
change, Mr Prime Minister, and they need to change fast.
