No more Ms Nice Gal

The hyperbole of Press releases, especially on so hyperbole-prone an occasion as the completion of a full year in Opposition, cannot, of course, be treated as a substitute forpolicy statements issued after Congress Working Committee meetings or deliberated remarks of the party president. But, taken in conjunction with the Congress reaction to the Guruswamy and Bhagwat affairs, the party, in association with the Opposition as a whole, seems to be readying itself for the kill. Whether the knife will eventually be thrust in and twisted depends, of course, on the state of play when push comes to shove, but the second half of the current Budget session, slated to begin in mid-April, will constitute, it would seem, the first serious attempt to mount a challenge to Vajpayee from without to match the repeated challenges he has had to contend with from within.

Round One of this challenge was easily won by ministers Yashwant Sinha, Naveen Patnaik and Ram Jethmalani. Between them they swatted off the Congress-Left attack on the Guruswamy allegations. In the Rajya Sabha, the Congress revealed itself as inept at opposition as the BJP is at governance. But its failure to score in the UpperHouse did not seem to have cramped the Opposition’s style in the Lok Sabha. P. Shiv Shankar waded in with the most cogent presentation yet of the issues, followed by a stinging and witty foray from Somnath Chatterjee. But it was really Chidambaram who cited those letters, notings and dates without which the BJP was pretending corruption does not exist, who delivered the coup de grace. When the debate resumes in April, the Treasury benches are certainly not going to find the going any more as smooth as they did in the Rajya Sabha. And the potentially explosive debate on Bhagwat is still to even begin. What Chidambaram’s pinpointed intervention established was that it was steel hot-rolled coils imported dirt cheap as "seconds and defectives" from Kazakhstan which constituted the threat to the Indian steel industry, and that this was explicitly and in writing recognised by both ministers till the first week of November. By the second week, the steel minister, through sleight of hand, converted the threat intoone from primary steel traded at much higher prices on international markets. On this basis, he jacked up the notified import floor price by around $100 dollars above prevailing import prices in the Indian market. This gave Indian steel producers a bonanza of around Rs. 4000 per tonne. HR coils prices have risen since the date of notification (December 11, 1998) by around Rs. 4000 per tonne. Yashwant Sinha made much of the notification having been published after the state assembly election results were in. Chidambaram’s revelations show that the decision was made precisely in the week — November 5 to 12 — that the BJP was discovering how fiercely the election was going against it. The link to Guruswamy’s allegation of the hike in floor prices being related to the election pro-cess will now require a far more sophisticated vindication than the Finance Minister’s simplistic playing with dates.

The government will also find itself on the mat over the curious Hinduja affair. The fast-rack approachessentially involved state governments offering a huge price premium over present domestic power prices to induce multinationals to invest in India. Since the premium was around three times the going price of electricity in the country, there was some lack of credibility to the state electricity board guarantee. So, on the principle that government is a composite of state and central governance, the Centre stepped in to counter-guarantee the state government’s plighted troth.

The Vajpayee coalition has twisted that concept to give a counter-guarantee to one of the commercial ventures involved in the Hinduja project. Not only is this unprecedented, and therefore, in as much need of solid explanation as Power Minister NKP Salve was required to give when he evolved the fast-track approach indeed, as Salve reminded the House, the BJP had demanded a JPC on his decision it also needs to be explained why the Hinduja contract was not renegotiated. After all, six full years have passed since the deal was initiallystruck. Prices of plant and equipment for power projects have fallen around 40 per cent in the intervening period. If the Hindujas were complaining about the contract being unimplementable without further guarantees, why were terms not reworked instead of the Hindujas being given a huge unearned bonanza? That, according to Guruswamy, is what led the finance secretary and finance minister to fear going to jail if they were to give in to the pressure being mounted on them (allegedly by PMO/H) to bail out the Hinduja Vizag project. None of this was properly argued in the Rajya Sabha. It will, however, be the focus of attention in the lower House. Hence the lively apprehension that Diwali might begin in April.

There is then the Bhagwat issue. Or rather issues for, with his affidavit, it is not one worm that has turned but a can of worms that has been opened. The target, moreover, is George Fernandes, a parliamentary torturer of some notoriety now being himself laid on the rack by those who in the past havefelt his turning of the screws. George is doubtless banking upon his formidable forensic skills. More will be needed to convince the Opposition that the issue is not, as Bhagwat has said, the dismissal of Bhagwat but the retention in Defence of a man so dangerous to the security of the nation that the Prime Minister specifically ordered that he not be informed of Pokharan-II. In sum, it is just as well the BJP gave themselves a birthday bash on their first anniversary. It increasingly looks as if they are not going to have a second.

Aiyar is a Congress party official but these views are his own