Political Diary

New Delhi, 12 January 2008 

Affectionately Yours….

MAYA REWRITES ‘CORRUPT’ RULES

By Poonam I Kaushish

 “The element of love and affection relate to emotions of a man. One may be impelled by his conscience or may be moved by emotions to part with his wealth or property and to give the same to a particular person for whom he has developed love and affection. Such a desire can be developed any time and on any ground.” Pearls of wisdom from Freud? A chapter on the intricacies of the human mind? Or, perhaps a psychiatrist’s verbose on love? Neither. These pearly gems flow from none less than the pen of the aam aadmi’s moral and ethical conscience keeper: the income tax officer.

The foregoing “maya” of love and affection was showered last week on the BSP supremo and UP Chief Minister Mayawati by the IT Appellate Tribunal. In one fell stroke, the Tribunal affixed a legal stamp of legitimacy on the Dalit icon and her clan’s huge wealth of properties and cash not commensurate with their known sources of income in various cases of disproportionate assets pending before the IT department.

Shockingly, it whitewashed Mayawati’s sins of commissions and omission as “gifts” received from supporters just out of “veneration and personal esteem” for her. Incredibly, it accepted in toto that her chelas’ love for her transcended new heights wherein they even inflicted heavy financial burdens on themselves by taking massive loans only to buy properties for presenting them as ‘offerings of love’ to their living Goddess. Sic.

In a land where political and public morality is virtually non-existent, it needs no guesses to know that only a politician could be wallowing in the sunshine of the IT man’s largesse. Certainly not the aam janata, which is treated with increasing contempt or as culprits. Aren’t we now accustomed to paying bribes for everything --- from getting a ration card to a driving licence. Never mind that it continues to burn a hole in our aam pocket. Clearly, when gold speaks, all tongues are silent!

In this swirling eddy of corruption, la affaire Mayawati has once again conclusively shown the depth to which India’s democracy and its leaders have sunk. Wherein our polity has not only legalized corruption and put a seal of approval on the culture of plunder but continue to be a law unto itself! In the bargain, the lion-sized corruption continues to gorge itself on the vitals of the nation.

Look, its raining scandals for our netagan. Why only Mayawati? How is she any different from Mulayam Singh, Jayalalitha, Laloo, Sukhram, Ju Dev etc? Remember Suraj Mandal, who blew the whistle in the JMM case in 1996 in the Lok Sabha. He asserted: “Paisa boriyon main ata hai, gathriyon main nahin.” Not one MP present protested.

Why should they? After all, haven’t our leaders reduced graft to a farcical political pantomime. So easy to blame everything on the “system”. Wherein India’s brand equity has been xeroxed as corrupt. Now naked, unashamed, public and brazen. Sanjiva Reddy’s words haunt and taunt us. Prior to his retirement as the President of India, he had told INFA candidly: “Anyone who has the opportunity to make money but doesn’t do so is a bloody fool.” How true.

We’ve had a surfeit of scams and their number keeps growing. Starting from Mudgal accepting a bribe of just Rs.2,000 in the early fifties to the Bofors Rs.64-crore pay off in the eighties. Nothing changed in the nineties except the magnitude of the scams snow-balled. From the Rs.5,000 crore bank scandal down hawala, sugar to UTI, petrol and Tehalka, which exposed the underbelly of defence deals in 2000. To Telgi’s Rs.30,000 fraud in 2004. Followed by Natwar Singh’s Volcker UN food-for-cash, down to the MPs cash-for-question and cash-for-projects scams under the MP Local Area Development Scheme. Onward to the fake passport racket and the latest wheat import scam.  

Only political reactions have changed with the changing times. From 1951 to 2008. For Nehru corruption was “always distasteful” which he considered as “highly derogatory and highly objectionable.” In fact, so averse was he to money that once he urgently summoned the then AICC General Secretary Shriman Narain to take charge of Rs.500 given to him as Party donation.

On the other hand, his daughter Indira dismissed corruption as a “global phenomenon” in 1977. Narasimha Rao merely called it “a systems failure,” in 1993. Vajpayee asserted, “law will take its own course” in 2003. Culminating in Manmohan Singh helplessly dismissing it as “the compulsions of coalition politics”!

Any wonder that in the last 60 years not one politician has been convicted. Leave alone, jailed for corruption. With the result that with each passing year politicians have become increasingly brazen. Bringing things to such a pass that going to jail is not far from becoming a badge of honour! In fact, two MPs and a sprinkling of MLAs involved in criminal offences have fought elections from behind the bars and won. A ghotala of few thousand crores is not worthy of feeding the chara of morality.

Sadly, the principle of “sovereign immunity” continues to protect our netagan. Operating in our expended concept of “instrumentality of state”. Never mind that the principle itself is a contradiction of democracy. It was derived from the English Common Law wherein the king could do no wrong. But the principle should have been given a burial once we had abandoned the kings. However, trust our polity to continue to cling to this royal privilege. It was primarily intended to protect a public servant from liability, not prosecution. But today our rulers have extended this concept of prosecution to even investigation.

