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Ramdev eviction
Anatomy of the Fungus of Corruption
| The Congress sponsored midnight police brutality on non-violent protesters at Ram Lilla Maidan has received sharp reaction from across the country with politicians blaming Sonia Gandhi and the Prime Minister directly for presiding over a Jallianwallah Bagh like swoop on fasting and sleeping people. |
The Baba Ramdev episode vis-à-vis the civil society intervention into politicalmainstream in the name of anti-corruption crusade marred by unprecedented policeexcesses could not have come at a worse time for Congress when the besieged UPA government is already hard pressed by various nuances of the 2G spectrum and Commonwealth Games scandals.
The common man or ‘Aam Admi’, a phrase which Congress manifestoes love to use, would have preferred Dr. Manmohan Singh’s government to be more focused on dealing with a confluence of worrying economic trends such as accelerating inflation, declining foreign investment, slower growth, populist food security measures and other challenges in governance.
Instead, misplaced priorities of the government came to the fore when a high powered four member ministerial team rushed to the Delhi airport to accord a red carpet welcome to Yoga guru Baba Ramdev, whom within a week, the same bunch of Congress crisis managers described as a ‘thug’ and a communalist ‘RSS mask’.
The government troubleshooters including irreplaceable party veteran Pranab Mukherjee hardly seem to note that Asia’s third largest economy is still set to grow around 8 per cent this fiscal year and in the international borders both China and Pakistan are making enough noises from time to time.
The June 4-5 midnight police swoop in the heart of the national capital – at the instance of a visibly jilted Central Government – only shows how clueless the official apparatus under the Congress led regime is when it comes to dealing with someone as apolitical as Baba Ramdev. The police actions in evicting the fasting crowd of over 20,000 including a large number of women and younger ones and the subsequent melancholic painting of UPA regime only prove a point that over two years through his second term, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s reformist image has taken a beating by serious corruption scandals and worse, a weak leadership.
So much of mutual understanding between Dr. Singh’s government management and the political leadership of Congress President Sonia Gandhi exists that her associates – gauging public mood – on June 5th went around the town saying that Mrs. Gandhi did not know about the orders given to the Delhi police to evict Baba Ramdev and his followers from the sprawling Ram Lilla ground.
The government was already embarrassed in April, when the social activist Anna Hazare came out of the backyards of Maharashtra and sat on a fast unto death along with the likes of Kiran Bedi and demanded a Lokpal Bill which could probe into financial defalcation of even a serving Prime Minister. Baba Ramdev, who was said to have been used by the government during Hazare’s agitation, plunged into another fast demanding government action to bring back huge amounts of black money stashed by Indians in overseas banks.
“Congress just could not handle the corruption bug,” says Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav who described the police actions in Ram Lilla ground as a case of “government loosing its mental balance.
”The BJP has made full use of the issue and stepped up its anti-Congress campaign by launching a nationwide stir. Predictably, L K Advani and his colleagues compared the police excesses with the Jallianwallah Bagh massacre and also a replica of the state of emergency slapped on the country on June 25th, 1975.
The UPA ally, Sharad Pawar-led NCP slammed the police crackdown saying that such a step was “uncalled for” and only reflected “mishandling” of the situation. NCP spokesman Professor D. P. Tripathi said that by using force when the situation called for a more reasonable response, the UPA has lost a good opportunity to be seen as sincere towards fighting corruption. “Instead, all opposition forces and others are united today,” he said, however, hastening to add that there was no major crisis for the UPA.
The crisis may not be immediate but it has upset the government’s trump card – the claim about an honest Prime Minister – rather badly.
Who ordered THE police swoop?
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who is this baba ?
The beginning never knows the end. Well, the maxim would go down well for Yoga guru Baba Ramdev, the country’s unquestionable newsmaker in the last few months. Once billed as a Congress mole to ‘discredit’ Gandhian Anna Hazare’s campaign, Baba is today a name ‘hated’ in Congress circles as much as he is perhaps adored in the BJP-RSS camp. Onetime brand ambassador of Bihar under NDA Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Baba Ramdev is a Yadav by caste from Jat land Haryana. A yoga guru who spoke about Rama’s valour, today runs a Yoga teaching and herbal manufacturing empire of `1100 crore at a sprawling campus of Patanjali Yogpeeth in Haridwar in Uttarakhand. When he took up the issue of bringing back black money stashed abroad, no one could presume that within days, this frail bearded man would emerge as a unifying factor for all opposition parties. His trust manufactures herbal products and ayurvedic medicines – said to be able to cure hair loss, kidney problem, cancer and even AIDS. It also makes consumer goods like toothpaste, talcum powder, soap, shampoo, hair oil, biscuits, juices, bottled water and energy boosters. His trust has branches in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Mauritius, Nepal and Tanzania and it is in the process of setting up business in Thailand and South Africa. Recently, the trust bought an island called Little Cumbrae in the U.K. for about £2 million. Even his Man Friday, secretary Balkrishna is not above controversy and is said to have a forged passport, a charge denied by Baba and his trust outright. |
A jilted Congress and the UPA government have defended the police action and took off the gloves vis-à-vis Baba Ramdev and even Anna Hazare by targeting them as RSS moles and especially raised the questionable sources of Baba Ramdev’s income.
