Thriving on opacity?

It is as if Rahul Gandhi is on steroids. And the BJP is supplying the stuff. After his all-guns blazing performance at the press conference last week at the AICC headquarters, there really is only one thing left to do for the Congress: the en masse resignation of the party’s MPs. There are only 51 anyway. The mileage from this should galvanise the party. There would always be the question if mass resignation would not subvert parliamentary practices. Well, the finance bill was passed without a debate.

At the press conference, Rahul Gandhi raised a few questions. He demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi supply the answers. The questions were related to Gautam Adani’s company transactions. I am not sure if the prime minister of a country would know the minute details of the transactions of a private firm. There is an SC panel investigating the alleged irregularities as we speak.

One of the questions raised was about the Rs 20,000 crore “round-tripping”. Gandhi would like the PM to account for how this amount was pumped into Adani’s “shell companies”. Well, if you believe the Hindenburg Report, it allows you to hazard a guess that the money may have come from Elara, an investment company with offices in London, New York, and Singapore. According to Google, Elara is a registered financial engineering and asset-management company. Gandhi’s point was that “this money can’t be his (Adani’s)”. Maybe. Maybe not. But how would the PM know whose money is circulating in whose account, even if the businessman concerned is a favourite of his?

Another question Gandhi raised was about the identity of the “Chinese face” , much in evidence in the close circle of Adani. It is not a mystery. According to the intrepid journalist-activist Rejimon Kuttappan, a self-confessed supporter of Gandhi and a migrant labour expert, Chang Chung Ling, director of Gudami International, is the man wearing that face. He is on the director board of many Adani companies. Well, why can’t he be on board? China has not been declared an enemy country by India.

A special strength of Adani is the heavy-capital infrastructure where the government goes in for public and private participation. Adani is clever and daring in this field in both raising the monies from abroad and delivering the product often ahead of time. From the time Modi became the Gujarat CM, he had discovered in his backyard a reliable and classic capitalist with an unmatched appetite for risk and profit—Adani. Why would Modi not rely on him?

And it is not just Narendra Modi. In 2015, a few months after Modi had just come to power in Delhi, Adani gave one of his rare interviews. In Times of India (June 24, 2015), he said he had been just as useful (as he is now to Modi’s India) to the developmental agenda of the country—until recently under Manmohan Singh. An excerpt: “During the UPA regime, (2004 to 2014), our market cap grew from Rs 882 crore to Rs 40,473 crore, a 4,500 per cent increase, at a time when our stock market indices have been touching an all-time high, the market cap of our companies increased by 65 per cent, driven by a combination of factors related to performance, restructuring, and expectations of the India growth story.” Whether it is the Congress PM or the BJP PM, clearly, there seems to be a convergence in the interests of India and that of one individual.

Again, Gandhi raised the question of the PM’s business delegations on his visits abroad. What’s trade without the merchants? Adani has accompanied the PM on many trips. How many times? We don’t know. We should. The BJP finds itself on the defensive because the party and the PMO see the delegation question as a potential trap. The thing to do is to reveal the delegation lists. Normally, these should be available to the Chief Information Officer. Alternatively, the information should be available on the PMO website. I checked both sources and drew a blank. The problem to my mind is not so much as Adani, a pioneering businessman in his own right, accompanying a pro-development PM; it is the withholding of information.

Where Rahul Gandhi’s knife seems to find the sweetest spot is in Modi’s proximity to Adani. Is this such a terrible crime? Any government in a hurry would have its favourites. In the Nehruvian 50s through the 70s, it was the Tatas, Birlas, and Dalmias. In the mid-80s through the early 2000s, it was the Ambanis and IT entrepreneurs. Right now, it is the Adanis.

Rahul Gandhi has worked hard to seize the day. But what has helped him more than anything else is the information opacity maintained by the BJP dispensation. This sooner or later ties up with free speech problems which in turn leads to arbitrary arrests and persecution by government agencies. Since last week’s court ruling, Gandhi comes across as a victim and a hero, a great combination.

If the prime minister could bring himself to lead a more open governance, Rahul Gandhi would really have neither the martyr’s halo that he has now acquired, nor an arsenal. The BJP needs to push back the culture of trolling and personal abuse and go easy on the use of government agencies like the ED if only because these are generating support for the Opposition. Social media is suddenly full of women and men swooning in sympathy for Gandhi, who has skilfully, and at great personal pain, graduated from crass politics to working on the emotions of the people, a quantum factor. And a great deal of credit for this transformation goes to the BJP.

The writer is a poet, novelist, and screenplay writer. Views expressed are personal