A report presented to the Indian Parliament by the country's Auditor General has alleged that there have been

many irregularities in allocating coal blocks for development and that politicians have benefited financially from this. The whole affair has come to be known as Coalgate. In the Coalgate mess, the Congress party has been hoist with its own petard. Tha t the report on coal block allocation by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CA G) would be adversarial and explosive was generally anticipated weeks ahead. In fact, the Coal ministry had warned the government months ago about irregularitie s in coal block allocations. Yet the Congress adopted the posture of a deer froz en in the headlights of a rapidly approaching vehicle. Even when it had favourab le cards to play, it kept them close to its chest. It has now emerged that the P rime Ministers Office (PMO) had asked the Coal ministry as early as April to iden tify favoured companies whose coal block allocations could be cancelled. If this had been made public before the CAG report came out, much of the public outrage against the Congress would have been defused; and the visceral attack by the Bh aratiya Janata Party (BJP) would have been somewhat blunted. It did not happen b ecause of the traditional lethargy of India s bureaucracy. Even worse, after the scam was exposed, Congress bigwigs tied themselves up in knots trying to justif y the indefensible; and ended up looking like total idiots. Predictably, the BJP seized the opportunity and came out swinging and it landed some big punches. The problem was that the BJP did not know when to stop. The pu blic loves a good fight and initially they cheered the party on. However, they d o not like to see the defeated being repeatedly kicked when he is already on the mat. The BJPs single point agenda of dislodging the PM became monotonous and the n irritating. In press conference after press conference, BJP leaders trotted ou t the same litany of the Congress calumny ad nauseum. They soon began to sound li ke a broken record and even their supporters tuned off. How long can you go on f logging a dead horse before you look pathetic? Even worse, the BJP refused to al low Parliament to function and this left a bad taste in the mouth of most Indian s. The BJPs insistence that the resignation of the PM is a deal breaker is ill thoug ht of and likely to boomerang on them. Already this far-fetched strategy has fou nd no support among the other political parties and I suspect that even some wit hin the BJP itself are not too enthusiastic about the idea. Think about it. The BJPs reasoning is that the PM was also the Coal minister during the tenure of Coa lgate and therefore needs to own up moral responsibility and quit. This would se t a horrible precedent as far as our politicians are concerned. They have a lot of skeletons in their cupboards as it is; and if they were to be held accountabl e for acts of commission and omission in previous postings, the halls of Parliam ent would soon echo in eerie silence. A brief aside here about the illustrious CAG, Vinod Rai. Like the former Chief E lection Commissioner, T N Seshan before him, here is a gentleman who clearly rev els in basking in the spotlight. Also like Seshan, Rai believes himself to be a modern day Lancelot selflessly tilting his lance at the corrupt establishment. H e has played this role so convincingly that every single section of the media th at has gone ballistic about the perceived corruption in Coalgate, has accepted i n toto the veracity of his report. While reams of newsprint and hours of debate have been expended in alleging that coal blocks have been allotted to private pl ayers who have little or no mining experience, for example, no one has pointed o ut according to Tavleen Singhs recent column - that since Indira Gandhi nationali zed coal way back in the 1970s, there were few opportunities for private sector companies to gain significant mining experience in the first place? To this date , almost two-thirds of Indias coal mines are owned by public sector Coal India an d their record of exploiting Indias coal deposits over the past 40 years has been anything but exemplary. I am not aware if these facts find a mention in the CAG report, but if so, they have been completely ignored by the media.

The BJPs holier-than-thou attitude is also starting to grate on the nerves. Contr ary to Goebbels assertion, repeating a series of half-truths ad infinitum does no t make them gospel. For one thing, the main reason the Congress has reaped the l arger windfall from Coalgate is that it happened to be in power at the time and was therefore in a position to dole out favours. If it had happened during the B JPs tenure, I doubt if the outcome would have been much different. Moreover, whil e it may be undeniable many private companies (and their political benefactors) have gained financially from the Congresss largesse, in terms of enhanced share v alue and so on; there is as yet no clinching evidence that the national excheque r suffered a loss of the magnitude claimed by the CAG. It is time the BJP got of f its high horse before it becomes a subject of ridicule. The dilemma of all political parties in India today is that they are increasingl y getting caught with their pants down by an aggressive and inquisitive media. T he weapon of plausible deniability that they employed so effectively in the past is being ripped away by the media laying their hands on incriminating documents with increasing frequency. How they are able to do so is a mystery yet to be re solved, but it means that the wrongdoers can no longer get away with feeble excu ses. The public is being increasingly aware and the politicians are beginning to realize that their golden age is coming to an end. One positive fallout of this new-found activism is that crooks and charlatans may come to the conclusion tha t politics is no longer a lucrative proposition and look for other avenues. One can only live in hope.