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One hundred and twenty years ago Grover Cleveland campaigned for his party's nomination as candidate for the White House. One sceptic asked a Cleveland supporter why he was backing a man who had antagonised every other politician.
Pat came the classic response: ``We love him most for his enemies!'' a reference to Cleveland's battle against nepotism in public life. (For the record, Cleveland is the only man who won back the presidency after losing it). Does the BJP-led ministry understand how important it is to choose one's foes and friends carefully?
That question is more than academic after two incidents in the past week. Does this ministry want to be seen as one that won't do business with Ratan Tata, yet cheerfully embrace Pawan Sachdeva of MS Shoes? Is that really the image it desires?
Obviously not. But between them that is precisely what an overzealous Urban Development Minister and an overcautious Civil Aviation Minister have managed to do. I don't question their intentions, but that is the public perception of their actions.
Let us begin with the Tatas. It is generally believed that the Tatas possess the cleanest image of any industrial house in India. Bribery and influence-peddling are not considered business as usual in Bombay House. MS Shoes, on the other hand, has made news for all the wrong reasons. Yet it is the Tatas who have had their proposals delayed so often that the group gave up in utter disgust. That doesn't make sense.
I am sure both Ram Jethmalani and Ananth Kumar can make an excellent case. I am also willing to believe that the laws of India support them. But I invoke the principle of Caesar's wife, who must not only be pure but publicly seen be such.
The Union Urban Development Minister seems to feel that the HUDCO has been unfair to MS Shoes. He is, he further claims, doing nothing more than implement a judgment given by the courts. He adds for good measure that much the same decision was given the green signal by the Rajiv Gandhi regime. All this is certainly true, but certain questions remain unanswered.
Why, for instance, isn't the HUDCO being permitted to go on appeal to a higher court? With due respect to all concerned, shouldn't the HUDCO be permitted to go all the way up to the highest bench itself? To take a parallel, presiding officers in the lower courts can hand down the death penalty but that doesn't mean that execution follows immediately.
In any case, I don't know if the minister was aware of a pertinent detail when he made his decision. Even as the Union Urban Development Ministry was giving MS Shoes its due, another wing of the government -- the CBI -- was applying the final touches to the chargesheet against the same MS Shoes. The Law Ministry had already cleared the file.
It will be pointed out, quite correctly, that these are two different cases which just happen to be about the same set of people. But I am afraid that people at large won't make such a fine distinction. What they will see is that Ram Jethmalani's ministry is tilting towards MS Shoes even as the CBI prepares to take action against that firm.
In any case, what was the hurry? Wouldn't it have been better if the MS Shoes case was left to the court? I am sure their Lordships would have done a better job of making amends for a previous injustice, if any, to MS Shoes. Quite frankly, making an out-of-court settlement under such circumstances is almost calculated to shake public confidence in the integrity of this government.
MS Shoes, lest we forget, is a firm that allegedly owes over Rs. 200 crore to various financial institutions such as the IDBI. And I am sure that either the Finance Ministry or the CBI would have supplied the details to the Urban Development Ministry if they had been asked. If only the government had examined the MS Shoes case with the same ultra-high-powered microscopes trained on the ill-fated Tata Airlines proposal!
The Tatas certainly didn't lack enemies when they tried to champion fleeced passengers in the face of well-entrenched interests. As I understand, there were three groups actively campaigning against the Tatas -- the Indian Airlines lobby, the private airlines, and the Left (which continues to oppose anything done by the private sector from Stalinist mulishness).
Between them, the three had done a great job of driving the Tatas to distraction long before the Vajpayee ministry came to power. As Ratan Tata said in that last letter of his to the Civil Aviation Ministry, the Tatas fought for three years before throwing in the towel. But vested interests kept the Tatas at bay despite there being three governments in three years.But Ghulam Nabi Azad and C.M. Ibrahim are luckier than the hapless Ananth Kumar. Though their opposition to the Tatas was far more strident, it is the BJP minister who has been left holding the baby. But this was supposed to be a government with a difference, wasn't it?
As in the MS Shoes case, the concerned minister may seem to have a case. It is only reasonable to ask for six weeks to conduct a full examination of the proposal, right? Wrong.
It isn't a re-examination per se that is so bad, but the double standards that come into play. The biggest private sector operator in Indian skies is Jet Airways which has 19 planes. The Civil Aviation Ministry has permitted it to take that figure up to 25. Yet it seems that the Tatas may not be permitted to operate a mere seven planes.
Such behaviour sends out a clear message to any entrepreneur who is considering putting his money in India: for all the talk of liberalisation, this country is still ruled by cronyism. That is not the message India needs to send out at this point in time.
The Urban Development Minister has, if nothing else, given the public his side of the case. His colleague in the Civil Aviation Ministry hasn't done even that. Of course, given the rather lame defence of the whole HUDCO-MS Shoes tangle (and the utter unpopularity of Indian Airlines with the paying public) silence just might be the best refuge.
Does the ministry at large realise just how much its image has been dented in just a few days? With the best of intentions, with all the legal facts arrayed solemnly behind them, the Urban Development Ministry and the Civil Aviation Ministry have done a marvelous job of blackening the government's face.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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