'Gandhis do not work for a living': Is Arun Jaitley breaking the Indian netas' omerta?

Stonewalling the critical questions on her help to Lalit Modi by digging up the Congress’s dubious past, a quarrelsome Sushma Swaraj may have managed to hoodwink her supporters inside and outside the Parliament. But, by backing up her below-the-belt blows to Rahul Gandhi and his family, Finance Minister Arun Jaitely has opened up a new debate, which if followed up, could make many professional politicians in India quite uncomfortable. In an obvious reference to Swaraj’s daughter working as a lawyer to the bad Modi, Jaitley accused the Gandhis of not doing any work for a living. “There are still some honest people whose children have to work for a living. There are other people who, for generations in politics, have not worked for a living. They have learnt the art of living comfortably without working, which we have not,” he said. In simple language, what Jaitley has said was this: for generations, the Gandhis have been living off politics. He didn’t mention if it’s through rent seeking or through landlordism, but made it sufficiently clear that politics is what sustains their “comfortable” lives. Probably, this was a party ploy to get mean and personal and rescue Swaraj from her current ignominy because a few days ago the Human Resources Minister Smriti Irani also had the same argument. “People in this country know that a woman coming from a normal family has to toil hard to make space for herself in society and its economy. It is generally seen that children of such women also work hard. Congress may have an exception in the Gandhi family where they don’t have to sweat it out in the sun to earn their livelihood,” she had reportedly said. [caption id=“attachment_2391548” align=“alignleft” width=“380” class=” “] Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. AP[/caption] Looking at the quality of debate in Parliament on Wednesday, one may not be dismayed at this line of argument because the Gandhis, at least the junior ones, would be hard pressed to explain how they make a living although the charge by Jaitley and Irani may not be completely correct because Rajiv Gandhi had worked as a pilot for Indian Airlines till he was drafted in to replace Sanjay Gandhi after the latter’s untimely death and subsequently he was a Prime Minister with salaries and perks. As regards the Gandhis’ original wealth, various authors have said that they were in financial trouble when Indira Gandhi was ousted from power after the emergency. Apparently, she didn’t even have a roof over her head and Rajiv failed to complete a house that he began building. However, since Indira’s return after the failed Janata experiment, they seemed to have been enjoying a good life although nobody knows the real depth of their wealth and the sources of their income. Here is exactly the problem. When Jaitley is pointing fingers at the Gandhis’s on an ethical question, will he keep the same yardstick for his own party leaders and leaders of other political parties? Is it just the Gandhis who are living a good life without actually doing any work? Will he ask the same question to other big names in politics, who - including their children and grandchildren - are super rich? Will he ask others, who came from humble backgrounds, how they made money and how their declared wealth kept growing by leaps and bounds? In fact, if one were to start counting, it will be an eternal exercise because politics is not only the bread and butter, but also the source of immense wealth, for every single major politician except a few, who have alternative careers or businesses, which incidentally may also have been funded by the payback from politics. Except Jaitley, Irani and a few others, no other politician will join the debate because it will expose them too. Indian politicians are masters of double standards, nepotism, quid-pro-quo, misuse of office and everything that betrays the trust of people who vote for them. What Jaitely had done in the Parliament was threatening to break the Indian politicians’ unspoken agreement to the code of silence when it comes to money and the lives of big leaders to save his colleague. Rahul Gandhi, if serious about his outrage at Swaraj’s alleged misuse of office and corruption, should swallow the insult and lob the charge back to the BJP so that it blasts off its facade of self-righteousness. Will he do it? Of course, he won’t. Will Jaitely and Irani go beyond these occasional teases that make the Gandhis temporarily uncomfortable? Nah. Neither will others do because politics, once you made it big, is a profession with enormous returns and no accountability. The Omertà ensures that nobody questions the moneymaking ways of politicians. If ever one does it, it will disrupt Indian politics. Some, mostly small fry, still get caught because they are amateurs and foolish.