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Modi's bandwagon hits Vyapam roadblock
By
Amulya GanguliThe Vyapam controversy has the potential of being as damaging, if not
more, as the scams which sank the Congress. The reason why it may prove
to be worse than, say, the spectrum scam is that Vyapam is unlike any
other scandal seen in recent years.
While most of them related to
malfeasance, the recruitment for government jobs and admission to
educational institutions via the tests conducted by the Vyavsayik
Pariksha Mandal (whose acronym is Vyapam) in Madhya Pradesh have been
marked by a seemingly unending series of deaths.
There is
patently something eerie and sinister about these demises, including the
death of the Madhya Pradesh governor's son, which impart a spooky aura
to the scandal. It is this unsettling atmosphere which has made union
minister Uma Bharati say that she fears for her life.
In spite of
being the target of headlines like "40 deaths and counting", the
Shivraj Singh Chouhan government made the situation difficult for itself
by resisting the calls for entrusting the probe into the deaths to the
Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) till the mounting pressure left
him with no alternative but to request the high court to ask the CBI.
But
his retreat came too late. The Supreme Court had by then taken the
matter into its own hands and asked the CBI to investigate the scam. As a
result, there is little scope of repairing the damage done to Chouhan's
reputation and also to that of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and
even Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Curiously, it is Modi's
refusal to speak on the various scams involving union ministers like
Sushma Swaraj and state governments run by the BJP in Rajasthan and
Madhya Pradesh which has drawn comparisons between Narendra Modi and his
predecessor, Manmohan Singh, who was also known for being tight-lipped.
It
may not amount to overstating the case to say that the present scene
bears more than a passing resemblance to the atmosphere of public
despair which prevailed in the twilight years of the last government.
The Modi government, too, is currently grappling, somewhat
ineffectually, with the Sushma Swaraj-Vasundhara Raje-Lalit Modi affair
and is now expected to face a backlash in parliament and outside from
the Vyapam imbroglio.
It might have been able to shake off some
of the mud flung by its opponents if the economy had shown signs of
revival. But by the time it does so - perhaps early next year -- no one
knows how the murky allegations against the external affairs minister
and her family and the two chief ministers will pan out.
The
reason why such scandals, whether those involving deaths or not, tend to
become more and more of a quagmire for those in power is that the
initial reaction of the governments is either to ignore them for being
small and inconsequential, or to try and brazen it out later when they
become too big.
There are other compulsions, too, like "coalition
dharma" which made former prime minister Manmohan Singh turn a blind
eye, probably at the behest of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, to the
telecom spectrum scam because sacking the then telecom minister,
Andimuthu Raja, might have persuaded the latter's party, the DMK, to
bring down the government by withdrawing support.
At present, the
question of coalition dharma does not arise because Modi runs a
one-party - some will say, one-man - government. But his government
seems to believe, like its predecessor, that it will be able to ride out
the storm.
There are differences, however, between the two
situations. While Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi faced little internal
opposition when the various controversies were eroding the Congress
reputation, Modi is less secure. Already, the BJP's octogenarian
patriarch, L.K. Advani, who is supposed to visualize the right path for
the party - Marg Darshak - has hinted that those suspected of
wrong-doing should step down, as he did when his name was mentioned in
the hawala scandal during the Narasimha Rao years in the early nineties.
Advani's
observation was evidently aimed at Sushma Swaraj and Vasundhara Raje.
The latter, meanwhile, has incurred the wrath of the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) because of the demolition of several temples in
Jaipur for a Metro construction project.
It is these multiple
anti-government voices within the saffron camp which differentiates
Modi's tenure from that of the Congress. The prime minister will be in
greater trouble if the Supreme Court's monitoring of the Vyapam scam
hints at the Chouhan government's culpability -- already suggested by
the police report of the suicide of a medical student when her autopsy
referred to strangulation.
When Modi was at the crest of the wave
which took him to power, he must have expected a relatively smooth run
with the economy slowly picking up and he managing to contain the
saffron hotheads. But the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.
Modi couldn't have imagined that so many scandals will afflict his
regime when it is only just over a year old.
Used as he was to
ruling with an iron hand in Gujarat, he is seemingly unprepared to deal
with a situation when it is threatening to spin out of control. Now, to
recover his poise, he has to act against the suspects, for
procrastination will only make things worse.
(Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at [email protected])