Men, Matters & Memories
M L Kotru
Times surely are achanging. Gone indeed are the days when a minor misdemeanor would send you packing to lands unknown. A Finance Minister and a Minister of State at the Centre were gone without a tear being shed for an act that, at its worst, amounted to a minor breach of budgetary secrecy. A Railway Minister sent in his resignation- and it was accepted- not because of a wayward nephew or son had opted for the shortest route to enrichment invoking the powers of his uncle’s or father’s name but because he held himself guilty for a rail accident.
Nor could you have in the days of yore used your Ministerial Office to ask the country’s top law officers and top investigators to report at his house to finalise a less harmful version of the charges to be presented to the country’s highest court. The Law Minister, the Attorney General, the CBI Director and the Additional Solicitor General and an assortment of Joint Secretaries from the Prime Minister’s Office, did attempt a mini whitewash, though, were caught in the end, by the Supreme Court.
Corruption most foul, cried the media, the electronic one somewhat hysterically, flashes blazing across your TV sets “Law Minister to be shifted, Rail Minister on the way out.” Twenty four hours after all hell seemed to have broken loose I was still watching, not so much in anger as in pain, the shenanigans of our ruling class, the men of the UPA Mark II.
Congress Core Committee to meet this evening……… Core Committee to meet this morning……….. Core Committee meeting postponed because the UPA’s Mr. Honest, Defence Minister A.K. Antony had yet to sort out between the two contenders for Karnataka Chief Ministership, the Congress having finally wrested the State from the BJP’s “corrupt” regime. Mercifully, Antony did find Karnataka’s new Chief Minister, Mr. Siddirammiah. One hopes, that given the UPA II’s record of these past five years at the Centre, Antony has asked the new leader in the State to steer clear of controversies. For, to go by the number of allegations against Manmohan Singh’s government it seems to have set up astonishing “highs” for levels of corruption. Had Sonia Gandhi been a genuine political animal- remember how strongly she opposed her husband, the late Rajiv Gandhi’s entry into politics- she would have directed Manmohan Singh to sack both the Law and Rail Ministers had she been genuinely disturbed by the attempts by senior officials of the PMO to have the CBI report (was it an affidavit?) tailored to protect the Prime Minster. Mercifully, she did finally ask the Prime Minister to oust the Rail Minister Pawan Bansal’s from the cabinet. Only she can explain the delay of a few hours before the Prime Minister was asked to give the marching orders to Law Minister Ashwani Kumar. In the event, it had looked till then that Manmohan Singh was probably reluctant to throw out the Minister who had tried to protect his interests in the coalgate scam.
Manmohan Singh in the instant case held overall charge of the Coal Ministry at the time the alleged taint-ridden site allotments were made; to spare the Prime Minister the ignominy of direct involvement in the case Sonia Gandhi could even now ask for the head of the junior Coal Minister, the loud-mouthed Mr. Jaiswal, the Kanpur MP, to go. Jaiswal denies any malfeasance but he could still be persuaded to resign in the “larger interests of the party and the government”. Anyone in Sonia’s or Manmohan’s place would make a ‘bakra’ of him with a promise that he would be properly rewarded with a gubernatorial or ambassadorial assignment as soon as the Supreme Court “cloud” passed by in two months’ time. (The Court incidentally is now on its summer vacation only to meet in July).
Corruption, truth to tell, has ceased to be an issue now. Some years ago India had the distinction of being 147th in the list of least corrupt nations. I am told we have marginally improved but are still among the most corrupt nations.
Manmohan Singh’s government will tell you if you have a few billions to invest that “India’s a single-window operation” i.e. you produce the investment proposal, show us the money and the single window will do the rest. That, frankly, is mythology. The UPA blew that one up a long time ago and they compounded the issue by legislating to tax retrospectively. Yes I am told (am not an expert by a long shot) if you are not a company like say Vodafone you might well end up in the dung-heap with such demands raised by the government.
Corruption is an instinct shared by all of us; it is like the scriptures we read every morning. Only the script in the case of corruption spells MONEY in big bold letters.
Think of this one: three years ago I went to renew my passport- filled up the form, paid up the money, spoke to someone in the External Affairs Ministry to have the “file” pushed, which it was, thanks to my 30 odd years as my then paper’s Diplomatic Correspondent. Surely I got the passport within a fortnight; the surprise came a week later when a sub-inspector of police showed up at my door to ask me about my “character”. Fifteen minutes after his minute scrutiny I couldn’t help getting up to show him my new passport. The man was astounded: “Arre yeh kaise ho gaya. Chaliye, accha hua” he said holding out a palm for ‘baksheesh’. I shook his hand and sent him packing.
This is petty, harmless bribery but when it infests your dams, your railways, your power stations, agriculture, road buildings etc. and that plethora of subsidies the floodgates are opened.
Reminds me of a balmy Srinagar Sunday in the 50s when I was back on a holiday; the then Prime Minister of the State invited me to a meeting of senior engineers. His advice to them was “I know you get a 10 percent cut on everything, I don’t grudge you that; after all, you have large families, you have hopes and aspirations. Please charge 15 percent from tomorrow itself but for heaven’s sake assure me that the State will get only quality in return. “I don’t want any compromise on quality”.
Later at the lunch that followed he told me he would show me one dozen prime places which slipped into a state of disrepair every second day. These dozen places must be costing Rs. 18 lakhs per “dressing” and that means 18 lakhs a week. As my late News Editor would have put it “aah, that’s chicken feed, young fellow”. Indeed chicken feed that must have been then (60 odd years ago).
How would he have described today’s version of corruption wherein “mountains of money” disappear into thin air. Those days perhaps the politicians had not learnt how to rob the banks, the public sector, education, medicine et al all “legally”.
How else would you explain India producing a virtual 45 percent of the world’s adulterated drugs, a big player in the field. Our democratic veneer, governed by the rule of law, will not permit it but we may soon have to think of other ways of punishing the corrupt.
There apparently is a competition of sorts on among politicians: who makes most money in the shortest time. If you don’t trust me look at the two Congress Ministers in, say, Jammu and Kashmir tearing each other apart, one accusing the other of corruption in departments which they have or had headed. Pot calling kettle black. Like, in the larger context, the Bharatiya Janata Party accuses the UPA II of being the most corrupt. The BJP very conveniently forgets the washout its suffered only last week in the Karnataka Assembly elections; the party was rejected on the issue of corruption.
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