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Affectionately Yours...: MAYA REWRITES ‘CORRUPT’ RULES’, By Poonam I Kaushish; New Delhi, 12 January |
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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)
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Small Is Beautiful: WHAT PRICE STATE REORGANISATION?, By Poonam I Kaushish; 5 January 2008 |
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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 60th 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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Change On Raisina Hill: TOUGH TASK AWAITS PRATIBHA, By Poonam I Kaushish; New Delhi, 20 July 2007 |
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POLITICAL DIARY
New Delhi, 20 July 2007
Change On Raisina Hill
TOUGH TASK AWAITS PRATIBHA
By Poonam I Kaushish
The old has given way to the new on Raisina Hill. India has got a new President in Pratibha Patil at the end of murkiest Presidential election ever. Her victory was a foregone conclusion. The numbers were heavily stacked in her favour. Never mind that she was the sixth compromise choice of the Congress-led UPA Government. But she proved beyond doubt that she was a seasoned politician and a survivor who had the wisdom and tenacity to keep her cool. Against the backdrop of a virulent tirade by the BJP-led NDA of having protected her kin involved in charges of corruption and crime.
Normally, the election of a new President does not excite any great attention. Thanks to the widely held perception that the Head of State is titular and no more than the Government’s “rubber stamp, even stooge.” This has proved true time and again. However, this time round the election of India’s 13th President will be remembered for many firsts. Foremost, we now have a woman Rashtrapati. (Do we still call her Rashtra-pati?) The poll dragged the office of the President into an unprecedented cesspool of politics, petty politics, unimaginable till the other day. It was marked by open defiance, abstentions -- individually and group-wise, cross-voting and last minute U-turns. It also heralded the beginning of the end game for the 2009 General Election.
As she assumes office, Patil has a tough task set before her. She will have to put the vicious most-bitterly fought Presidential campaign behind her and start afresh with a clean slate. Tread with extreme caution and sagacity and win the confidence of even those across the political spectrum who opposed her. Bygones must be treated as bygones. She will need to rise above party considerations and rid herself of the perception of being the UPA’s ‘yes woman and a dummy.’ Specially, as she is widely viewed as a Nehru loyalist, who was personally handpicked and promoted by Sonia.
All her actions will be put under the microscope by the Opposition, which will leave no stone unturned to embarrass her and the Government and even look for some excuse to impeach her. Given the allegations surrounding her campaign. Besides, she has a tough job in having to follow Kalam, who endeared himself to the people across the country with his heartwarming humility and transparent honesty. He will for ever be remembered for converting the staid Rahtrapati Bhawan into a pulsating People’s Bhawan by throwing open its doors to the aam aadmi.
Patil’s election assumes great significance on one other crucial score. As India’s President, she will be required to play a decisive role after the next Lok Sabha poll in 2009. It is she who as the President will have to take the call on who will be the next Prime Minister. Critical in the emerging trend of hung parliaments and coalition government’s, resulting from a fractured polity, decline of the national parties and growth of regional satraps.
Unlike the British Monarch, India’s President is neither a ceremonial head nor a glorified cipher. As the elected Head of State, Patil has a much bigger role to play than hereditary monarchs. What is more, she enjoys certain reserve powers which flow from the little-noted oath of office she takes. Whereunder, she solemnly undertakes “to the best of my ability” to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution” and also devote herself “to the service and well being of the people of India.” Kindly note it is her ability and not that of her Council of Ministers!
India of 2007 is, no doubt, not the India of 1947. Parliamentary democracy has degenerated beyond belief into a feudal power brokers’ oligarchy. Increasing communalism, casteism and corruption, together with the collapse of the system, cry out loudly for a new dawn and a new deal. In this milieu the President’s role has become even more crucial, if the nation is not to be hijacked by political Dons and mafias.
Patil would do well to take a good look at a speech by India’s first President, Rajendra Prasad on the President’s powers at the inauguration of the Indian Law Institute on 28 November 1960. (It was reportedly “blacked out” under Nehru’s orders but made public for the first time by INFA in July 1977 with the kind help of Janata Prime Minister Morarji Desai.) Rajen Babu, as he was popularly called, questioned, among other things, the tendency to equate India’s elected Prime Minister with the hereditary British monarch. He wanted this question as also the powers and functions of the President “studied and investigated by top legal and constitutional experts in scientific manner.
Rajen Babu also questioned the general tendency to believe that like the British sovereign the President of India was required to act according to the advice of his Council of Ministers. He said: “The executive power of the Union is vested in the President and shall be exercised by him either directly or through officers subordinate to him in accordance with the Constitution. The Supreme Command of the Defence forces of the Union is also vested in him and the exercise thereof shall be regulated by law…” There were also articles which laid down “specific duties and functions of the President…”
Our netagan should seriously ponder over what Rajen Babu had to say and go in for the overdue study. Much has no doubt happened since. Originally, there was no provision in the Constitution which bound the President hand and foot to act in accordance with the advice of his Council of Ministers. But Indira Gandhi used the in famous emergency of 1975-77 to push through the Constitution 42nd Amendment which provided: “There shall be a Council of Ministers with the Prime Minister at the head to aid and advise the President who shall, in the exercise of his functions, act in accordance with such advice.”
At first sight, the Constitution 42nd Amendment seemed to put an end to nagging doubts on the issue. Doubts which in 1969 caused Indira Gandhi to trigger off free India’s biggest political storm and split the Congress. (Remember, she rebelled against the Congress High Command’s choice of Sanjiva Reddy as its Presidential candidate and instead put up V.V. Giri as her “conscience candidate.” Giri won in the close fight.) But cooler reflection showed that the amendment reduced the President to a mere rubber stamp and, worse, introduced into the Constitutional provision an element of rigidity which could lead to absurd situations.
What, for instance, would a “rubber stamp” President do if, as some eminent jurists asked, a Ministry was defeated on a vote of no-confidence (or otherwise) but refused to resign? What would the President do if the Ministry brazenly went ahead and advised him to do certain things? A refusal to comply would mean a violation of the Constitution. Yet to comply would also be a violation since under the Constitution a Ministry must enjoy the confidence of the House to which it is responsible.
Such conundrums have been posed and would continue to be posed. Ultimately, these point to the need to take a good fresh look at the powers and functions of the President in the light of what Rajen Babu and other eminent people have said---and our own experience vis a vis the Emergency. Not many today are aware that Rajen Babu not only presided over the Constituent Assembly but himself was one of India’s top legal luminaries.
In sum, Patil will have to give all it takes to balance the ever-growing inherent contradictions within our polity. Address basic issues vital to the healthy growth of India’s democracy which, regrettably, is increasingly turning feudal. Her oath of office casts on her the supreme moral duty to perform whenever decisions are taken against the national interest or the well-being of the people. She needs to recall Abraham Lincoln’s famous quote: “Public opinion is everything. With public sentiment nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed. Consequently, he who moulds public opinion goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions.” ---- INFA
(Copyright India News and Feature Alliance)
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