Gift of the grab

To speak of a tsunami of scams in India today would be palpably wrong. However disastrous a tsunami’s long-term effects, it is essentially a brief phenomenon. By contrast, corruption has become an integral part of India’s life and permeates the entire bodypolitic. This term is, by no means, confined to politicians in power and their bureaucratic henchmen all too happy to collude with their venal bosses. It includes the judiciary, the media, private sector tycoons, power brokers and so on, as the Niira Radia tapes have established so eloquently. Santosh Hegde, Karnataka’s intrepid Lokayukta, has practically said so.
The corrosive menace, let us admit candidly, is not new but rather ancient. Over 2,500 years ago Kautilya could record “40 different ways in which the king’s minions would cheat him of his revenues”. Hyderabad’s charming euphemism for graft, mamool or customary, has its roots in the Mughal times, Mumbai’s substitute of it, hafta or weekly payment, in the British Raj. The trouble is that what in the past — including the earlier years of Independence — was only a trickle is now a relentless torrent. Having increased arithmetically first and then geometrically, corruption on a mammoth scale in this country is now taking a quantum jump. It has indeed become the country’s fastest growing and least-risk industry. How and why this has happened is best exemplified by the 2G spectrum scam — the mother of all scandals since the tryst with destiny.
How former telecom minister A. Raja of the Dravid Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), a vital ally of the Congress in the ruling alliance, was reappointed minister for communications and information technology in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s second government has been exposed thoroughly by the Niira Radia tapes. The Supreme Court, apart from the Opposition parties and the public at large, has commented caustically on Mr Raja’s ability to brush aside even the Prime Minister’s directive and the finance minister’s advice to him. He then went ahead playing ducks and drakes with the procedure for granting spectrum licences. The resultant loot is estimated at `1,76,000 crore, a mind-boggling figure. The Enforcement Directorate, in its report to the apex court, has stated that some of this money had found its way to various tax havens on the very first day.
Even in his last years, Jawaharlal Nehru had forced his minister for natural resources Keshav Dev Malaviya, one of his favourites, to resign because Malaviya had taken a sum of — hold your breath — `10,000 from a mine owner of Orissa, ostensibly for election purposes. Nehru had acted the moment the dismal fact was known. Forty-seven years later nothing whatsoever happened to Mr Raja for nearly a year after the gargantuan scam. The reason for this was never a secret. The DMK patriarch, M. Karunanidhi, had arrived in New Delhi and tersely told all concerned that Mr Raja would neither resign nor be sent away.
Only last month Mr Raja’s exit became unavoidable after the Comptroller and Auditor General had laid bare all the sordid details of the unspeakable spectrum saga. Several more days were allowed to lapse before the Central Bureau of Investigation (cbi) raided the residences of Mr Raja and his key aides. When a large cross-section of people scoffed that the raids were too late and therefore meaningless, law minister M. Veerappa Moily lamented: “When the government takes action, it is criticised; when it does not act it is criticised”. It didn’t occur to the innocent soul that those under the scanner are not so foolish as to let incriminating documents lie around their homes and offices. Up to the time of writing, Mr Raja hadn’t even been interrogated, leave alone being put under arrest. Under these circumstances, more and more people have begun to ask: What use is the Prime Minister’s unblemished personal integrity when he is unable to control his ministers and others recklessly exercising their gift of the grab? Inextricably intertwined with the 2G outrage is the inexcusable appointment of P.J. Thomas as Central Vigilance Commissioner now under challenge in the apex court.
Around the time the stench of spectrum became unbearable, the country also witnessed a series of other revelations that underscore the total degeneration of the entire Indian elite. Flats in the Adarsh Cooperative Housing Society, meant for Kargil heroes and widows, were grabbed by retired and serving top military officers and an array of politicians headed by the state chief minister of that day; a Calcutta high court judge faced impeachment and a Supreme Court bench observed that there was “something rotten” in the Allahabad high court, the country’s largest; and nobody seemed horrified by the disclosures of bribes for bank loans or of foodgrains worth nearly `2,00,000 crore meant for the poor having been smuggled and exported. To cap it all, a CBI court sentenced a former chief secretary of Uttar Pradesh, Neera Yadav, to four years’ imprisonment for corruption. Along with her, a business baron, among the beneficiaries of her induced largesse in land allotment in Noida, was also sentenced. Be it noted that all this is the mere visible tip not of an iceberg but a glacier a hundred times larger than Siachin.
The painful subject is vast. In available space I can therefore make only three points very briefly. First, going by past experience, nothing much is going to happen to the culprits in the current cases also. Even if they are prosecuted, the proceedings can last forever. Can anyone throw some light on what has happened to the owner of Satyam or to Madhu Koda?
Secondly, in wailing that he, an “innocent” person, is being persecuted because he is a dalit, Mr Raja is following a well-trodden path. During the 1980s, A.R. Antulay, then chief minister of Maharashtra, had lamented that he was being targeted because he was a Muslim. Thirdly, the principle “innocent until proved guilty” has become the shield of criminals and crooks to indulge in loot even while being under trial.
It is time we recognise that corruption in India is fast assuming the proportions of tyranny in Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia. And let us be warned that when an evil becomes so overwhelming, something has to give.