Of mice and men, corruption and larger abuse of power

Opposition leaders are asking the BJP to bring it on, in other words, testing the extent to which the Modi regime can use its power to go in for overkill

From the way Narendra Modi describes it, the series of solidarity meetings or statements by regional parties in opposition to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) because all of them are being investigated by either the Enforcement Directorate or the Central Bureau of Investigation or the Income Tax or any other "agency" for abuse of power to amass ill-gotten wealth, that is, corruption, is much like the blind mice in the nursery rhyme, running together from the vengeful farmer's wife.

The difference is that there are more than three political parties being investigated for their corrupt deeds by the Modi regime, threatened by the prospect of having their tails cut off. The PM, permanently in election mode, though he is selective about the issues he addresses, said the opposition was united by corruption immediately after Telangana Rashtra Samithi leader, and Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao met Bihar CM and Janata Dal (United) chief Nitish Kumar and Rashtriya Janata Dal leader and deputy CM Tejashwi Yadav in Patna.

It was Modi's contention that opposition unity was an unholy nexus prompted by the investigations of the agencies. If any confirmation is necessary that the Modi regime is leveraging its power through the "agencies" to chastise and therefore discredit the anti-BJP opposition, his statement during his Kerala trip nails it. "What we see is that when we take action against the corrupt persons, there has emerged a new polarisation in national politics. To save these corrupt people, certain political groups are openly coming out and trying to get organised into a unit," he declared. He then called for a new era of vigilance against such people and groups.

KCR's efforts to forge "the main front" against the BJP and not just an opposition front, seems to have got under Modi's skin. In recent weeks, KCR has held meetings with Nitish Kumar, Tejashwi Yadav and the veteran leader Lalu Prasad Yadav in Bihar, Arvind Kejriwal in New Delhi, M K Stalin in Tamil Nadu, Hemant Soren in Jharkhand, Uddhav Thackrey in Maharashtra and Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal.

The recognition by Modi that there is indeed a new polarisation in national politics is significant. There is a shift from attacking regional parties are defenders of "parivarvad," that is, dynastic politics, to talking about a new polarisation. It implies that the dogged pursuit of the anti-BJP to forge a "main front", as KCR put it, has begun to annoy the BJP. In other words, the continuing efforts by different opposition leaders to build unity among the parties, in what is becoming a non-formal relay race, pose a challenge to party managers in the BJP.

Neither Modi nor the BJP seems comfortable with the uncertainty and unexpectedness that is intrinsic to a fragmented opposition that has no single leader but is strongly committed to one objective, challenging the BJP and bringing about its downfall. The Congress, as a symbol of everything that the BJP is not, was an easy target. A multitude of regional parties that are singularly themselves is a political monster that cannot be beheaded.

The calculation of political damage in each of the states and against each of these regional party leaders under agency investigations will have to wait for the next round of elections. In West Bengal, the panchayat elections due by the end of the year would be one way of measuring public sentiment over the BJP's aggressive exercises in unearthing corruption, by either reviving dormant investigations into corruption cases or initiating new investigations. Meanwhile, Mamata Banerjee and her nephew, Abhishek Banerjee, have upped the ante by turning even more excoriating in their attacks against Modi and the BJP.

From Arvind Kejriwal to Mamata Banerjee and the Shiv Sena and Tejashwi Yadav, there is a logic to the strategy of fighting back. Each of them has challenged the BJP to bring it on; in other words, test the extent to which the Modi regime can use its power to go in for overkill. Arvind Kejriwal has taken the fight all the way to Gujarat, claiming that the appeal of the Aam Aadmi Party goes up by four per cent after every raid and every accusation of corruption against his government, especially in the globally lauded education and school upgrade programme. Mamata Banerjee has ordered her administration to investigate any wrongdoing and bulldoze any property that has been illegally constructed on illegally encroached land in Harish Chatterjee Street, where her home is. Her nephew has demanded, after being interrogated by ED for hours, that Amit Shah as the home minister, should be investigated for the illegal cross-border cattle trade and the illegal coal mining scam. His reasoning is simple; the border is manned by the BSF, and security in the coal mines is provided by the CISF, both of which report to the home ministry.

The opposition and the Modi regime, and by extension, the BJP, seem locked in a relentless confrontation over abuse of power. For Modi, the emergence of "certain political groups" that are "openly" coming out and trying to get organised is a target in the ongoing war to convince voters to choose the righteous over the corrupt. For the political group or groups, or disparate political parties, Modi's abuse of power by unleashing "vendetta" politics is only one of the targets in the ongoing political war. The opposition is also chasing a less easy-to-counter and sly objective, asking why the BJP is the only "clean" party in India.

Questioning the BJP's incorruptibility is a particularly difficult one for the party to address. The opposition seems to have belatedly woken up to this. In 2021, Mamata Banerjee, in her inimitable style, described the BJP as a "washing machine," where leaders under investigation for corruption could be processed and come out smelling clean. Other opposition parties have begun recycling the idea of the washing machine and turning up the heat by resorting to a Biblical device to trap the BJP; "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone."

Corruption or administrative overreach via investigations triggered by the new polarisation are part of the same crime: abuse of power. On corruption, "It is retail versus pipeline corruption", one Trinamool Congress Member of Parliament said recently, referring to ongoing investigations into cross-border cattle trade vis-à-vis the vertiginous climb of Gautam Adani from "just another billionaire to pipping Mukesh Ambani to the top in under two years must be a record of some sort,"
as one news report put it.

Mapping the many ways in which power is abused by regimes and leaders, by definition all being temporary office holders, is, however, larger than retail corruption. It is against the larger abuse of power by the Modi regime and by the BJP using Modi as a shield that the opposition is "openly coming out and trying to get organised into a unit." This increases the probability of more action by the Modi regime and the BJP, wherever it is in power, to unearth retail corruption.

(Shikha Mukerjee is a senior journalist based in Kolkata)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.