M D Nalapat
Wafting
through the corridors of North Block, the abode of India’s sprawling
Home Ministry, are rumours that Congress President Sonia Gandhi wants a
more youthful face to her loyal government than the 77-year old Manmohan
Singh, and that her choice is the athletic 64-year old, Palaniappan
Chidambaram, who was shifted from Finance to Home after the 26/11 Mumbai
attacks in 2008. The new minister in charge of internal security shares
with the current Prime Minister the advantage (in Sonia Gandhi’s eyes)
of having a zero political base, thus being unable to pose any political
challenge to the Nehru dynasty, which was ruled the Congress Party (and
usually the country) since the 1930s. Should Chidambaram be appointed
PM, he is unlikely to repeat Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s
feat of replacing the Bandaranaike family’s control over the Lankan
ruling party with that of his own clan. Congress office-bearers say that
the Congress President’s instruction to her new Home Minister was
simple: prevent another terrorist attack, so as to prevent the BJP from
staging a comeback on the back of public insecurity.
Chidambaram, who in his other life is one of the country’s top lawyers, knows that he has to deliver, and his chosen way has been to reinforce the system of bureaucratic control that he had favoured while Finance Minister from 2004 to 2008. During that time, he ensured that sweeping powers were given to the Income-Tax Department, so that in today’s “democratic” India, any taxman can - in his subjective estimation - accuse a citizen of evading taxes by concealing income, and freeze bank accounts and take over property. Several such actions have been taken out of the purview of courts by modifications in the rules introduced by Chidambaram, not that the courts in India can be expected to deliver justice in a single lifetime. For example, the Bhopal phosgene gas leak caused 15,000 deaths and more than 117,000 serious illnesses in 1984. Only last week (26 years later) has a token sentence of 2 years in jail been awarded to the officers of Union Carbide, the US company that operated the Bhopal plant. Naturally, the convicted officers all got bail immediately after the verdict, and went home to their families, even as the Bhopal victims still writhe in pain and starve because several are physically unable to work.
