Even after much muck-raking, the Opposition and their champions in the press have not been able to convincingly prove any charge against the Prime Minister ... The voters are not fools to be carried away by such allegations. In any case they don't have to be bothered about Bofors or any such allegations when we have an impressive record of achievements to convince the electorate that the Congress is the best bet.
- K Natwar Singh, then Minister of State for External Affairs, November 6, 1989

? There is not a single allegation against Ms Pratibha Patil in any court, in any audit bureau, in any RBI document or cooperative bank document. These are not even allegations, these are cooked up stories. Tell me the charges against her ... I am waiting to hear."
- Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi, Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, June 28, 2007

It has come to be accepted as a golden rule of Indian politics - those the gods want to destroy, they first alienate from middle India. In recent weeks, the Congress and its election managers have sought to brazen out the slew of charges against Pratibha Patil: documented cases of bank swindles; a sugar mill that owes people money; misuse of MPLADS funds for facilities run by her extended family; a hostel network built with state patronage, ostensibly to help indigent women, but ending up as illegal, commercial bed-and-breakfast units.

To every charge, the Congress has responded with obfuscation, denial, filibustering. As land records have been requisitioned - at least from the local authorities in Delhi - and hidden safely in the Union Urban Development Ministry, a huge cover-up operation has been afoot. In its extent and in its use of political time and Government resources, it is quite without precedent in an Indian presidential election.

This is the closest an Indian head of state's nomination has come to the Watergate whitewash that preceded Richard Nixon's re-election in 1972. The Committee to Resolutely Elect Pratibha (CReEP) has worked hard, refused to even acknowledge the allegations against Patil, insisted she is pure as driven snow.

Instead, it has unearthed a supposed bribery charge against Sub-Inspector Bhairon Singh Shekhawat in 1948, and insinuated he was unpatriotic for having joined a British-run police force in 1942. Of course, this is an interesting charge coming from a party led by a president whose father fought in Mussolini's army around the same time as Shekhawat joined the British Indian Police.

For the Left, the ideological somersaults have been even sharper. In the CPI(M) newspaper, People's Democracy, the redoubtable Sitaram Yechury questioned Shekhawat's credentials by asking why he had signed up to serve a colonial government in the year of the Quit India Movement. There was some irony here, because, in 1942, the Communists' own role was extremely dubious, and openly critical of the Quit India call.

Losing middle India
Such trivia notwithstanding, there are some compelling messages that emerge from the Pratibha Patil fiasco. It is true that the lady will win a decisive victory, trounce Shekhawat and become the new resident of Rashtrapati Bhavan. It is equally true, however, that her choice will cloud the rest of the UPA's term.

A vigilante website is already up and promises to monitor and "expose" Patil through her years on Raisena Hill. Her scandals will be raised and repeated in Parliament, and each time it will be the Government that will have to answer.

Among the urban middle class, people with no stake in the selection of the President and usually not concerned with which party factotum gets the job, the Patil selection has caused some disquiet. Particularly after the popular and apolitical choice of APJ Abdul Kalam, the former table-tennis champion from Jalgaon is seen as a tainted lightweight, too small and too small-time for the job.

None of this will lead to governments falling; the Pratibha Patil affair is unlikely to be the chief deciding factor in the 2009 national election. Yet it has made the Congress that much more vulnerable, forcing it to expend valuable political capital as India braces for a punishing 18-month marathon of big state and national elections.

To add to the Congress' woes, nobody in the party is quite sure why Patil was selected. She emerged as the ultimate accident of history. The Congress wanted a Family Loyalist; "Why not a woman?" M Karunanidhi suggested; somebody pointed out that Pratibha Patil was married to a Shekhawat; AB Bardhan of the CPI, who had known her as a junior legislator decades ago, jumped and said, "Yes, of course".

As one Congress spokesperson pointed out, "We didn't know her background. We all thought she was innocuous and harmless. And then this emerged ..."

The Congress has responded with trademark, over-the-top bravado. Dasmunsi snubbed middle class sentiment by scoffing at e-mail and text-message campaigns, arguing that busybody urban dwellers didn't vote in any case. In a sense, it was no different from the manner in which the party had reacted to the Bofors scandal in the period 1987-89. It had brushed aside investigative journalism and newspaper reports as inconsequential and a misreading of the "real" issues concerning the country.

PR in the past tense
It is instructive to look back at the Bofors experience. On April 18, 1987, the Congress Working Committee adopted a resolution that denied any wrongdoing in the Swedish gun deal and insisted that the Government was being targeted as part of a "grand design of destabilisation", in which the United States, Pakistan, forces of "neo-colonialism" and parties of "right reaction" were all playing a part.

Verbatim extracts of the CWC's landmark Bofors resolution - which drove party policy till the 1989 election - make fascinating reading:

• "The events of the last six weeks established beyond doubt a pattern of destabilisation in which external forces hostile to India have been revealed to have inexplicable links with internal forces."
• "The consequence of the avalanche of disinformation let loose on an unsuspecting public will be to weaken our defence preparedness vis-à-vis a country that has attacked India no less than four times."
• "Disharmony, tension, conflict and hatred are being artificially engineered to divide the people and to deflect their attention from the tasks of development and national reconstruction. Religion is being exploited to serve sinister political aims."

For the two-and-a-half years that followed, Congress functionaries spent their energies defending a deal they weren't certain about; at best, they were defending their leader, at worst, they were batting for a dodgy Italian middleman they had no particular feelings for. In this period, the Congress decided Bofors and corruption were a middle class obsession, limited to letter writers to newspaper editors.

Slowly, surely, the Bofors fever trickled downwards and became shorthand for all that voters felt was wrong with the Congress. The party didn't know what hit it, didn't see it coming.

Now consider the Pratibha Patil business. Congress functionaries are spending their energies defending a candidate they aren't certain about; at best, they are defending their leader, at worst, they are batting for a dodgy small-town politician they have no particular feelings for. Once again, the Congress has decided a besmirched presidency and petty corruption are a middle class obsession, limited to e-mail and text-message writers to news channels.

It's 1987 once more; will 1989 too repeat itself?

Courtesy: www.dailypioneer.com, July 08, 2007