BJP146;s tainted outrage

If there was a prize for graceless behaviour going in the entire drama over the UPA8217;s 8220;tainted ministers8221;, the BJP should surely have made a serious bid for it. The party has elevated its faux outrage on the matter to the level of parliamentary strategy. The NDA, it says, will boycott the Railway Budget to be presented on July 6. In other words, the crucial Budget session that begins this month may well be doomed to replays of the same raucous scenes that so successfully derailed the very first session of the 14th Lok Sabha. It seems the people must wait 8212; and pay 8212; some more before 8220;better sense8221;, as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh termed it, prevails on the country8217;s main Opposition party. The BJP is determined to pay back the Congress for its boycott of George Fernandes in the 13th Lok Sabha by mimicking its tactic. The politics of boycott was absurd then. It is absurd now.

Of course, there is a worthy case to be made against the presence of chargesheeted individuals in government, as indeed in Parliament. But the BJP has not made it. It isn8217;t difficult to see why. Among the reasons that hobble the party is one Dilip Singh Judeo. The former minister of state for environment in the NDA government was forced to resign after he was caught accepting cash on camera and respectfully lifting the currency wads to his forehead in November last year; only months later, the party leadership has thought it wise to rehabilitate him with a berth in the Upper House. The party8217;s loud indignation strains the credulity for other reasons as well. Just like the Congress, the BJP has also walked the thin edge between crime and politics; like the Congress, it has been known to unresistingly keel over. Even a random background check on MLAs and MPs of both parties would show up the extent and enormity of the intimacy between what we know as money and muscle power and legitimate political representation. Both parties have conveniently trotted out the 8220;people8217;s court8221; argument whenever they8217;ve been called upon to explain themselves.

The debate on 8220;tainted8221; ministers has long ago been hoist on its own circularity. In this free for all, the mud sticks on everyone and eventually on no one, while popular disillusion mounts. Here8217;s some unsolicited advice for the BJP, therefore: until the party can summon the courage 8212; and the scruples 8212; to make a genuine break with the past, it must maintain a low profile on this one. It could even try and assume the mantle of a constructive opposition and keep the government on its toes on issues where its own credibility is not so hugely in question. If it persists with the current theatrics, however, it will only confirm what everyone has suspected all along. The party is a bad loser.