CONSPIRACY OR MERELY A HERD MENTALITY?
Around a year ago virtually the entire opposition led by the BJP, the CAG, the IAC led by Anna and Arvind, the electronic media led by Times Now.. were all telling us of how corruption ridden the Congress was, how it pocketed ‘lakhs of crores’ of rupees et al.
As the 2G Spectrum re-auction fiasco has busted the mythical balloon, fetching the government less than a quarter of its base price, Kapil Sibal asked: Where are those Rs 1.76 lakh crores?
When this minister was trying to show the back of the envelope calculation that there wasn’t much of a loss really, and as the former Chief Justice pointed out “profit is a matter of perception but loss is a fact” and questioned the CAG’s presumptive loss concept.. they were ridiculed.
From CWG, to 2G, to Coalgate what turned out was this:
– there were technical irregularities
– there was some corruption by Congressmen [against whom decisive action was seen to be taken]
– there was sizable corruption by its UPA allies, specially the DMK
But it also showed that the Manmohan Singh led Congress Government was not seeped neck-deep into corruption.
It is somewhat comforting that the same democratic processes have led to some correction.
But I shudder to think what would have happened it some smart [even presumably unethical] floor management was not done by the Congressmen and if the government had fallen on this count, who would hold sway today? What would have become of the possibility of this correction and cleaning up the image? Almost certainly the BJP would have set up a coalition government with a lot of horsetrading.
Hence I ask, was it all merely an unfortunate confluence of circumstances or a calculated, deliberate conspiracy to bring down the government of a party that was very likely to win the next election, that gave us RTI, RTE, MGNREGA, etc?
I am no votary of the Congress, nor for that matter do I support all of its policies, but I could clearly see a malicious design, based on apparent falsehood.
It is this moral and intellectual bankruptcy of our legislators, the vocal civil society and the fourth estate that bother me.
Don’t they worry you that we had come so close to the precipice?
