In the first half of the past decade India was on the crest of an upward trajectory and being considered as a rising global power. India was truly a “Shining India” in those years despite much criticism by the Congress Party then that India was not shining and it was an empty slogan of the ruling BJP.  Pitiably for the Indian Republic, India in the last seven years under Congress rule is in 2011 being widely perceived by the Indian public as “India Stinking and Sinking”.  India in 2011 stinks of unprecedented political corruption at the highest levels of the Congress Party and where the Prime Minister is in a state of denial as admitting it would bring him in a direct clash with the apex Congress Party hierarchy. Resultantly, India not only stinks heavily of political corruption at the highest levels but also perceptively ‘sinking’ in global perceptions.

The latest Wikileaks bomb to hit the Congress Party is the disclosures made in cables to Washington from senior US diplomats in the US Embassy in New Delhi indicating that money in crores of rupees was being used by Congress  MPs, naming an aide of Capt Satish Sharma considered a part of Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s inner circle as involved in offering bribes in crores of rupees to vote for the Indo-US Nuclear Deal.

It is well known that at least nineteen MPs defied party whips to vote for this Bill and that they did it for exorbitant financial gains. It is inconceivable that the likes of Mr. Amar Singh now estranged from the Samajwadi Party who were most active in this ‘cash for votes’ horse-trading did it for patriotic and nationalistic impulses.

The next question that surfaces is that from where did these political war chests for horse trading in hundreds of crores of rupees emerge from?  Was it only from Indian business houses or also from United States Multinationals vying for a share of India’s nuclear power plants market?

Irrespective from where all these thousands of crores emerged from, question is if Congress President or the Congress Prime Minister were unaware of this horse-trading being conducted to ensure the survival of the Congress Government in power? The Congress spin masters would lead the Indian public opinion to believe that they were unaware. This is a travesty of truth and the highest level of political deception.

The survival of the Congress Government in 2008 on the Indo-US Nuclear Deal was on I think just three votes and these three votes were bought along with the other sixteen. In other words and more bluntly put the Congress Government survived on a ‘sinful vote’ where all canons of political morality and political propriety were thrown to the winds, if not with the direct concurrence of the Congress President and her Prime Minister but definitely with their acquiescence, with them building credible plausibility exits if cornered.

In the process in the perception of the citizens of the Indian Republic governed by the Congress Party stinks of unprecedented corruption. It is not in any way flattering to the public images of the Congress President or the Prime Minister. The Indian Republic expected more from the Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh. India expected that a person of his personal integrity would have waded away from the muck of political corruption that today engulfs the Congress Party and its Government. The fact that he has not done so, diminishes his political stature considerably, as I stated in a past Column.

India’s stinking political corruption in the absence of forceful intervention by the Congress President and her nominated Prime Minister, in the eyes of the international community looking for sizeable foreign investments, reduces India’s international image to that of “India Sinking” in 2011.