Thick as a brick

 

 

The difficulty with politics is that there are no established principles, Napoleon Bonaparte had said. Holds absolutely true for India where the advent of coalition politics has spawned many a political dynasty, each one heading a regional party and alternating power with its main rival. They have a loyal clique of bureaucrats, strongmen and businessmen to provide them with logistics support. Their vision, therefore, narrows to pleasing vote banks at all costs, minus principles.

They came together to form the National Democratic Alliance with the BJP and now some of them are part of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance. Despite several amendments to Tenth Schedule (anti-defection law) of the Constitution, floor-crossing has become a norm. People like mercurial president of Rashtriya Lok Dal Ajit Singh and Lok Janshakti Party leader Ram Vilas Paswan are known to find new friends in every election to remain on the right side of the power. History of sorts was created recently in the appointment of an independent MLA Madhu Koda as Jharkhand Chief Minister with support of UPA constituents. He was a member of the BJP-led government in the State till he decided to switch sides.

The then Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Kalyan Singh set a bad precedent by inducting MLAs defecting from other parties to support his government in 1999. Some of these groups didn’t have the one-third strength of their legislature party and hence were liable for disqualification. But, a pliable Speaker of the Assembly ensured that a decision on them was delayed till the next elections. “We shouldn’t have looked for short term gains as it inflicted greater damage on the party and the society”, then State BJP President Kalraj Mishra admits now. States like Goa, Rajasthan and Gujarat also have a history of defections. “Most defections happen in anticipation of a share in power. That’s why we amended the Tenth Schedule to make it mandatory for a person switching sides to seek re-election while denying any post or perk till the re-election”, says former NDA minister Shahnawaz Hussain.

The political class is ‘helped’ in going astray by a dedicated bureaucracy which plays a big role in most States in promoting and protecting interests of their political masters, in anticipation of ‘lucrative’ posting. This is the reason why States like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar witness an administrative overhaul with every change of regime. A corrupt bureaucracy prefers an acquiescing political master and vice versa. An internal churning among the civil service members in UP about 10 years ago identified three ‘most corrupt officers’ through secret ballot.

As per the results ‘leaked’ by official sources, each of the three has since served as the Chief Secretary – the top bureaucrat – of the State, thanks to the political patronage enjoyed by them. In fact, one of them had to be removed on orders of the court on a PIL.