As Sonia Gandhi said “I am Indiraji’s bahu and I’m scared of no
one,” in reaction to Delhi high court summons to her and Rahul Gandhi, it is
important to read between the words and lines.
What was the necessity to make a POLITICAL STATEMENT when the
court case is not at all political in nature?
Well, that has been the strategy of none other than Indira Gandhi
when she was implicated in 1977-1980 in many criminal cases by then Janata
Party government. While, the then PM Morarji Desai knew that the long legal
battle could have taken away all the energy from a 60 year old lady and that Indira
Gandhi was contemplating to even retire from public life, Chaudhari Charan
Singh did a political suicide. He arrested Indira Gandhi, caused hardships to her
and suddenly the entire public sentiment turned against the government and for
Indira Gandhi. She won the 1980 elections comprehensively. Sonia Gandhi
remembers this and is HOPING and WAITING for Narendra Modi government to repeat
the same mistakes committed by then Janata government. Therefore, it is no
surprise on part of Sonia Gandhi or Rahul Gandhi having called this court case
as a political
vendetta. Both of them and the entire congress party have still not
come to terms that they have lost the election in 2014. They still continue to
live in 20th Century which belongs to very few good works of
Congress and mostly bad politics of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and then
Rajiv Gandhi. Therefore, whenever they face a challenging situation, they can’t
stop themselves from invoking Nehru, Gandhi’s. Rahul Gandhi is content in
saying “meri dadi ko mara, mere papa ko mara”, somehow trying to pull out political
mileage, which doesn’t stop even after a quarter of a century has passed after
these sad incidents.
Sonia Gandhi has been the longest serving Congress president.
She portrays herself to be an ideal “BAHU”, making her in-laws her shield and
her family her sword. She expects each Congress member to worship her, her
family, her in-laws and keeps on talking about the past, past, past, past….
This very attitude has prompted the culture of flaunting
political connections by the smallest gully-neta when confronted by a smallest
traffic police for smallest thing such as breaking the traffic signal. And this
culture is hurting the nation the most today.
This attitude of Congress of publicly invoking family legacy when
faced with a legal case raises the question: are legal summons an insult or
disrespect to the grandeur of Sonia Gandhi’s family? A “how-dare-the court-summon-us”
attitude is not particularly democratic. The attitude shows how Sonia and
family wants themselves to be treated as privileged, above the law; sometimes
even like kings and queens.
But this BAHU politics won’t work in the face of allegations of
financial irregularities and malpractices. Sonia may try to compare herself
with post 1977 Indira who dared the Janata government to arrest her and eventually
used her small period of imprisonment to emerge as a martyred leader. There is
hardly any comparison between 1977 and 2015. Most OTHER politicians such as
Narendra Modi, Nitish Kumar, Arvind Kejriwal, Mamata, Devendra Fadnavis, etc… unlike
Sonia and Rahul, pride themselves on their humble beginnings.
Subramanian Swamy’s case is not a political challenge requiring
street fights and maximum histrionics. Instead, the sycophants around Sonia
Gandhi should advise her and Rahul Gandhi to give a point-by-point rebuttal to
the charges in court. The legal maze of the National Herald case can hardly be
settled through invoking the political era of Indira Gandhi.
The NDA government on other hand is happy to see the Sonia-Rahul
duo and Congress squirm under the spotlights provided by the National Herald
scandal, where the needle of wrongdoing clearly points to them. However, the
government is also facing another challenge in Rajya Sabha over key legislative
reforms, the goods and services tax (GST) being the most important among them.aught in a scandal?TI
Therefore, instead of giving in to the pressurization tactics,
the government would be better advised to call the Congress' bluff. It should
under no circumstances help the Congress wriggle out of the National Herald
scandal by directly or indirectly pressuring the investigating or prosecuting
agencies to go slow. That would be a real subversion of the rule of law.
The government should give the Congress a simple and strong
message to try their best to disrupt the development of the country and that
the government is prepared to sacrifice the GST, and should launch a nationwide
propaganda campaign to tell the world that the Congress is derailing Indian
growth story to protect one family.
