The bargain is, tragically, a familiar one. All you need is the resourceful businessman with an eye on the main chance or, as seems to be the case here, the prime plot. All you need is the unscrupulous politician, willing to trade his clout for money. The unchanging setting is that of the bloated patronage-state, also ubiquitous in India. And it’s a deal. Such deal-making is as reprehensible as it is routine and it is one of the media’s prime tasks to insistently push through the apathy and the cynicism and say so. But when this deal-making allegedly involves a Punjab Congress MLA who is also Chief Minister Amarinder Singh’s chief parliamentary secretary — as is indicated by the cash-for-deal talk, excerpted by this paper from tapes in its possession on Thursday — the rightful outrage must surely come compounded with sharp irony. The Amarinder Singh government in Punjab, remember, has brandished an ‘‘anti-corruption crusade’’ as its calling card in its tenure so far. The question is: will the Congress government headed by Amarinder Singh now display the same righteous enthusiasm in pursuing the corruption case that can be made out against one of its own, as it has displayed in its pursuit of his political rivals? Will the government accept the challenge to prove that it was genuinely fired by the zeal to cleanse the system, after all? There are enough grounds for scepticism. Soon after it took charge, it became clear that all the anti-corruption frenzy was only a veneer for something less edifying. The Punjab chief minister went after Parkash Singh Badal and son and all the bureaucrats considered close to them, with all the state resources at his command. In the name of fighting corruption, the government did not hesitate to cross the line between fair-minded pursuit of the corrupt and a witchhunt born of private/political vendetta. What has confirmed this impression is the government’s fierce resistance to cleanse its own stables. In October last, this paper highlighted the government’s victimisation of Jaskaran Singh Brar, the whistleblower who took it to court over the appointments of DSPs. His father and brother were arrested by the vigilance department on startlingly flimsy charges, other relatives and friends faced intimidation. The onus is on Amarinder Singh. He must act upon the serious allegations against someone considered to be a senior functionary in his government. He must appoint an independent inquiry into the matter. The onus is on the chief minister to call a halt to the process of de-institutionalisation that he appears to have presided over, and reverse it. This is the moment.
