Bribes of India

Irawati Karve, in her Sahitya Akademi award-winning book Yuganta, momentarily felt that she was useless in this age because she lived in the past. Thankfully, the feeling didn’t last long. She went on to draw out the details of our past and while presenting them, she underlined their contemporary relevance. In these times too, our recent and ancient past could serve as worthy medication to heal our wounds.
India is severely battered today, ironically by its own. The high rate of corruption at every level of our society mocks citizens’ right to life — a life with self-respect. India ranks 87th out of 178 countries in the Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index for 2010.
The Indian government, from the tehsildar to the Prime Minister, is at best silent and indifferent when approached or questioned about corruption, and at worse, busy conniving with the evildoers.
Right now, for example, the government at the Centre is silent on who cheated the nation of more than `1,76,000 crore in the 2G spectrum auctions. It is indifferent to calls to be accountable to Parliament. The convicted former chief secretary of Uttar Pradesh, Neera Yadav, in cahoots with a private operator, caused a loss of `5,000 crore to the exchequer. In Uttar Pradesh again, the foodgrain scandal is a textbook case that owes its success to officials at various levels and in various departments forming a ring which would shame the Sicilian mafia. This scandal is expected to put to shame the 2G scandal — it is being estimated that loss to the exchequer may touch `2 lakh-crore. But what’s perhaps even more criminal is that officials and their partners profited from foodgrains at a time when the poorest of the poor were waiting for those very grains.
In 1921, Mahatma Gandhi wrote in Young India: “The best use we can make of this government is to ignore its existence and to isolate it as much as possible from our life, believing that contact with it is corrupting and degrading”. The Mahatma said this of the British government in India then. It is ironical that today the government elected by “we, the people of India” deserves this treatment.
The Heritage Foundation, an American think tank based in Washington, D.C., put it bluntly when it held the Indian state as “the biggest culprit” for the rampant corruption in India. While the foundation’s report released on December 8, 2010, goes into great detail to justify its comment, the summary of what it says is that the restrictions and controls leading to lack of transparency and accountability in governance have made the state the main culprit perpetrating corruption.
Corruption poses a very serious threat to a citizen’s freedom and that is what has pushed our economic freedom score below the world average. According to the 16th Index of Economic Freedom, jointly released by the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal, India’s economic freedom score is 53.8, making its economy the 124th freest economy in the world. The report also indicates that the black market has expanded and may account for 40-50 per cent of India’s gross domestic product, i.e. “in the neighbourhood of $600 billion”.
Twenty years after our unprepared entry into the “global-liberal” world, a few who are power centres themselves or orbit close to it, have certainly excelled in the art of money making. Money making per se may not be a vice in the framework of dharma, but it certainly is a crime if it involves ripping off the nation’s wealth.
We seem to have broken Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000-hour rule for success. In Outliers, Gladwell says that the best way to achieve excellence is to spend 10,000 hours honing your skills. Malcolm, after all, tested his rule for success on the Beatles, Bill Joy, Bill Gates, and even Mozart. In India, a “predatory state” which restricts individual business entrepreneurship, becomes the spawning ground for illegal money-making and, here, the 10,000-hour rule is bound to fail if tested on those worthies who are now defamed for their corruption.
What do we make of the silence and indifference of the government towards corruption that is bleeding the state and further depriving the poor? The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) alone has nearly 10,000 cases pending trial in different courts. Of these, over 280 are corruption cases in which the Central government has not yet allowed prosecution. There are few convictions in corruption cases and in even fewer cases is the looted money recovered. Whether the convicted individual is in jail or out on bail, the monies are lost forever. Justice for the nation is never obtained. The silent majority is denied justice, beginning to end. So, of what use is the CBI, the Enforcement Directorate, income-tax department, Central Vigilance Commission, state CIDs et al?
In states like Bihar, the politics of corruption and lawlessness has been rejected and the road to more accountable governance is being laid. But the reverse path is preferred by the United Progressive Alliance-2 government at the Centre. Admittedly, the malaise is everywhere. Dynastic rule and nepotism continually challenge India’s fight against such crimes against the nation because the state machinery is often a tool in the evildoers’ hands. A few regional parties offer arguments based on the social justice theory to ward off criticism of corruption. But, as columnist S. Prasannarajan observed recently, “The politics of social justice has already passed the ‘empowerment’ stage and reached the ‘enrichment’ stage”.
Although the oldest, the Congress Party’s will to fight corruption has never amounted to more than token gestures — we have asked all tainted leaders to quit their positions, is their usual refrain. But what about the money which has been parked in tax havens? Who takes these major decisions that result in huge losses to the exchequer? In asking this, let us remind ourselves that we are not even talking about the kickbacks that have lined individual pockets.
Some feel that a thriving democracy with skewed demand and supply situation, like the days of Victorian England or the post-civil war America, is bound to be shackled by corruption. But aren’t we a nation that existed long, long before these modern nation states? The disease of graft and greed did exist then, but our treatises addressed them rather candidly.
The Mahabharata elaborates on law, governance, statecraft and sound administration. In the Sabha Parva, Sage Narada questions King Yudhishthra, “Does it happen that, from greed, confusion or arrogance, you do not even look at those who have come to you with a petition, or at those wrongly treated and have come to seek relief from you?” The citizens of India are asking this question today.

Nirmala Sitharaman is a Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson. The views expressed in this column
are her own