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Pritish Nandy

A Preposterous Gallery of Rogues

Last week, while discussing recent events in Uttar Pradesh, I praised three men, criticised four.

I thanked the President of India for taking a brave and wise decision and refusing to sign on the dotted line, when the Cabinet (very stupidly, in my view) asked for President’s rule. I praised Prime Minister Gujral for backing off (after his initial snafu of recommending President’s rule under pressure from Mulayam Singh and Sitaram Kesri) and not returning the proposal to Rashtrapati Bhavan a second time, which could well have caused a Constitutional impasse. I also praised Home Minister Indrajit Gupta for standing up to his Cabinet colleagues and refusing to impose Article 356 in UP. For risking the wrath of the Congress and the CPI-M which wanted to stop the BJP from forming a government at any cost.

But the real villain of UP politics was not Mulayam Singh nor Sitaram Kesri. Nor, for that matter, Kanshi Ram. They were all fishing in troubled waters. The real villain was Romesh Bhandari, a despicable politician if ever there was one, masquerading as the governor. Wherever he has been, Bhandari has created mayhem. It was he who deliberately lied at every stage and misled New Delhi, campaigning for President’s rule so that he could stay in charge and play his own dirty games. Luckily, he was exposed. If Gujral has any sense, he should evict him from Raj Bhavan. Ideally, with a swift kick on the posterior.

As everyone knows, it was Bhandari’s badmashi that brought the BJP to power. Support came their way only because people felt they got a raw deal. Everyone hates Article 356 and the very idea of imposing it on UP created this huge backlash that the BJP took advantage of.

But one week is a long time in Indian politics and it may be appropriate to look at what has happened since. How the BJP, in its own obsessive greed for power, has blown the godsend opportunity that came its way. It has formed a government, true. But at what cost? And what a government!

Kalyan Singh heads what must be the biggest state cabinet ever sworn into power. He began with 70 ministers sworn in on day one. Of them 26 were of cabinet rank and 44 ministers of state. But this huge ministry was not big enough to be arithmetically stable. So, with cynical disregard for all scruples, within 24 hours he swore in another 23. There are, in all, 93 ministers in his government today, cutting across all parties. Rebels, dissidents, breakaway groups. Independents of different hues. All of them united by a single political compulsion: Greed.

Greed for power, office, money. To accommodate these 93, 45 secretaries and principal secretaries of key departments in the state have been forced to vacate their offices and stay at home, till alternative space is found for them. These 93 ministers will have to be given 93 different portfolios to keep them out of each other’s hair. Which means the existing ministries will be dismembered and distorted to accommodate them. They will be cut and chopped into smaller ministries. Each will be given power, authority, budgets, security, bungalows, huge offices, countless assistants, cars, gun-toting Black Cats. And, of course, the opportunity to make money. Lots of money.

What kind of people are these 93 ministers? What parties do they belong to? What ideology do they profess? What are their qualifications to rule? You will be amazed if you knew the truth. So would be Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani, leaders of the BJP who have been till now lecturing us on issues like honour, values, political dignity. For, the BJP-led ministry is shamelessly crammed with thugs, criminals, murderers, history sheeters. If you do not believe me, check it out.

Take just one example. That of Harishankar Tiwari, who has been appointed a cabinet minister. Tiwari has, at last count, 32 criminal cases against him and is one of UP’s most notorious mafia dons. These cases relate to murder, extortion, arson, loot, electoral malpractices. And more.

There are many others, equally notorious gangsters and criminals who will now sit in government and decide the future of India’s largest state. Among them, to quote the newspapers, are Amarmani Tripathi, Bachcha Pathak, Raja Raghuraj Pratap Singh, Markandey Chand, Prem Prakash Singh, Sukhpal Pandey, Sardar Singh. Renegade Congresswallahs. Breakaway BSP men. Janata Dal dissidents. Even criminal BJP leaders. Making a mockery of Kalyan Singh’s own promise on September 21, when he took oath as chief minister. When he said his first pledge was to create a "bhay mukt samaj," a "kanoon ka raj."

The BJP government in UP is precisely the opposite.

It is a preposterous gallery of rogues.

It was the same Kalyan Singh who had forced his party leadership to topple the Mayawati government in 1995 because the BSP had provided security cover to Mukhtar Ansari, a notorious gangster. Today, even the BJP’s own ministers include people with crime records so long that they would embarrass Arun Gawli. Singh tries to explain it away by saying that all those who have criminal cases registered against them are not necessarily proven criminals. Vajpayee, his neta, is even more shameless. He goes one step further in cynicism to say that since the people of UP have chosen these goons and mobsters as their elected representatives, the BJP does not consider it necessary to probe their antecedents!

So it is no longer only greed. It is bribery. Open bribery by the BJP.

All the 40 non-BJP MLAs who split their respective parties to join Kalyan Singh last week have been rewarded with ministries. What is worse, Vajpayee is already talking about an imminent rapprochement with the BSP, which means that Mayawati may well join the ruling clique and bring back her own gang of mobsters to bloat the ministry further. For all you know, UP could then have a cabinet of 125 or more! Where will you seat them? Where will you house them? Who will pay for their black cats and their security? Who will keep a watch on their corruption, their crime?

What happened to all the hogwash that the BJP propagated in the name of political idealism? What happened to values? Morality? Clean public life? About rooting out crime and criminals? Or is Hindutva as bankrupt as Congress politics, where anything goes on as long as it benefits the corrupt ruling elite? Where cash determines what is right, what is wrong?

For those of us who were born after Independence, who saw the Congress as the ultimate repository of all evil and campaigned for an alternative political culture that would be less vulgar, less corrupt, less vulnerable to criminal exploitation, Kalyan Singh’s government is a tragic disappointment. It reminds us that, ultimately, all political parties are driven by the same filthy compulsions.

Pritish Nandy