The key decision to allow police action to evict Baba Ramdev and his supporters was taken ‘at the highest level’ on the June 4th evening after Baba Ramdev, as per Kapil Sibal, refused to “honour” his earlier commitment and did not call off the fast. In a meeting of the Congress core committee presided over by Sonia Gandhi and attended by the Prime Minister, the idea for the police swoop was first mooted by Sibal, one of the negotiators with Baba Ramdev. Pranab Mukherjee readily endorsed this while Home Minister P Chidambaram said that he needed to consult the Delhi Police Commissioner and senior officials in his ministry about the possible implications of such an action. Chidambaram got back to the room after getting the opinion of Union Home Secretary G K Pillai and the intelligence chief. The Delhi Police Commissioner told Pillai over the phone that he would carry out whichever orders of the government. Till then, both Mrs. Gandhi and Dr. Singh were only silent spectators and were not committing either way. Mrs. Gandhi only said that the party should not get the blame and asked Pranab Mukherjee and Kapil Sibal to prepare notes properly to ‘expose’ Ramdev’s RSS connections and that he has betrayed the government. Congress spokesman Abhishek Singhvi was told to brief the media about RSS-BJP intentions. “The nation is aghast to see that BJP, RSS and their frontal organisations, which have repeatedly failed to get a popular mandate, are trying to destabilise the government,” Singhvi said that evening. Congress loose canon Digvijay Singh, otherwise a much discredited former Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, soon was on television spewing venom on Sangh Parivar and taking a line well rehearsed one time by Congress in 1975 before imposing Emergency. “By conceiving, controlling and coordinating the movement for Ramdev, RSS and BJP are destabilising not only the government but the nation,” Digvijay Singh said.
Hours before Sibal had seemingly said at a press conference in Shastri Bhawan, “This government cannot not talk and accommodate, we can also rein in”.
The writing was clear on the wall – Ramdev should be jailed and sent out of Delhi. Accordingly, Ramdev was force flown to Dehradun the next day and then to Haridwar where the yoga guru runs his ashram. In the subsequent period when his health deteriorated, Baba Ramdev, under pressure of followers and fellow compatriots like Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, ended his fast. The government has heaved a sigh of relief though it knows pretty well that the challenges have increased manifold.
Fear of Troubles:
The Home Ministry now fears troubles across many states especially those under the BJP and in states like Assam. The Centre has already alerted the Governors of opposition, especially BJP ruled states about possible emerging situations and law and order problems.
As the heat and dust raised by the agitation and the subsequent police crackdown is far from settled, the Home Ministry top brass along with the intelligence chief have reviewed the developments in the context of the rhetoric made by BJP’s central leaders including the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh Shivraj Singh Chauhan and his Gujarat counterpart Narendra Modi.The Uttarakhand Governor Margaret Alva has been advised to keep a close tab at the situation vis-à-vis Baba Ramdev’s rhetoric especially about raising a ‘fighting force’. Intelligence agencies have alerted the Home Ministry that even in the North East, BJP and its affiliated political parties and organizations like VHP can plan major agitations as ‘corruption’ is regarded as the worst menace in the far flung region.
| A high powered four member ministerial team rushed to the Delhi airport to accord a red carpet welcome to come to Yoga guru Baba Ramdev, whom within a week, the same bunch of Congress crisis managers described as a ‘thug’ and a communalist ‘RSS mask’. |
The hope against hope for Congress is that the surcharged public mood against corruption will subside by the time it gets ready for the 2014 polls. However, Samajwadi spokesman and a socialist intellectual Mohan Singh maintains that corruption will be a major issue in next year’s assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh as much as in the Lok Sabha polls like it was in Tamil Nadu. “Congress is today generally perceived as not only as a party of the corrupt but as one which is also defending the corrupt,” he said. He ruled out that the Samajwadi Party will bail out the UPA government like it did in 2008 if the situation warrants such a move, saying “A mid term general election is always welcome as compared to a corrupt regime where the Prime Minister sounds only helpless and attributes coalition politics for corruption".
Few would disagree. The Congress has developed a syndrome of its own wherein it does not see the writing on the wall with regard to corruption. It never saw what was coming with the Bofors scam. In 1990s, P V Narasimha Rao was charged with receiving a suitcase full of currency from stock broker Harshad Mehta. Even the late V N Gadgil, then the chief spokesman for Congress, later admitted of committing a “mistake” by describing Rao as “Mr Clean once”. “I should have avoided that question …..,” he had said later.
The 2G scandal has now hit the present Prime Minister Dr. Singh pretty hard. In effect, the culture within Congress of Chief Ministers ‘surviving’ on New Delhi’s mercy still continues. How many non-performing Chief Ministers were replaced by Sonia Gandhi or Narasimha Rao?
In the mid-nineties when Rao was Congress Chief and Prime Minister, then allegedly Chief Minister(s) from Northeastern states like Meghalaya and Nagaland braved against all onslaught of intra-party rivalries and charges of corruption. To handle crisis, the Chief Minister(s) in question would depute the trusted lieutenants to call on the high command. Whom all they met and what transpired will perhaps never come to light.
Swati Deb
