I once called Jaswant Singh a hypocrite and a humbug on the floor of the Lok Sabha. He got very uptight about it and demanded that I furnish the House with a Hindi translation of the two words. That, of course, was beyond my linguistic skills. But how else would one describe the hypocrisy and humbug of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government at the Centre in its reaction to the expose of murky goings-on in the allotment of petrol pumps? This lot were once the opposition with a difference. Endless indeed were the lectures we would hear from George Fernandes about Nehru in the first Lok Sabha slinging out a Congress MP because of funny business in the stock market. Then would George lead us through the noble saga of Lal Bahadur Shastri and the railway accident at Ariylaur, to which Shastri reacted by putting in his papers as railways minister. The story would then move on to the Mundhra scandal - exposed, we would be indefatigably reminded, by none other than the son-in-law of the prime minister. The K.D. Malaviya tale would then be dredged up to tell what in a better age was the political punishment for a dodgy consideration of no more than ten thousand rupees. What, by way of rhetorical climax, George would thunder, had become of those high ethical standards? What, indeed? With his party president filmed in his drawing room directing an (albeit ersatz) arms dealer to pass on two lakh rupees to help defray the expenses of a party convention, George now believes the right place for a minister under investigation by a commission of inquiry is right there in the cabinet room. If consistency is virtue only in an ass, then George is clearly no donkey. The council of ministers also includes three ministers - beginning with the deputy prime minister and going on to the minister for saffronization, Murli Manohar Joshi, and the delectable sushri sadhvi, Uma Bharti, photographed full frontal hugging Joshi as the Babri masjid came tumbling down - all three of whom will have to file an affidavit in the next elections (if the Supreme Court-directed amendment to the Representation of People Act is passed, as it doubtless will be) confirming that they are facing charges framed in a criminal court over their role in the demolition of a place of worship. The council of ministers also includes one Harin Pathak, minister of state for defence production, up for trial on charges that include murder. And now we have Ram Naik, the same Ram Naik who served with me in the 1992-93 joint parliamentary committee. Clearly, my BJP colleague was learning extra-mural lessons from the likes of Harshad Mehta who came up before our committee. In company with us were no less than seven ministers of the present council of ministers: Ram Naik at petrol pumps; Yashwant Sinha and Jaswant Singh (interchangeably at finance and external affairs); George and Harin Pathak; Murasoli Maran (who is on record as not having been able to afford a bicycle when he was an adolescent and now presides over a media empire that has, I have read somewhere, an estimated net worth of a thousand crore or more); and, bringing up the rear, the thus far blameless Digvijay Singh, minister of state in the foreign office. A finer band of men would be difficult to conceive: Ali Baba would have been hard put to find forty better. They concentrated their ire on three Congress ministers of the day. The first, of course, was Manmohan Singh, whom they sternly reprimanded for having thrown out the one-liner that as finance minister he would not lose sleep over the stock market going up or down. The second was B. Shankar-anand who had connived with a public sector bank to submit a bid after what was strictly regarded as closing time. And the third was the hapless Rameshwar Thakur, named because he had circulated some papers only to Congress and not to the non-Congress members of the JPC. Lathering themselves into a fine froth over these delinquencies, the JPC delivered itself of these immortal lines, the very resonance of which carries the inimitable baritone of our present finance minister, Jaswant Singh: 'If a system be devoid of the moral quotient, of a commonsense appreciation of right from wrong, of a sense of public duty when entrusted with public funds, then it cannot work.' Ram Naik, are you listening? Moreover, rejecting the then finance minister's plea that the 'FM cannot be held responsible for administrative failures or management deficiencies,' the present finance minister and his cohorts thundered, 'Such a distinction cannot be sustained by the constitutional jurisprudence under which the parliamentary system works. The principle of constructive ministerial responsibility is equally applicable to other departments and ministries.' Such as Ram Naik's ministry of petroleum and natural gas? Would the hon'ble finance minister not agree that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander? I remember - how can I ever forget? - these seven noble champions of morality in politics. So total was their dedication to cleanliness in public life that when the JPC report came up for discussion in Parliament, Ram Naik and Murasoli Maran, Yashwant and Jaswant, George and Digvijay, and Harin Pathak disrupted the proceedings for weeks until they got the heads of Shankaranand and Thakur. Now, the same Seven Samurai cling like limpets to their chairs. The post-resignation job I would suggest for Ram Naik is the Fevicol ad: he could show his rear-end stuck to a ministerial gaddi! We have no right to expect any better of them. For having got the heads of Thakur and Shankaranand, they went on a 13-day dharna in the well of the House to demand Sukh Ram's sacking. However, P.V. Narasimha Rao had by then grown back his missing back-bone, and Sukh Ram remained at communications till the end of that government. Nemesis struck later, when three crore came tumbling out of his puja room. At this, Sukh Ram was hounded out of the Congress - and into the waiting arms of the BJP. Is this not the most venal government the world has seen since Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos?