Commentary/Dilip Thakore
Turning back the corruption tide
The Karsen urea scam, the Sukh Ram telecom scandals, the JMM bribery
case, the Lakhubhai Pathak swindle, the St Kitts forgery, the
Bihar fodder case, the PWD and police uniform scams. The list
of scams and scandals in contemporary India could go on and on.
Several years ago when I wrote that since 20 million people were
on the payroll of government and public sector enterprises, one
could safely assume the existence of 20 million scams based on
the calculation that all of them nurtured an illegal supplementary
source of income, I provoked a mini storm of protest.
It was ridiculous to allege that every single government servant
was crooked, said my critics. Consequently I was obliged to qualify
my assertion (on the editorial page of Business World).
However I stuck to my figure of 20 million scams in government
and the public sector. My revised calculation: that while every
government employee in the post-Independence Indian soft state
may not have cheated the public and/or the exchequer, the majority
were nurturing more than one illegal source of income or swindle.
Therefore a conservative estimate of the aggregate scams and scandals
within the government sector would still be 20 million.
Contemporary newspaper headlines suggest that this estimate of
live scams and swindles within the government sector should be
upped to 40 million.
This is not to say that open, uninterrupted and continuous day-to-day
petty and not-so-petty corruption is the monopoly of government
sector employees.
Unfortunately the government sector hand-in-the-till culture has
seeped into the private sector as well, contaminating the entire
economy. Thus even within the non-government corporate sector
the earning of under-the-table commissions on purchase and works
and service contracts has become commonplace.
Alas! What a fall is there my countrymen! Like the troubled ghost
of Hamlet's father which roamed the battlements of Elsinore, the
restless ghost of Mahatma Gandhi is undoubtedly roaming the dusty
highways and the bylanes which tenuously link contemporary India's
chaotic cities and neglected villages, a witness to the depths
to which the nation he fathered has sunk.
Yet the greatest tribute which citizens with consciences (and
their number is not negligible) can pay the memory of the Mahatma
as the nation pays lip service to his rich legacy on October 2
(his birth anniversary) would be to advance beyond breast-beating
and attempt to find ways and means to dig the people of this high-potential
nation out of the abyss into which they have been plunged by a
procession of political leaders who - it is now clear - were unworthy
successors of the Mahatma. This contribution is one such attempt.
Looking back in retrospect at the string of scandals and scams
which have been suddenly unearthed during the Nineties, the only
good which has flowed from these shocking disclosures of gross
betrayals of public trust is the emergence of an activist judiciary.
In perhaps the darkest period of the nation's history, the judiciary
has emerged as the only institution of the state which has not
been overwhelmed by the tidal wave of corruption which has swamped
post-Independence India's institutions of governance.
Consequently national interest demands that this sole surviving
institution of government is entrusted with the task of thoroughly
cleansing the stinking stables of the government and the polity.
But if the judiciary is to complete this task which it seems to
have taken on, it must be empowered to complete it. For the on-the-ground
reality is that during the past three decades the judiciary too
has suffered considerable damage and attrition and at best is
an enfeebled institution serving as a thin blue line of right-thinking
members of society just about holding the barbarians at the gate.
It would be downright foolish to entertain any illusions that
the political class cutting across party affiliations, is well
disposed towards the judiciary. Judges particularly in the upper
judiciary, have long been a thorn in the side of post-Independence
India's new breed of carpetbagger politicians who tend to regard
public property and funds as their own.
This thinly disguised animosity explains why the remuneration
of Supreme and high court judges remained frozen at the 1950 level
for over three decades until the mid Eighties. Moreover over 60
reports of several law commissions have remained largely unimplemented
and are gathering dust in the mouldy archives of the federal law
ministry in New Delhi.
These valuable and learned reports suggest numerous ways and means
to recast procedural and other laws to reduce the law's agonising
delay. Currently over two million cases are pending in the Supreme
and high courts and civil litigation delays of a decade and more
are the rule rather than the exception.
Therefore sustained public pressure to reverse the unstated policy
of studied neglect of the judiciary of judicial reform is a vital
precondition of cleaning the Aegean Stables of the nation's institutions
of governance and the public sector.
For a start the number of courts and judges need to be rapidly
increased. Against the Western nations' norm of one judge per
30,000 citizens, the ratio in India is 1:600,000. This ratio needs
to be adjusted not only numerically but also qualitatively by
improving the remuneration and working conditions (in terms of
premises, equipment and supportive infrastructure) of the nation's
judicial officers. The familiar excuse of paucity of funds to
strengthen the judiciary should no longer be accepted. This stand-alone
institution of orderly governance is too important to be left
to the suspect mercies of the nation's comprehensively discredited
political class.
Thorough-going judicial reform apart, the nation's populace and
the intelligentsia in particular also needs to end its prolonged
romance with the subaltern classes which have infiltrated and
suborned the political and administrative process. Though it is
politically incorrect to say so, the truth is that the nation's
freedom movement was led by its urbanised educated middle class.
And if a second freedom movement to lead the nation out of the
desolate wilderness of poverty and despair is ever to gain momentum,
it is this very class which will have to re-enter public discourse
and public institutions.
The electorate has to come to terms with the limitations and disastrous
amorality of subaltern class politicians, who unable to link cause
and effect adequately, are destroying all the institutions of
orderly governance. And in creating this awareness the media,
the intelligentsia and the judiciary have vital roles to play.
This is not an argument for jettisoning the democratic system
of government or for restricting universal suffrage. An insufficiently
understood premised or orderly democratic government is that the
judiciary and the intelligentsia (both unelected communities)
have critical roles to play in checking politicians' excesses
and moulding public opinion. And empowering judicial institutions
and the intelligentsia is a pre-condition of the re-entry of the
nation's alienated educated middle class into politics and the
institutions of government.
Dilip Thakore is the founder-editor of Business India and
Business World and former eidtor of Debonair.
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