Porngate. Day of Shame. Karnataka’s blackest day. Call it what you will. It must rank as the most embar rassing episode yet. What could possibly be more scandalous than this? And is there more to come? Lawmakers blithely – and surreptiously – flipping through images of a woman being brutalised. That’s not even porn.
In my book, it makes this trio, a party to the assault. And the more the ruling party tries to wish it away, the more it will come back to haunt them. Because, gentlemen, it's not going to go away. The embarrassment every time television plays the pictures – and they have done so, on the hour, by the hour – and you and I squirm, as must hundreds of others, every time that happens, they will shrink further in the eyes of an unforgiving people.
The BJP must call it like it is. Pointing fingers at other political leaders’ wayward behaviour isn’t enough. And it doesn’t make what Laxman Savadi did, right. lean up your own house, BJP. A minister’s private conquests may win the macho male brownie points among his peers. And clearly, for Messrs Palemar, Savadi and Patil – and god knows who else among the political class – it’s Silvio ‘Bunga Bunga’ Berlusconi, who is the ideal.
Not the right thinking Lal Krishna Advani or the suitably sari-clad epitome of the Bharatiya Naari – Ms Sushma Swaraj, sindoor, bindi, mangalsutra and pallav firmly in place (who at least had the grace to say she was embarrassed). akes one wonder. Is all of this one great big charade? And who’s the hypocrite? The politician who plays us, the gullible public? Or we, the people, perpetuating the fraud, the hypocrisy that the perfect neta, flawed, human, but putting us and our needs first actually exists?
But this much is clear — whether it’s man attacks nurse, minister rapes friend’s wife, these and sundry other sexual misdemeanours that in the real world would invite arrest and prosecution, none of these see our khadi-clad ministers clapped in irons. Apart from the odd N. D. Tiwari, no case of sexual misconduct has ever been prosecuted. Unlike corruption, which clearly, for reasons unknown, riles us all as a nation, far more than sexual misconduct.
As for porngate, is there ever going to be a day when absolutely nothing scandalous happens in the city — as Karnataka lurches from one crisis to another, one jaw-droppingly, horrific tale after the next, each one worse than the one that has gone before. The only conclusion that one can draw is that our elected official – the Rt Hon. Mantriji must believe – mistakenly — that winning high office gives him a licence to do exactly what he wants, when he wants; that it bestows an immunity, a free pass to every kind of wrong-doing, where he can do pretty much as he pleases and that nobody will call him to account.
As for Ordinary Joe – that’s you and me, folks — who pays his taxes to keep the khadi-clad in clover, he’s unlikely to do anything more than snigger, shrug his shoulders and move on.
Indeed, it’s the party that must act. The buck should stop there. Instead of Big Brother reading them the riot act, its Big Brother who gives them carte blanche, smiling on benignly at their many peccadilloes. And as the former chief minister B. S. Yeddyurappa did, rise to the defence of his wayward favourites, and put the blame squarely on the media for making a big deal about something as inconsequential as two ministers watching a porn clip on a mobile handset while the government was discussing serious business in the House!
Indeed, for this political class, wrongdoing has become a rite of passage. When in fact, it must be doing the right thing that must be measured and quantified and held up for scrutiny before any man or woman is allowed to take on the mantle of leader.
Nobody expects a selfless Gandhi, Nehru or Patel in this self-indulgent world. But instead of brushing porngate aside, under an already bulging, crowded carpet, the BJP should look at how and why men with a little money and no political pedigree are welcomed into the party, rather than people who have worked for the welfare of the people.
Ensuring that the this trio are punished to the full measure of the law goes without saying. Indeed, the matter which is not being addressed, and in fact, being drowned out in the cacophony of blame that each of these tainted men is laying at each other’s door – does one really care whose phone it was – is the shocking lack of awareness among our legislators of what is right and wrong.
Political parties at the centre, generally look to the states to churn out the revenue that keeps the wheels of politics well oiled. Granted, Karnataka has always been a cash-rich state and the last thing the BJP wants is for anything to upset that apple-cart. But the red faces in Delhi over porngate, and the body blow that B. S. Yeddyurappa received with the Supreme Court ordering a CEC probe, bear the portents of an internal implosion in the making.
Those who have watched the state’s previous governments say the rot that has set into the BJP, the bickering and the factional divide, and now the corrosion of its soul and what the BJP stood for, mirrors the death throes of the once mighty Congress and the nascent hope that rested with the the Janata Dal, the political experiment gone awry.
Chief Minister Sadananda Gowda is not a man one envies in the slightest. If he had only a BSY, who wanted to continue to play puppeteer even when out of government to deal with, to worry about, that would have been difficult enough. But add the problems that are being laid at his door with one minister after another being knocked out of the bowling alley that is his cabinet – 11 ministers have stepped down and Mr Gowda is left holding 19 portfolios – and you catch my drift.
Political pundits say that the BJP high command can see the writing on the wall, that they give their southern saffron outreach less than four months before it goes down – BSY striking out on his own to form a Veerashaiva- OBC alliance... whatever. Clearly, something’s gotta give…
