How many zeroes are there in 1.7 lakh crore?

This perverse pointless question may be a good diversion to indulge in while the nation openly wonders what is it that prevented prime minister Manmohan Singh, a man who otherwise enjoys an antiseptically clean image, from showing the exit door two years ago to minister for communications and information technology A Raja when the spectrum scam first hit the headlines. Raja continued to brazen it out, even as late as hours before he finally quit (Sunday, November 14), refusing to resign  in the face of blindingly obvious corruption charges in the allocation of 2G spectrum at dirt cheap rates in a whimsical manner in 2008.

Alarming frequency

At the last count, the loss to the exchequer due to the scandalous sale of 2G spectrum has been pegged at Rs 1.7 lakh crore, the biggest corruption figure in the annals of India, which is actually no stranger to sly deals from slier hands. The Rs 1.7 lakh crore is no vague ballpark figure, it’s a number vetted and verified by the comptroller and auditor general of India (CAG). In other words, it’s official.

In its report on the alleged scam in 2G spectrum allocation, CAG has said that the minister for communications and IT ignored advice from the PM and the ministries of law and finance, and the recommendations of the telecom commission to allocate 2G spectrum to a select group of companies at throwaway prices. The CAG has backed up its stinging censure of Raja by attaching files which, it claims, establish the minister’s personal culpability. As many as 85 licences to 12 companies out of the 122 new licences issued in the controversial January 2008 decision were granted to entities which did not meet the prescribed DoT eligibility conditions, the CAG said.

And it’s not just the CAG. During these two years of blatant disregard for propriety, the supreme court expressed its bafflement over Raja’s continuance in the government, the CBI filed an FIR in the case, the telecom regulatory authority of India (TRAI), independent media... well, everyone had just one terse line: Why is Raja still there?

People had quit in the face of lesser preliminary evidence. To put things in perspective, Ashok Chavan put in his papers over the Adarsh housing society scandal, a scam (in terms of money involved) that is less than pocket change compared to the mountainous spectrum shame. Not long ago, the dashing and debonair Shashi Tharoor paid with his job for so much as weighing in with his support for Rendezvous Sport, the consortium of bidders for the Kochi IPL franchise. Ok, Chavan and Tharoor have not exactly been punished for their malfeasance, but at least their resignations were construed as a modicum show of respect to notional propriety.

So why was it that even the bare minimum of acceptable standards in public life were not applicable in Raja’s case for so long? Why was the PM even ready to mortgage his own hard-earned credibility and honesty for the survival of an otherwise political nondescript hailing from the equally nondescript town of Perambalur in northern Tamil Nadu?

The question is simple, but the answer may be complex in that it may well be embedded with all the genetic truths sustaining the UPA government and its unpredicted and improbably huge victory in the general elections of 2009.

Pay pals

The appellation, spectrum scandal, is doubly appropriate as it possibly involves a wide spectrum of palace intrigues and powerful people who are the real monarchs of our virtual democracy and A Raja, just a pawn. The web subsumes the UPA’s costly, fantastic campaign in 2009. “Everybody has a price. The Congress and the DMK were in a position to pay that,” says a former bureaucrat in New Delhi. “It was a campaign that was well-greased. At that time (during the elections) we all wondered how the Congress and its allies could be so well-oiled.”
 
This is not an over-simplified speculation of fevered minds, but considered opinion of people who have seen plenty of poisoned plots and shady schemes that have been part and parcel of every dispensation across this hapless country. 

The simple theory, and the most plausible one doing the rounds, is that Raja may have lorded over the scandal as the telecom minister, but the buck, in more ways than one, actually doesn’t stop with him. It may run its journey through some of the most politically powerful corridors in Tamil Nadu, and of course, in New Delhi.
 
The real truths that sustain this stodgy shenanigan may not ever come to the surface, for it involves powerful families with unlimited lust for power and pelf. These are the forces that don’t play by the rules. Instead, they rewrite the rules for their personal convenience.

