Congress and its oily link

The United Nations' $64 billion oil-for-food scandal seems to be snowballing into another Bofors. While the report has cooked the goose of External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh despite his high-decibel claims of Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh backing him, it is Sonia who could be in serious trouble for her dubious role in the whole episode. If the assertions of an Iraq-based Indian businessman Haridarshan Singh Majie is found true then Sonia's letter of solidarity for Saddam could just open a whole can of worms. This is the first time that Sonia's name has figured in the scam after the Volcker report that listed Singh and the Congress Party as "non-contractual beneficiaries" of the food-for-oil programme. So what we have in our hand is a deadly cocktail of greed, money and sheer opportunism.

Natwar would have to go despite all his hamming and hawing about the Volcker report. Because the longer he stays as external affairs minister of India, he would be damaging India's cause at the international areana. Natwar Singh erred on many counts. He suggests that the annexures have been made by the present government. The records are all from the nationalised oil company under Saddam rule. The Volcker committee cross-checked it with the bank records. Beyond all this what is really disturbing is the conduct of the oldest political party of the country. Instead of rebutting the charges in the Volcker report, all that the lawyer-politcians and senior leaders in the Grand old party have done is brazen denial. The tactics seem to be deny, deny till the stormclouds blow over and a new issue takes centrestage.

The sheer extent of the scam is indicates of how a humanitarian programme was subverted by unscruplous individuals ranging from anti-imperialist sloganeering politicians like Natwar who lobbied for a pro-Saddam Hussein policy at home to Marc Rich, America’s biggest white collar criminal. They set aside all sense of ethics and scruples to mint billions of dollars by paying kickbacks to Saddam Hussein while the masses for whose benefit the programme was intended continued to live wretched lives.

What is really interesting and gailing is that how a section of the mainstream media have taken cudgels on behalf of Congress and Natwar Singh. While NDTV 24X7 on Saturday ran "exclusive" interview with Natwar who kept on rubbishing the Volcker report in capital letters(quite churlish I must say) to a intent Barkha Dutt, the venerable Hindu kept on poking holes in the report. Even N Ram of Hindu allowed did not seem convinced by the indictment handed out to Natwar in the the Volcker report,

The Big Fight show in NDTV 24x7 being compered by Vikram Chandra was simply claptrap and looked like Prannoy Roy's subtle way to bury the issue. The way Vikram compered it looked like it was NDTV bosses who suffered from Big Fright. Throughout the show, Vikram just refused to allow economist Surajit Bhalla when the latter started reading from a sheaf of paper detailing the flow of funds to Congress. The fright of finding Congress and Natwar in trouble. I am just guessing what the bosses at NDTV ordered to their editors after the scandal broke out. The Hindu of course, having decided to save "anti-imperialist" Natwar, today made some amends and published the whole list of Indian companies mentioned in the Volcker report. In its eagerness to toe the Commie line of saving Natwar and Congress, Hindu seems to have eroded its credibility while covering the scandal.

To quote Swapan Dasgupta in the Big Fight, it's not imperialism that is all about profits. Even anti-imperialism also equals profits.