MANMOHAN-ERA HOLDOVERS SABOTAGE MODI’S ANTI-GRAFT CAMPAIGN

Several bureaucrats in prominent positions during the Manmohan decade were interested, post the UPA defeat, only in covering up evidence of their own active participation in UPA-era misdeeds.

Recent byelections showed that many pro-Narendra Modi voters stayed home rather than come out to vote for the BJP. While the party is seeking to improve its organisational efforts in a bid to rectify such a trend, the responsibility for the abstentions vests more with the functioning of parts of the Government of India, specifically the slow pace of the agencies involved in the anticorruption drive launched amidst a volley of promises by Prime Minister Narendra D. Modi on 26 May 2014. Although much was made by the new government of the Special Investigating Team (SIT) speedily set up by the incoming government, while several sittings of the SIT have indeed taken place, its overall success in curbing or uncovering graft has been negligible. Following on from his practice as Chief Minister of Gujarat, once he became Prime Minister, Narendra Modi seems to have placed his faith and confidence fully in the existing rungs of the bureaucratic ladder to carry out both a policy of economic growth and a much-anticipated cleansing of the administrative stables, the tasks for which his party had been given a Lok Sabha majority. Unfortunately for the BJP, several of the bureaucrats in prominent positions during the Manmohan Decade (2004-2014) were interested, post the UPA defeat, only in covering up evidence of their own active and pervasive participation in UPA-era misdeeds. The result has been the conversion of the policy of Zero Tolerance for Corruption announced by Modi to close to Zero Results in his campaign against VVIP corruption. Thus far, the truly big names have remained untouched even while a small number of lesser fry, especially in some state governments, have been booked. At the same time, disclosures under RTI have been heading sharply downwards because of the lack of response to queries made to the bureaucrats manning RTI boards, thereby severely impacting the anti-corruption drive. The lack of tangible action against VVIP corruption by agencies under the Modi government has resulted in the Congress party confidently claiming that BJP allegations of largescale corruption during the UPA days were just a “chunavi jumla” of the rival party Thus far, even biggies such as P. Chidambaram, Praful Patel and Robert Vadra remain free to globetrot, while the only extant case against the First Family of the Con- gress is a private proceeding of Subramanian Swamy, who at the time he initiated action was not even a member of the BJP The public perception of lack of success in dealing with high level political and bureaucratic corruption has become the Achilles heel of the Modi government. To this must be added the fact