Only dumping Chidambaram can save UPA the blushes

Without saying so, the American establishment is veering round to the view that the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance may not return to power in the next elections to be held in 2014 or earlier. 

This is the real meaning of the praise for the Bharatiya Janata Party, Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, and Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar contained in the recent Congressional Research Service report. Rahul Gandhi has been given the gentle thumbs down in any potential 2014 contest with Narendra Modi irrespective of whether it happens.

What is the Congress to do? Shut up the Americans? That can’t happen.

And WikiLeaks has demonstrated how well informed and surprisingly sagacious American diplomats in this country are as they go around collecting political intelligence. Politicians of all parties have shared their insights with the Americans and revealed embarrassing political secrets. When the American establishment, therefore, privileges the opposition over the ruling dispensation, trouble is at hand.

So what should Sonia Gandhi, who is back from a surgery, do? The UPA crisis is rooted in three things: corruption, price rise, and the worsening security situation. No terrorist attack since 26/11 has been solved. The blame for it must lie with home minister P Chidambaram. Objectively speaking, Chidambaram seems tired of being the home minister. Never a man of ideas, he is at a dead-end. Deep down, he may not be averse to leaving home (a thankless job, if any) if the departure is made honourable.

On price rise, Pranab Mukherjee gets squarely indicted. He may be politically useful to the UPA since he is the only senior leader to have friends left in the opposition to ask for favours in times of need. But as finance minister, he is headed nowhere. Foreign factors are invariably mentioned when he is confronted with issues of price rise and runaway inflation, and the electorate rejects this. Politics has to get the better of economics. That is not happening. RBI measures are too little and too late, and Mukherjee is forever frowning on them.

Corruption, however, is the biggest killer. Anna Hazare has focused on this issue brilliantly. In a sense everything boils down to corruption, from a minister who rigs his election, to an environment of tolerance created for food hoarders, to an inspector on the coast who with corrupt impunity permits the landing of explosives, which are then used for terrorist attacks.

When Rahul Gandhi and Chidambaram faced angry relatives of the recent Delhi bomb blast victims at a hospital, the searing cry of hurt and outrage said: You can’t control corruption, and you can’t give us security. Why have you come?

Badly for the Congress, the opposition is capitalising on the anti-corruption wave sweeping the country. Bihar is punishing corrupt bureaucrats and Madhya Pradesh will follow suit. Damned by the lokayukta, BS Yeddyurappa had to go.

But the Centre resists fighting corruption. Venerable institutions like the CAG are attacked. The latest is the Central Bureau of Investigation’s desperate attempts to stall the investigation into Chidambaram’s role in the 2G spectrum scam, as legally demanded by Subramanian Swamy.

Chidambaram may be entirely innocent. You are innocent until proven guilty. But it is not a happy situation when you are home minister in the midst of serious allegations.

The one decision that will send a clear message that Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh are serious about the government’s image is to urge the home minister to return to the Union cabinet after clearing his name in the 2G scam.

The politicians in Tihar jail were dumped there by the courts. The Congress gained nothing by it whilst angering its coalition partner DMK and one or two of its own. Steps to clean up the central cabinet, including imprisoning identifiably tainted ministers, will greatly neutralise the anti-corruption campaign whose principal target is the Congress/UPA government.

It is the last chance for the regime to save itself - and prove the Americans wrong.

NV Subramanian is the New Delhi-based editor of www.newsinsight.net and writes on politics and strategic affairs.