Will Rafale become another Bofors?
natural leader of such an alliance in the making. It is even probable that the business interests of some Opposition leaders are so inextricably tied in with corporate India that they are unwilling to join the anti-rafale protests.
Which brings us to the central figures in the two controversies. Rajiv Gandhi was not a professional politician in the manner that Modi is, perhaps lacking the cut-throat competitive edge that the present PM brings to his politics. This, arguably, left him more exposed, especially when his key aides began to desert him at the time. Modi, by contrast, brings an element of awe and fear to his politics. Where Rajiv was quickly pushed on the defensive by the allegations, Modi has chosen to brazen it out, supremely confident that his well-crafted persona as a crusader against corruption can’t be dented so easily.
Which leads one to a final observation. In 1989, VP Singh succeeded because he was able to artfully position himself as the challenger who could occupy the moral high ground on corruption. Rahul Gandhi is not the incumbent but the baggage of the Congress’s past corruption scandals weighs him down. The Indian middle class embraced VP Singh when he claimed he had the Bofors pay-off Swiss bank account number in his pocket because he epitomised an anti-establishment spirit that could capture the public imagination much like an ageing activist Anna Hazare did years later. That is a role which the Congress leadership will find difficult to emulate. After all, when you head a party which has been in power for much of the last seven decades, how do you reposition yourself as the angry young outsider in the perception battle? That question lies at the core of Rahul ’s 2019 challenge.
Post-script: The Bofors scandal broke in the pre-television era where news agendas could be set by a handful of newspapers. In a more frenzied, cluttered, and perhaps more democratised news environment it is uncertain that an issue with a convoluted case history like Rafale will have quite the same impact.
Rajdeep Sardesai is a senior journalist and author The views expressed are personal