People's Democracy

MR Vajpayee and his government continue to stick on to office shamelessly. Far from any expression of remorse, the entire discredited bunch of the NDA have adopted an audaciously arrogant approach. Their defence, however, is much to feeble.

The Congress party, they say, was involved in many a corrupt deal. So what moral authority, they claim, does the opposition have in seeking their resignation? The opposition in the country is not the Congress alone. The Left, particularly the CPI(M), as is universally acknowledged, has an unblemished record of public service untainted by even remotest of allegations of corruption. It was the Left that was in the forefront of exposing and generating a public campaign against the corruption of the Congress from Bofors to Hawala. The BJP had then joined the Left in demanding the resignation of the Congress government on these charges. Now, in a complete volte-face, they seek justification for their corruption on the grounds of Congress’, record!

Mr. Vajpayee must learn that the Congress has paid, rather dearly, for its corruption in the past. On Bofors, they lost an election, former Prime Minister Narasimha Rao is facing conviction in the JMM bribery case, and there has been a steady erosion of its popular support over these years. By clinging on to power, Mr. Vajpayee is inviting a similar, if not a faster, process of rejection by the people.

The anger and disgust amongst the people against the Vajpayee government is, today, palpable. This is all the more so because the BJP had, amongst the various masks that it has donned, sought to project itself as a "party with a difference" claiming that its chehara (face), chaal (behaviour), charitra (character) and chintan (thinking) to be not only different but superior than those of any other party in the country. It is on this basis that they had claimed to eradicate bhook (hunger), bhay (fear) and bhrashtachar (corruption) from India. Mr. Vajpayee wears the mukhota (mask) embodying all this and carries a projection of a larger than life image.

Today, such an image lies shattered. Mr. Vajpayee is the presiding deity of the Saffron pantheon which consists of the most corrupt and venal elements. And, such elements have only one morality: that of sticking on to office at all costs and under most objectionable circumstances. They are a set of people who are capable of even selling their mothers for pecuniary gains. They are the worst betrayers of the national cause willing to barter India’s security concerns for personal aggrandisement. Their invocation of national jingoism, at the drop of a hat, is only a ruse to conceal their real intentions. Intentions that are predominated by personal greed and avarice at the cost of country and its people.

Mr. Vajpayee must quit immediately, if he has some modicum of shame left or some pretense to adhere to some values. Otherwise, the Indian people will force him to do so.