Mundane monarch

Come to think of it, Raja, modest and, to be brutally frank, mediocre, is the most unlikely person to be part of the clandestine cabal that virtually calls all the shots in India. How this low-key, laconic persona ended up at the centre of India’s biggest scandal ever is the stuff of urban legend and the all important happenstance that govern much of our random lives.

The 47-year-old Andimuthu Raja owes his rise as a politician to the fact that he is a dalit, a calling card that has opened many doors for him. Right from his young age, he has been associated with the DMK. But he moved in the ranks more through default (as a dalit) than through design. “He was lucky to be at the right place at the right time always. The DMK, despite playing the caste card, never held much sway over the dalit vote-bank. So to overcome this lacuna, it started throwing up token faces in the 1980s and 90s. Raja was churned out of this swirl,” says a leading political observer in Tamil Nadu.
 
But what Raja lacked in social skills and obvious talent, he made up with one quality that always pays rich dividends in the DMK: Implicit obedience to The Family. From a humble functionary in Perambalur, Raja rose by the sheer dint of his sycophancy and sworn allegiance to the DMK’s patriarch M Karunanidhi and his huge brood. He doesn’t have any distinguishing characteristic or talent. And paradoxically, this worked to his advantage. He doesn’t evoke extreme emotions in others. “So when the DMK was looking for an alternative to the pretentious Dayanidhi Maran to helm the lucrative telecom ministry, it opted for Raja, banking on the comfort of reliability and safety,” says a party functionary. “When Raja replaced a Family Hand, he, again by default, became part of The Family,” he adds. Fortune, for once, favoured a timid man.

All in the family

In fact, grapevine in Tamil Nadu suggests that all the spadework for the spectrum pile was done by the previous incumbent. “It was when the DMK realised that he may not share the booty that it developed cold feet. And the family politics came handy to elbow him out and in came Raja, who was as reliable as a Swiss banker,” says a source.  

To this day, Raja has not even attempted to build a political base for himself, and this has won him the confidence of The Family. Not for him the banal braggadocio of T R Baalu. Not for him the show pony theatrics of Dayanidhi Maran. Raja, in general, merges with the furniture.

He is such a political lightweight that he contested (and won) the last election from the sanctuary of a reserved constituency (the hilly Nilgiris, even though he hails from Perambalur). It’s a different matter that the sylvan woods of the hills these days reverberate with the whispers of large tracts of estates that he is said to have bought in close marriage with... well, we will not reveal names here, but in Tamil Nadu it is an open secret. There are also many barely kept secrets that have been the grist to ribald rumours.  

Though Raja is generally perceived to be close to Rajathi Ammal and Kanimozhi (Karunanidhi’s third wife and daughter from her respectively), Raja is also said to enjoy the confidence of M K Stalin, born to Karunanidhi’s second wife Dayalu Ammal. Even with Karunanidhi’s prodigal son M K Alagiri, Raja has always strived to be in his good books. So it was a bit of a surprise when it was reported that Raja got a humiliating open dressing down from Alagiri at New Delhi airport recently.

But, then again, it was the media which made a hue and cry out of it. Not Raja. His loyalty is sealed and it’s in the safe custody of Karunanidhi. Or so it seems. And that may be why Karunanidhi is overplaying his hand at the centre. And that is why Karunanidhi had MP daughter Kanimozhi parley with finance minister Pranab Mukherjee on November 11 when the clamour for the ouster of Raja had reached a crescendo. It is hardly likely that Kanimozhi would have discussed the setting of winter  in New Delhi. Even as late as that the DMK was unwilling to  sacrifice Raja.

Raja too bluntly refused to give in to the demands of resignation. On November 12, Raja, in a rare show of bristling confidence, taunted arch rival, the AIADMK’s honcho J Jayalalithaa, for making bold to seek his resignation. “Why should I resign?” was his simple message. Effrontery? It may be. But it also shows the kind of confidence that he enjoyed from his mentor and master. He followed this up with a detailed interview in The Hindu on November 14 ruling out resignation.

Karunanidhi, too, for his part, pooh-poohed Jayalalithaa’s open wooing of the Congress for a potential alliance in the future. “We know the doors will be locked for you,” the redoubtable Kalaignar said  on the floor of Tamil Nadu assembly.

