NCP leader Sharad Pawar’s intervention in the ongoing Adani controversy has surely embarrassed the Congress party. Notwithstanding the attempt by Congress leaders to put a brave face on it, the damage is certainly done when someone like Pawar argues that the demand for a Joint Parliamentary Committee to look into the Adani affair is unjustified. Mallikarjun Kharge and Jairam Ramesh might feel obliged to endorse whatever the Gandhi scion says, but there is merit in the NCP leader’s argument that a JPC will serve little purpose when a) the ruling party will still enjoy a majority in such a JPC, and, b) a Supreme Court-ordered inquiry by experts has a better chance to find out if any laws were broken. That Pawar spoke to the Adani-owned NDTV channel is not as important as the fact that he decided to break ranks with the rest of the Opposition to strike a discordant note instead of leaving it vague by choosing to remain silent on the issue. Clearly, he was unhappy the way Rahul Gandhi had steamrolled the entire Opposition into disrupting the budget session over the demand for a JPC.
Pawar’s charge that Adani was targeted by the Hindenburg Report, which triggered the controversy asserting that the group was over-leveraged and had manipulated books of accounts, also may not be far off the mark. After all, the Hindenburg Report is a self-avowed short-seller, playing the market for profits after ferreting out what it claims are dark secrets of the businesses under its scanner. Indeed, the NCP leader doled out a lot of common wisdom such as how when he first started in politics it was fashionable to deride Birla and Tata for all the ills of the country — just as it is common now to blame Ambani and Adani for the current troubles of the people. It was important to realise that without the Birlas and Tatas, the Ambanis and Adanis, the economic development of the nation would be stunted. As long as various industrial groups follow the law and operate within the prescribed parameters no one should have any problem with the private sector wealth-creators. Without the contribution of corporates it would be hard to finance all the infrastructure projects and all the welfare schemes governments at the Centre and the States routinely undertake to alleviate the sufferings of the people. It is extraordinary that such a commonsensical argument required to be aired to educate people who for their own partisan political ends were bent on painting Adani and, by implication, all big businesses as black and unwelcome. Not long ago, Rahul Gandhi may not like to remember, his grandmother’s government was accused of favouring the Ambanis, the same way he is now accusing the Modi Government of advancing the cause of the Adanis. It is remarkable that the Ambanis first grew big before the regulatory structures were put in place in the post-economic liberalisation period. The Modi Government may well have facilitated the extraordinary growth of the Adanis in the last eight-nine years. But the question is whether in so doing any laws were broken and, more importantly, whether there was any quid pro quo arrangement. This has not been established.
It is a different matter that Rahul Gandhi has decided that the only way he can regain relevance for self and the party he controls unofficially is by tearing apart the popular image of the prime minister as an honest man who has not tainted his hands with the filthy lucre all through his long political career. He did that on the eve of the 2019 parliamentary poll as well, going around the country chanting “Chowkidar chor hai”. And the people answered by thoroughly rejecting him and his party. So much so, Rahul himself lost his hitherto family pocket-borough of Amethi. Now that yet another parliamentary poll looms large, the Gandhi scion is singing the same tune, albeit replacing the Raffle deal with the Adanis to peg his charge of corruption. By all accounts, this time too there are few takers for Rahul’s mud-slinging. Maybe his own credibility is so low, given the series of scams linked to the larger Gandhi parivar that coming from him the charge of corruption against Modi falls completely flat. Instead of strengthening his party at the grassroots, which entails dogged hard work and patience, tarring the reputation of Modi in the hope that some of the mud would stick is a sure-fire recipe for a repeat failure. Rahul should introspect. The country still does not take him seriously.
