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Integrity, Inc

There is a resoundingly hollow ring to the Congress's pious intentions to return to the straight and narrow.

The Indian National Congress is at present wearing a haggard look. It is not used to powerlessness, its leaders are therefore bereft of their essential coordinates. The party has a tenuous toehold on the administration only in Madhya Pradesh and a couple of teeny weeny North-Eastern states. Its status as the second largest party in the Lok Sabha is not an altogether credible reality even to its fold, which is the reason they dread the prospect of a fresh parliamentary poll so much.

Powerlessness leads to mindlessness. The jamboree the Congress leaders arranged for themselves at Pachmarhi has yielded a load of cliches. Played into a nearly impossible corner, Congressmen have been persuaded to preach unto themselves the virtues of ethical behaviour, simple living and love for the poor. The model code of conduct released to the press by the party top brass at the end of the jamboree lays repeated stress on the need to practise, wonder of wonders, integrity in public life.

The current travails of the United States president vividly illustrate the point at issue: it is difficult in any clime to distinguish between private and public moralities. In any event, politicians at the helm of the Congress have acquired the reputation does not easily wear off. The exclusive purpose of their occupation in office, Congressman assumed as gospel truth in the post-Independence decades, was to enrich themselves by whatever means possible.

The introduction of so-called economic reforms provided a philosophical veneer to their cerebral passion for pelf and pomp. The electorate was not impressed, it gave the party a thoroughgoing drubbing, in the wake of which it is rediscovering the worthwhileness of morality and integrity on the personal and collective planes. It may be too late in the day though -- cynics cannot be prevented from articulating the cattish commentary that Congressmen do not have even the foggiest notion of what constitutes integrity.

If this sounds like a harsh judgment, consider the following case history. The facts are fairly well known. Both the articles of the Constitution pertaining to the functioning of the Rajya Sabha and the provisions of the Representation of the People's Act draws attention to a particular aspect of the federal polity. The founding fathers of our Constitution had conceived the role of the Rajya Sabha as watchdog and custodian of states' rights. In this huge and complex country, they argued, it was crucial that the wishes and aspirations nurtured, and the hardships and difficulties experienced, by the citizenry dispersed in the remotest parts and regions were brought to the notice of those in the highest echelons of administration in New Delhi.

The Rajya Sabha was chosen as the deus ex machina to ensure the fulfillment of that objective. The voice of the states is supposed to reign supreme in this chamber -- its composition would be such that problems affecting each individual state received detailed mention in the proceedings of the House.

Given this context, the Representation of the People's Act made the provision specifying the minimum qualification for members of the Rajya Sabha. Candidates desirous of election to the Rajya Sabha from a state must be ordinarily resident in that state. The rationale underlying the provision is obvious: a person who is ordinarily resident in a state could be expected to be adequately conversant with the problems of that state. An outsider would not have that advantage.

This legal provision, has, according to the belief of many, implications for the survival of the Union of India. However, in the course of time, the leadership of the Congress has with great alacrity made a mockery of the stipulation. The great game of sabotage began in earnest during the regime of Indira Gandhi. She was, after all, a czarina. She would pick ministers at random, according to her own sweet will. The persons she chose would perhaps not be at that particular moment members of either the Lok Sabha or the Rajya Sabha. Ministers have to be members of either House though -- in case they are not, their ministerial status, the Constitution says, will cease at the end of six months.

It so happened that the persons Indira Gandhi chose now and then as ministers were not overly popular in the states they hailed from and were unlikely to be elected to either chamber from there. But where there was a will, Indira Gandhi was confident, there was bound to be a way. Constitutional properties did not bother her. Suppose a vacancy existed in the Rajya Sabha slot of members from Gujarat and the person she had picked as minister was a Bengali ordinarily resident in West Bengal. So what, Indira Gandhi would command the Gujarat wing of party to adopt the minister as their candidate for election to the Rajya Sabha from their state. Her command was law to her partymen.

The individual concerned had still to convince both the Election Commission and the judiciary that s/he was ordinarily resident in Gujarat when everybody knew that s/he in fact belonged to West Bengal. The stratagem hit upon was for the minister to open a bank account in Gujarat or buy a chhatak of urban or rural property in the state, so as to furnish evidence of his or her being resident in the state; the alien corn there by ceased to be alien.

A Congress politician prominent in New Delhi but having no home base did not have to worry as long as Madam was pleased with his or her conduct and behaviour. She would gift him or her a Rajya Sabha seat, maybe from a state remotest from the state he or she actually belonged. Somebody from Punjab would come to represent Assam in the Rajya Sabha, somebody from Kerala would turn up as member of the Upper House from Rajasthan, somebody from Jammu and Kashmir would don the mantle of Bihar.

The stratagem unleashed by Indira Gandhi soon spread like wildfire. With the exception of the Left, all other political parties merrily joined the game, they too decided to ride roughshod over the constitutional injunction that only those genuinely belonging to a state should represent that state in the Rajya Sabha. This was hardly surprising, for most of the other parties have grown out of the ribs of the Congress. Even when they expel someone from their ranks, they do it for a period of six years, neither more nor less, adhering to convention set up by the Congress.

The dream of the authors of the Constitution, namely, that deliberations of the Rajya Sabha will reflect the views and aspirations of the states, has therefore been killed most successfully. To salvage their residual conscience, a few of the politicians who have sabotaged the spirit of the Constitution in this manner have dared to assert that a person from Bengal representing Gujarat or one from Punjab representing Assam serves the cause of national integration. It may indeed be so, but then the provisions of the Representation of the People's Act ought to have been amended in the first place to establish the priority of national integrity over the protection of state prerogatives.

Which is where we return to the theme of integrity. To claim a current or fixed deposit account with a bank located in a state -- or the hurried purchase of a piece of real estate -- as valid credentials for ordinarily resident status in the state is pure hokum -- the person concerned might not have spent even a week in that state till the submission of the claim, nor was it his or her intention to settle down in the state from then on. No, the role this tribe of politicians preferred was that of the quintessential 'carpetbagger', in American terminology.

Congressmen in their present contrite mood have confided that they want to return to the path of integrity. In case they mean it, they can make a small beginning. There are at least half a dozen eminences from the party who are in the Rajya Sabha under false colours: they pretend to represent the states they hardly know. As token of the Congress's determination to return to the path of integrity, it can direct these half a dozen eminences to immediately vacate their Rajya Sabha seats and allow pucca, non-fake residents from the respective states to replace them.

Herein lies the rub. Given the parlous state of the party, it is doubtful whether even such a simple proposition can be put into practice. Integrity is all right, as long as it does not affect one's own interests. And that will be equally true for most of the other homilies the Congress has, post-Pachmarhi, decided to attach to its flag-post.

A final comment. The party's stated resolve to rid itself or corruption has a resoundingly hollow ring. It would have sounded less hollow if, for example, a person like A.K. Antony was elected party leader. One should not, however, forget that the Congress is a monarchist party. The edict of monarchism cuts across every other moral principle.

Ashok Mitra