Cong corner

Well, Raja may mean many things to the DMK, its chief and his families and its various members, but why should that have been a matter at all for the Congress at the centre when it didn’t mind showing the exit gate to its own men for lesser transgressions?
 
Politically it seemed a daft idea, as the blissful continuance of Raja in the face of mounting evidence and loud protest was only making things difficult for the Congress. It is also unlikely that coalition compulsions would have put the Congress in a tight spot. The DMK neither has the numbers nor the political heft to rock the UPA boat in the present scenario. If anything, the DMK needs the ministerial crumbs at the centre at least to keep the raging Alagiri occupied. An unyoked Alagiri, we all know, will prove to be the bull in the DMK’s shop in Chennai. Remember, Alagiri is locked in an open succession war with younger brother M K Stalin. While the patriarch has publicly announced Stalin as his successor, Alagiri has openly said he would stake claim for the leadership of the party in a post-Karunanidhi scenario. Alagiri has been packed off to the centre to keep him busy and keep him away from Stalin and Tamil Nadu politics. Even with a full time job as fertilizer minister, he is known to spend more time in the state than in parliament or his ministry. So if the DMK should pull out and he should be jobless, that’s a political situation even Karunanidhi may not be able to handle. Sharing power at the centre is central to the DMK’s political and financial plans.

The Congress party and the UPA government have painted a picture of helplessness in dealing with the DMK, but that theory crumbles on the first challenge. The fact is, the DMK needs the Congress more than the Congress needs the latter. In Tamil Nadu, the Congress has suffered  due to its association with the DMK. The Family excesses have, by association, only brought a bad name to the Congress and, it is an inalienable fact that DMK doesn’t have the numbers to survive in the state legislative assembly. [Total seats: 235, DMK: 99, AIADMK: 57 and Congress: 35.] If the Congress walks out, as is demanded by some stray voices in the state, the DMK government may well fall with a huge thud. And it would be out of power both at the centre and the state. With elections to the Tamil Nadu assembly due in six months, that is hardly a situation that the DMK would have relished. Hence, the Congress’ bargaining power with the DMK were never in doubt, unlike the picture painted in Delhi.

So if all the aces are with the Congress, why did it not play them for two years? Well, for this, you have to understand the strange political relationship between the octogenarian Kalaignar and the Congress Party. “It’s a tie that looks unbreakable. Seems forged on iron and steel,” opines a journalist, who has been following the affairs of the DMK both in Tamil Nadu and New Delhi. That is why Karunanidhi can openly challenge the AIADMK to try and unhinge the Congress from his confident clasp. And what exactly is the reason for the Congress-Karuna bond is the Rs 1.7 lakh crore question and it is implausible that it has got to do only with good chemistry or political necessity.

Congress will do nothing that will hurt Kalaignar. And Manmohan Singh can’t do anything that would hurt Sonia. This reasoning may kind of answer why Raja continued his charmed, but brazen run for two years.

It was Congress’ (and by extention Manmohan Singh’s) unwillingness rather than helplessness that kept Raja, the face of  everything that denotes poor governance, in the saddle for this long.  He would have continued if not for the deluge of statements from senior bureaucrats (two former telecom secretaries and a former telecom regulatory authority of India chief) severely and directly indicting Raja for the scam and the fact that the Supreme Court of India had scheduled a hearing for Monday (November 15), the Congress would have been happy to let Raja be.

Raja is not the only villain in India’s biggest scam to date. The Congress has as much explaining to do as the DMK. So, when you read headlines such as “Raja quits as Cong refuses to relent” (Economic Times), “DMK wilts under pressure from Cong” (Mail Today) and “DMK blinks in faceoff against Cong” (Times of India), take them with all the salt you can buy for Rs 1.7 lakh crore. Because, from the way the Congress has behaved it’s clear that it couldn’t, for some reason, even look the DMK straight in the eye, forget about staring it down. We will never come to know the high price we are paying for this late burst of conscience from the Congress party.

We will never get to know the real ‘Rajas’ of the telecom scam.
 
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