Author: S Prasannarajan
Publication: India Today
Date: April 4, 2011
URL: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/Story/133374/Signature/cash-for-vote-scam-upa-government-horror-couple-manmohan-singh-and-sonia-gandhi.html
Introduction: Perhaps India is the Only Democracy
where the Prime Minister Can still Remain a Rsare Man of Decency, Dignity
even has he Continues to be the Leader of Arguably the most Corrupt Government
Ever to Rule India.
Most horror stories have a beginning steeped
in poignancy, even if choreographed to perfection. Today, to realise the enormity
of the horror that is the UPA Government, personified by a prime minister
who has come to resemble a hologram and his political boss who has a sense
of granite detachment, we have to go back to that day in 2004 in the Central
Hall of Parliament. It was a day of mawkish sentimentalism and saccharine
sycophancy of vintage Congress when Sonia Gandhi discovered the power of "No".
It was her moment to reclaim India for the Dynasty after the humiliation of
the BJP in the General Elections; it was her appointment with India as a politician
with the most coveted surname in Congress. Her renunciation, accompanied by
the tears of those who have been denied the prospect of another Mrs G in power,
was followed by the coronation of the untarnished outsider. It was an unprecedented
distribution of power between two individuals who defied the traditional Congress
script in which there was never any separation of the Church and the State.
There was only the Church. Suddenly, there was an accidental politician, a
technocrat with a proven record in economic liberalisation, as prime minister
and a party czarina who wanted all the power without being in power. For the
first time in the history of the Dynasty, a Gandhi refused to play it up front
in spite of having won the mandate and chose the least political of them all
from her party to lead the Government. The age of the Moderniser and the Madonna
had begun.
Seven years on, look where they have brought
us, or, to be precise, how much they themselves have changed. In the art of
deception and diversion which this Government has mastered we don't know at
what cost to the national exchequer, there seems to be a perfect harmony between
the two. The prime minister, a man of less words and lesser action, has acquired
a life independent of his own Government, which is partly due to our own strange
definition of leadership. Perhaps India is the only democracy where the prime
minister can still remain a rare man of decency, dignity and integrity even
as he continues to be the leader of arguably the most corrupt government ever
to rule India. He is the axis of the rot but gives the impression of being
a good soul condemned to the job-and we buy the pretence. The arbiter of his
power to deceive, the party president, matches his criminal aloofness with
her imperious remoteness. But the WikiLeaks revelation about cash-for-vote
brings 10 Janpath closer to the rot. The arrangement of 2004 has worked to
the mutual benefit of the prime minister and his political boss in 2011. One
is still dutiful and the other is as opaque as ever, and both treat politics
more as a necessity rather than a natural medium to reach out. He is not your
classical Congressman and she is not your Mrs G. Together, they have reduced
the distance between the romance of 2004 and the horror of 2011.
