A poster appeared near the ministerial bungalows and MPs flats in Delhi this week had requested the Congress leadership to save the UPA government from the present PM and put Pranab Mukherjee at helm of affairs. It blames PM for the present muddle. May be this is a prank. But it reflects the prevailing concern within the ruling party. The Congress has replaced its chief ministers at the drop of a hat. But it has no tradition of changing the government at the centre mid-stream unless warranted by providential intervention.

True, both the opposition and government side concede that in the 15th Lok Sabha the UPA is numerically safe. And time is not in opposition’s favour. The UPA2 has just completed one year and a half. It still has three and half years left to complete the term. Barring unexpected developments, there is no threat to the UPA from its constituents. Hence with a little bit of coalition management, about which its ability has been not in doubt, the government can easily drag on for the rest of the time. The questions being asked is: instead of wasting all its energy in engaging the opposition and fighting court cases, will the Congress Party utilize the available time for a drastic course correction? Will such a survival plan be within the present framework? Or will the party establishment intervene to retrieve the government through a set of functional and policy fine-tuning? The latter course is more likely.

Already there is talk of certain bold moves by the Sonia establishment to tighten the government without being seen as indulging in micro-management. Also, the party seems to do the course correction without much of a public display. Apart from avoiding putting any blame on individual Congress leaders, the party would like to remove the impression that the course correction implied any shift in the government’s industrial policy. While it will be premature to discuss a move that is still at the consultation stage, the idea seems to be to unveil it in stages after the Parliament session ends. This stems from the reported feeling in the Sonia establishment that no purpose will be served by allowing the present ineffectiveness dragging.

It was as part of this strategy that the party quickly came to the PM’s defence. Any delay in doing this, it is pointed out, might have led to wild misinterpretations and misunderstanding. It might also have provoked instances like the recent pro-Pranab posters. Similarly, there is also great relief over the Supreme Court turning its ire from the PM to former communications minister A. Raja. So far the apex court has not persisted with the query as to why such a long delay by PM to respond the petitioner’s request for sanction to prosecute Raja. Later the court has also spared the PM and put the entire blame on Raja for the 2G telecom muddle to favour certain business groups.

But according to a very senior Congress leader, it was only a marginal consolation. The leader confided in a group of print media persons that the issues could erupt again in the course of the hearing. Even if ‘we’ are spared of that embarrassment, the bigger political questions. Why did not the government promptly act to avert such a scandal in spite of warnings by opposition leaders and whistle blowers? The court found that Raja had ‘bypassed’ the PM and ‘over-ruled’ him. If the court is right, this fact alone shows how the government failed to carry out its vital constitutional responsibility? It could have taken recourse to rights under PM’s prerogatives and joint responsibility of the cabinet.

Certainly this reveals political lapses and an essential functional lacuna of the government. The senior leader says In the interest of its own political survival, the party would have to correct prevent such slips. He talks of two types of rectifications. The first is a firm resolve of zero tolerance to corruption and scandals. The PM has to be ruthless in such matters. The party has always been with him in such matters. It was not just a question of the DMK ‘hurdle’ alone. The public perception is that the government is not serious about checking scams and scandals at different levels under it. Strong signals should be sent to remove such an impression.

Second, there is all need to clear the air about the government’s attitude towards the tightening grip of the powerful lobby networks. What we have is just a tip of the iceberg All of them are not confined to business lobbying. They do kind of dirty work involving security. Should they be treated as legitimate business activity under a reformed economy? Is the institution of lobbyists really necessary give confidence to the investors? Or will it also distort the natural process of growth? This is some thing the party and the government decide in their own interests. A section in Congress Party fear that if the government continues to drift on such vital issues, it will meet the fate of the scam-doomed Japanese PMs.

No government in India had to face such a large number of corruption charges. There are over a dozen cases either under inquiry or carried in print by serious media. The controversy over the appointment of the CVC has been an issue handed to the opposition on a platter. Inhouse reader surveys have made the media houses to resort to sort of competitive coverage of scandals. This itself indicates that the corruption issue has seeped deep into the public mind in a big way. It is becoming difficult for the UPA government to get rid of the scandal tag.

In fact it looks worse than the Bofors days. But there is a difference. Unlike under Narasimha Rao and Rajiv Gandhi, the UPA’s PM and senior party leaders are not seen as even remotely linked with the scandals. But the PM is increasingly seen as philosophically tolerating scams. This may be right or wrong. Hence the public ire seems to be focused on the PM’s failure to root out the sources of corruption with a heavy hand. Thus the future of this government will depend more on how does it makes the course-correction rather than the opposition manoeuvres. (IPA Service)