Since the Manmohan Singh government is at the receiving end of the Supreme Court’s stinging indictment of its role in the spectrum scam, it is the Congress which will suffer the most during the election campaign in Uttar Pradesh and Goa. The party would be grateful that the verdict of the voters in Uttarakhand, Punjab and Manipur was sealed in the ballot boxes before the apex court’s judgment. Otherwise, the impact of its suspected indulgence in ‘crony capitalism’, as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has alleged, might have been considerable.
But the Congress’ main worry will be on the popular reaction in UP, not only because it is the biggest state which is seen to indicate who will rule in Delhi but also because the party’s heir-apparent, Rahul Gandhi, has invested so much of his own and his party’s political capital on achieving success in the state. If the party falters, it cannot but undermine Rahul’s chances of rising further up the political ladder.
Of the two factors – caste and corruption – which are crucial in UP, Rahul’s focus has been mainly on the latter although the fact that he is not averse to playing the caste card was evident when he reminded the audience that Sam Pitroda, chairman of the National Knowledge Commission, was born in a carpenter’s family.
The Congress has also been trying to wean away the Most Backward Castes (MBCs) – Koeris, Lohars, Nishads, Mallahs and so on – from the Yadav-dominated Other Backward Castes (OBCs) to undercut Mulayam Singh Yadav, and the ati-Dalits (where ‘ati’ stands for extreme) like Passis, Koris, Doms and others from the Jatav or Chamar-dominated Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) of Chief Minister Mayawati.
But since the corruption charges against her government have been the focal point of the Congress’ campaign, the Supreme Court’s verdict cannot but deflate the Congress to a large extent. It isn’t only that the allocation of a precious natural resource was ‘stage-managed’, as the court has said, but the prime minister and the finance minister acted apparently like helpless spectators as their rogue cabinet colleague ran amok.
It is this failure of governance, which has made a mockery of the hallowed principles of collective responsibility and the prime minister’s status as the primus inter pares (first among equals) which will provide excellent grist to the opposition’s mill. The BJP will undoubtedly make the most of it. However, it is doubtful to what extent its diatribes will sway the UP voters outside its own support base in the mofussil areas because of its limited influence in the state.
At the national level, of course, the BJP will make the most of the judgment even if it is still running scared of how the scandals involving its former Uttarakhand chief minister, Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’, will be reflected in the ballot boxes when they are opened next month. It will also be aware that the Congress will continue to harp on the fact that the first-come-first-served process of spectrum allocations began in 2003 when the BJP was in power at the centre. Even then, the BJP has received a golden opportunity to carry on its anti-corruption campaign against the Congress as when it shared a platform with Anna Hazare.
Where UP is concerned, the BSP will be most pleased because the judgment will take some of the heat of its own follies which made Mayawati sack 21 of her ministers and spend millions of rupees on the construction of her own statues and of her party’s election symbol, the elephant, which have been a constant target of Rahul Gandhi’s jibes. Now, with the Congress running for cover, she can breathe easy. Of the others, the Samajwadi Party will gloat in silence because the discomfiture of a prospective ally with whom it can form a government will place it in a stronger position.
None of the parties is likely to spend much time on the implications of the judgment on the mobile services because the subject is largely beyond the layman’s ken. In any event, it will be months before the fallout in terms of prices and portability is known. There will probably be a belief that the government will try to ensure that the mobiles, which have become such an indispensable item of daily life, remain affordable, not least because a large section of the less privileged – vendors, washermen and autorickshaw drivers – use them.
However, more than the corruption charges that have battered the government for more than a year and were seen to infect many sectors apart from the telecom department – the Commonwealth Games, Adarsh housing society etc – what the latest judicial indictment has done is to hugely diminish the prime minister’s stature. Even if he has been personally ‘exonerated’, as Subramanian Swamy has noted, the electoral impact of the disclosure that he held the wheels of the government with a limp hand cannot but hurt the Congress.
(04-02-2012-Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. He can be reached at amulyaganguli@gmail.com)