What is extremely disquieting is that Union Ministers and Chief Ministers accused of swindling crores of public money are all living in great comfort and merrily enjoying their high positions. Effectively exposing the fact that the crusade against corruption has shamefully failed in India. Think. We Indians pay over Rs 21,068 crores a year for ‘services rendered’ to our powers-that-be, according to the Transparency International’s Indian Corruption Study 2005.

Arguably, what is the future of society in such conditions? More frustration, more chaos, more unrest and even bloodshed. It needs to be remembered that corruption in the national polity can only survive by paying a very heavy price of increasing mayhem and violence in society. The tragedy of it all is that our polity continues to merrily wallow in corrupt self deception without a thought to the future and the inevitable damage to the larger national cause.

This in a nutshell epitomizes today’s political culture. New ideas are bandied about daily for eradicating the scourge of corruption and enforcing some morality. Which like a Jack-in-the-box surface each time a scandal breaks out. By Government after Government. All setting up Committee after Committee, each tom-toming more than the other. With what  net result? A big zero.

The problem of dealing with corruption is not merely due to a lack of legal powers or absence of any enforcement agency. We have had the Prevention of Corruption Act since 1947. The CBI was set up in 1963. Nevertheless, no amount of legal powers or creation of enforcement infrastructure will be of much help. Simply because there is a lack of political will, genuine desire to cleanse the political cesspool and courage of conviction to fight for honesty and accountability.

The question then is: how does one eradicate this scourge from public life? There are many remedies for what the people want: transparency and accountability. That is the crux of the problem of our polity, which has so far only preached, but seldom practiced. The top has to be clean for the lower levels to be clean. But the people at the top are just not keen on honest anti-corruption drives, the stench, which fills the political class, cannot be cleared by mere personal assertions, abuses or denials.

The harsh truth is that no politician till date has been able to overcome his greed to bell the big fat cat of corruption. To quote Vajpayee in the Lok Sabha during the debate on the hawala scam in 1996; “Politics has become a way of making money.” One living testimony to this is Mayawati, who extols her workers to fill her coffers --- openly, defiantly and shamelessly.

If the Government is serious about purging the malaise and reigning in the Dalit icon, now is the time to introduce probity and cry halt to the legitimizing of corruption, as implicitly in IT Tribunal’s bizarre decision. Galloping corruption and the lack of integrity at the higher levels needs to be curbed ruthlessly without further delay for the health of our democracy. Failing which we will at best end up letting Mayawati ‘affectionately’ continue to rewrite the ‘corrupt’ rules of a ramshackle corrupt democracy, where honesty  will no longer be viewed as the best policy! --- INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)

POLITICAL DIARY

New Delhi, 5 January 2008

Small Is Beautiful

WHAT PRICE STATE REORGANISATION?

By Poonam I Kaushish

From maut ke saudagar to small is beautiful. The latest brainwave to emerge from a desperate Congress, hurting after its electoral massacre in Gujarat and Himachal, is aimed at once again reigniting the flames of ‘separatist tendencies’ by talking of carving big States into small. The bigness and smallness of a State has little to do with national interest but everything to do with massaging its vote-banks and improving its winability quotient. In the hope that the smaller units will fetch the Party big political dividends.

Camouflaged as imperative for “political stability” in the country (read Party), it has mooted the idea of setting up another States Reorganisation Commission ((last suggested in July 2007) to explore the formation of new States. No matter that till its electoral rout in UP May last, the Party had opposed tooth and nail the creation of small States. It even let the Telengana Rashtriya Samiti quit the UPA alliance.

Today, with Assembly polls in nine States and the General Election just 15 months away, the Party has now backtracked or, should one say, had a rethink and is all set to create Telengana. Primarily, to take the sting out of the TRS political plank, now also backed by the BJP. Recall, the UPA had set-up a sub-committee under Pranab Mukherjee (who else?) but as it had failed to reach a consensus, the decision was left to the Congress.

Needless to say, this out-of-the-blue plan to appoint another SRC is bound to open a Pandora’s Box on the demand for statehood from every nook and cranny of the country. Already, over 10 new entrants are rearing to go. It remains to be seen whether the Congress-led UPA Government will come out smelling of roses or reek of rotten eggs.

The task is, indeed, tough, as the issue is both emotive and politically sensitive. Against the backdrop of many regions and sub-regions aspiring to be full-fledged States. Moreover, the Left is divided. While the CPM, which faced a violent demand for Gorkhaland in West Bengal, is opposed to carving out separate states, the CPI has of late has softened its stand on the demand for a Telengana. The NCP also remains lukewarm to the demand for Vidarbha, even though it has no major presence in the region.