The rapid shift in the Congress stand from disruptions over the
Herald case to Vyapam and Lalit Modi shows that the party is exposed. The NDA
should thus drive home the advantage and allow the Congress to continue with
its disruptions and tell the world day in day out that this is about deflecting
attention from the Gandhi family's real estate blunder, not Vyapam, which is
anyway being investigated by the CBI, and the courts are already monitoring it
closely.
The chances are that Congress will give up first.
No. 1, the focus continues to remain on the Gandhi family's
Herald blunder.
No. 2, disruptions continue to be seen by the public as evidence
that Congress and the Gandhi family is indeed hiding something.
No. 3, Congress allies have already begun to wonder whether they
have to be dragged along with Congress antics just to protect the Gandhi family
or should they pay the price for just being their ally.
No. 4, the GST won’t be a big loss in the short term as there
will only be problems and challenges in the first two years of implementation,
causing discomfort in the trading community and mild hike in inflation. GST
also will cause a reduction in state autonomy on finances once implemented. It
will be impossible for states to give up GST once they are in. Sacrificing GST
is therefore no big deal in the short term.
There are chances the non-Congress parties will be tired of the
Congress' antics which, they know, is about saving the family. Any prolonged
disruption can only benefit the BJP. With state elections due again in a few
months' time, the regional parties cannot but be worried about playing the
Congress game.
The government should, in the meanwhile, prepare to run the
reform programme through simple budgetary actions such as merging excise and service tax
and the other financial actions which can be simplified and made to look like
reforms.
Legislation may suffer, but not for long. If the government is
willing to withstand this winter of discontent, the Congress will return to the
discussion table with its tail between the legs. Meanwhile, it should persistently
try to divide the opposition and get them to discuss the Congress' tactics.
It is ridiculous to think and assume that the PMO has pushed the
National Herald case against Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi to pressurize
the party to support the GST Bill. It would be too innocent to think that Modi won’t
be aware of the uproar by Congress members in Parliament following the summons.
He in fact would have preferred the case not coming up now as it was always clear
the Congress was looking for excuses to stall the parliament functioning. While
Congress sensibly argued against the 1% inter-state levy in the GST Bill, they put
forth other unreasonable demands like putting an 18% ceiling on the GST tax
rate in the Bill itself. That was the best way of ensuring the GST Bill never
went through.
Even as Modi showed huge amount of maturity and calmness during
answering the debates on both constitution and intolerance, on the day of the
meeting, Rahul was sarcastic to mention to the TV channels that government had
called upon Congress leaders under pressure, and that the party’s strategy was
not of consultation. He further continued his rhetoric when he said that the
BJP was out to hurt the interests of farmers with the Land Bill and it was the
Congress party that had ensured the Bill never went through even if country
needs land for industrialization and urbanization, or that farmers would be
better off if they were going to get 4 times the value of their property under
the BJP’s Bill, unlike the land acquisition during Congress and other regimes
at throwaway
prices. And then, amazingly, Rahul Gandhi went on to say that the
labour reforms proposed by the BJP were going to hurt labour and the Congress
would do its best to stop them. Even if everyone knows the pro-labour policy of
the last 68 years has ensured poor jobs growth and so-called anti-labour
reforms would do more to generate jobs; Rahul thought he would be able to
convince people of this country of the same rhetoric that failed in the
elections 18 months ago.
The National Herald case first came up in
2013, when the Congress party was in power, so there was no question of the BJP
leadership trying to come up with it to put pressure on the party to pass the
GST Bill, or any other legislation for that matter. The allegations, first made
by Niti Central, were straight-forward – that Congress leaders like Sonia and
Rahul Gandhi had conspired to take over the National Herald, using the Congress
party’s money, and that this was done with an eye to the property owned by the
newspaper. Whether the allegations hold good or not, is for the courts to
decide, and that is where the matter is. If all charges against politicians are
to be settled out of court; which is what the Congress party’s strategy seems
to be amounting to, it is a sad day for Indian democracy.
The control of the country's longest-serving party by one family
has done the nation enormous damage and distorted all politics. TIME TO END IT
and MAKE CONGRESS A GANDHI MUKT PARTY. The day, majority of Congress party
members gather courage to voice this known fact, better days will begin for
Congress party.
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