Average Indian cares about roti, rice not Bofors, 2G etc...

Last week’s headlines were haunted by news from about a decade ago. The Bofors scam and the Tehelka sting, involving former BJP President Bangaru Laxman, were both at least a decade old but dominated the headlines with India’s two biggest political parties slinging mud at each other over the level of corruption they had allegedly stooped to. But do average Indians really care about a decade-old or two-decade old scam or about the prices of mangoes and vegetables?  “What concerns them (Indians) is the skyrocketing price of vegetables. Okra, beans, carrots cost Rs 40-50 a kilo. Vegetable production was down by 25 per cent last month pushing up prices, yet again. Fruit is a luxury. In fact in many middle class homes it is a non-essential. What is summer without mangoes?!” argues Smita Prakash in her column in Midday.

According to Prakash, while the price of vegetables isn’t in the hands of the government,  high inflation is ensuring that the common man did not have the ability to pay for vegetables and fruits. “The UPA has two years, which is certainly not enough to provide bijli + sadak + rice + pani + roti + kapda + makaan to all of India. Actually all of India doesn’t even expect it out of them. All it hopes is now for a modest economic recovery. Stop the slide, arrest recessionary trends, help in job creation, get rid of toxic taxes, convince investors of your growth policies,” she says. She may have a point. S&P has lowered its outlook for the country, FII’s are cashing their chips and as Firstpost pointed out the government looks all set to miss ots aims of curbing the fiscal deficit.

While it does not mean that we should condone corruption does it mean that the government and other political parties need to look beyond only incremental gains on arguments over corruption and look to pass meaningful legislation that could aid the economy? Both Bofors and Laxman’s case should perhaps be taken to a logical conclusion but can they be used purely to get political points that can be leveraged for future polls? Or are India’s two biggest political parties barking up the wrong tree?