Besides Telengana and Vidarbha, BSP’s Mayawati favours trifurcation of Uttar Pradesh --- Harit Pradesh out of Western UP, Bundelkhand and Purvanchal out of south-eastern UP. Then there is a demand for Gondwana from portions of Chhattisgarh, Andhra and Madhya Pradesh, Kodagu from Karnataka’s coffee belt, Bodoland from Assam, Ladakh from Kashmir, Garoland from Meghalaya, Mithilanchal from North Bihar and Gorkhaland.

Nobody can deny that a few States in India are much too large and unwieldy for efficient governance. It takes nearly two days to get from one end of UP to the other by road! Obviously, administrative efficiency is the first casualty. As the recent experience of Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and, earlier, of Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, shows, smaller States are able to meet better the rising expectations of their people for speedy development and a responsive and effective administration. Today, all are shining examples of “small is beautiful.”

However, protagonists of bigger States disagree, often sharply. What guarantee, they ask, is there that this will end internal fissures. Make the rivers flow smoothly from one State to another. Merely look at the ugly riparian fight between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, Andhra and Tamil Nadu and Punjab and Haryana.

What warranty that it would decrease the ever-rising disparities between the haves and the have-nots which are all the more glaring and difficult to camouflage in small states. Clinching their arguments by asserting that with caste and creed dictating the polity’s agenda presently, any fresh redrawing of India’s political map would only give monstrous fillip to separatism.

Just see how pandering to casteism over the past many years has unbottled the genie of separatist tendencies. Almost every caste now wants to be included among the Other Backward Castes (OBCs). Even Dalit Muslims and Dalit Christians are demanding reservation on the basis of caste which their religions do not accept. Would this be in India’s best national interest? Further reinforcing that if smaller incisions have to be made as in the USA, then the body politic of India would need to be wholly restructured on that pattern.

Besides, it may make sound political sense but lousy economics. When the Prime Minister goes blue in the face talking of cutting back on costs, we continue to multiply our expenses. Authoritative sources aver that the creation of a State would cost the national exchequer over Rs 1,200 crore. Entailing expenditure on setting up a new State capital, Assembly and Secretariat but excluding the annual recurring expenses.

In addition, it could well encourage fissiparous tendencies, ultimately leading to India’s balkanization and stoke the sub-terranean smouldering fires of disputes over borders--- and cities. Both Haryana and Punjab still claim Chandigarh. Orissa demands the return of Saraikala and Kharsuan. Nagaland still wants to cut into large chunks of Manipur and certain forest areas of Assam to create Nagalim. Bihar yearns desperately for the mineral-rich districts of Jharkhand.

Will not a further partition of the existing States result in an India that would fit Jinnah’s classical description of Pakistan as being “truncated and moth-eaten”? The only purpose it will serve will be to whet regional and separatist appetites, as it happened at the time of the first SRC in the mid-fifties. The very “black hole” that our past leaders were ever eager to avoid.

Remember, the first State Reorganisation Commission was set up by the Nehru Government in 1954 under Justice Fazl Ali, retired Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. It recommended that the component units of the Indian Union would consist of two categories ---“States forming primary federation units of the Indian Union and territories which are centrally administered.” One of its members, K M Panikkar submitted a dissenting note, seeking the bifurcation of Uttar Pradesh. This was rejected by the Government.

Typical of India’s political culture, the first SRC and the creation of new States left in its wake more controversies than it sorted out. Regional leaders promptly started demanding the liberation of smaller colonies from the fat ruling classes. While those opposed countered the demand for smaller States by cautioning against India’s break-up into hundreds of smaller States. Did the country want to reverse the historic integration brought about by Sardar Patel?

The tragic irony of history is that successive Prime Ministers bought peace at the cost of strong integrated India by carving out new jagirs for acquiring “new chelas” and assured vote banks. Lest history books omitted their “contribution” in the building of a new India.The controversies and demands generated then continue till date

Logically, if one district of Assam could be made into a full-fledged State of Nagaland, another into Mizoram, a third into Meghalaya and yet another into Arunachal Pradesh, how can one hold back on Telengana or Vidarbha? The last time new States were created was in 2000 when the NDA regime okayed the creation of Uttaranchal (now Uttarkhand), Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh.

Unfortunately for the Centre, its policy of going populist time and again and opting for quick-fix remedies has boomeranged. What, one might ask, is the alternative? Statesmanship and sagacity lie in adopting the middle path. The UPA Government should not set up another SRC just to win votes.

It needs to learn from the mistakes of the recently carved small States, diagnose the disease afresh and hammer out solutions for better governance. Much can be achieved through meaningful decentralization of administration in these days of computerization, without adding to the cost of governance through top-heavy ministerial baggage.

Let us not allow politicians of all hues to create new pocket boroughs motivated by petty personal interests, undermining national unity. India has entered its 60^th year of Independence with 27 States, a testimony to a free and vibrant democracy. Are we now going to roll back history to pre-Independence days and create 562 States? Let not history record what Conrad Egbert once brilliantly stated: We learn nothing from history except that we learn nothing from history! ---- INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)                     

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