In good faith

In a somewhat unprecedented turn of events,Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has declared his readiness to submit to ques-tioning by the Public Accounts Committee investigating the 2G spectrum allocation. Caesars wife should be above suspicion, was the rationale he offered. The Congress has held this up as evidence of its commitment to the probe and as a final undercutting of the oppositions rhetoric on a joint parliamentary committee. The BJP,meanwhile,has flung the offer right back saying that the PAC is confined to auditing questions and cannot address the systemic collusion that put A. Raja in the cabinet and allowed the spectrum allocation process to be subverted. It insists that only a JPC has the wide ambit required to take on the investigation,and that the PM could not choose the forum that is going to question his government. In short,no headway has been made in resolving the bitter political battle over the method of parliamentary investigation.The PMs willingness to face a PAC does constitute some movement forward. The government needs urgently to change the subject from a deadlock in Parliament not just as a medium-term effort to rescue the forthcoming budget session of Parliament,but also to reverse the impression of a policy freeze that has formed after the disastrous winter session. When legislative business is not taken up,the inertia cannot but appear to spread to the executive. Instead of getting tangled up in a debate about which dock to appear in,the prime minister would do better to allay suspicions and reach out to the opposition personally to exit all sides from the zero-sum-game of PAC versus JPC. Certainly,the intransigence over instruments,on both sides,seems to have overwhelmed the real questions. To the wider public,it seems mystifying that Parliament could be put in deep freeze over the comparative merits of JPCs and PACs.Too much time and productive energy has been wasted in this tussle. The government must expend greater energies in satisfying the oppositions concerns on addressing every dimension of the scandal. As the head of the government,the prime minister is the right arbiter,and has the greatest stake in ensuring that parliamentary work resumes. It would only enhance the stature of his office if he were to be personally invested in carving a reasonable common ground with the opposition over how to get past this crisis.