Wreck

Congress is an institution wrecker, says Pratab Bhanu Mehta. I love Mehta's writing -- when I understand it. Which is rare. Perhaps Express should employ a re-writer for him.

He writes here: ......weak institutions disable you from being effective mediators in social conflict. Part of what institutions do is providing authoritative mediation of facts. The state faces a crisis of credibility when it is easy to impugn the facts it produces as partisan. Under those conditions, every group feels more entitled to continue believing what they were predisposed to believing, because there is no authority they can trust.

What he means, in English, seems to be: Whenever a section of the society cries about injustice, facts have to be ascertained. Who does that? Institutions like CBI. But do we trust CBI? No, because it is reputedly a ruling party's puppet. Tytler may really be innocent with regard to 1984 Sikh riots, but CBI's credibility is so low, thanks to Congress largely, that nobody believes the clean chit given to him.

And one doesn't understand, in many cases, what were the compulsions. Absolving Quattorchi is understandable, because he was close to Gandhis. But why shield Tytler? He was a non-entity. Why send Pratibha Patil to Rashtrapati Bhavan? There were several other Congress-friendly people with bigger statures. BJP can easily accuse Patil of favouring Congress if the mandate of this election is fractured and it becomes a toss-up between UPA and NDA. Because she commands no respect.

Why Navin Chawla is made Elections boss? BJP has accused him of being Congress-partisan many times. What if BJP were to question fairness of elections conducted under Chawla? We have had criminals getting elected to Parliament, but that's not the lowest point. Lowest point for the democracy will be when losing party will dub the elections unfair.