ELECTIONS '98
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For a few dollops more, India's progress from a relatively honest to an internationally recognised corrupt nation has an interesting historical course. Distinctions, they say, come in pairs. In the United Nations chart, India happens to be the 10th poorest country from the bottom. We are also, a private international survey suggests, among the 10 most corrupt nations on earth.

Fifty years ago, at the time of Independence, we had, of course, been as now, a down and out country, with the majority of our people overwhelmingly impoverished. We had nonetheless the reputation of being a relatively honest nation, quite unlike, say, Indonesia or Thailand in Asia or most of the countries in Latin America. Progress of a remarkable sort, that condition is fundamentally altered.

For at least two thirds of the Indian population, economic deprivation and a wretched, stagnant level of living continue to be the harsh reality. Income has however proliferated, almost exponentially, at the top. And much of this income explosion is accounted for, tra la la la la, by corruption.

Without question that hypocratic oath, Satyameva Jayate, has helped enormously. It is part of the national heritage to assume that all sins are absolved once the commitment of these sins is accompanied by the chanting of some mantras. The country's filthy rich have, with great aplomb, lazed, worn akimbo the Gandhi cap and, Satyameva Jayate, thieved around. Politicians have led this pack of thieves. It has been an interesting historical course.

In the early years following the attainment of freedom, politicians were still scared of deviating from the straight and narrow path. But opportunities were many, the temptation was too great and some of them could not be prevented from indulging in venality. They would do so with circumspection though. They would have at their beck and call one or two thieves or crooks or hangers on of other assorted descriptions to perform the dirty work surreptitiously on their, that is, the political leadership's behalf.

If market gossip is to be lent even some marginal credence, the situation is now comprehensively reversed. Politicians themselves are now at the beck and call of the crooks and the thieves; they devotedly do the bidding of the latter. The outpourings of the former adviser to the finance minister are understandably coloured by both prejudice and malice. The ambience he describes has still an aura of authenticity. The free market principle, it would appear from his various allegations, has penetrated into the sanctum sanctorum of the Union Cabinet itself.

Leon Walras, the main instigator of neo-classical economics which provides the foundation of the liberalisation philosophy, dilated at length on the marvel of 'the cry of prices' in the marketplace. Bargaining takes place in the free market on the basis of unfettered offers and counter-offers on the part of buyers and sellers until an equilibrium position is arrived at. Until that position is reached, it is an endless series of auctioneering on a grand scale.

The purport of the assertions by the former adviser to the finance minister is that the present government has converted itself into an auctioneering precinct par excellence; different ministers plead the interests of different business groups, bid against one another and a stable-unstable equilibrium draws the curtain on the day's proceedings. In this milieu, the interests of the close to one billion people constituting the vast majority of this nation, it goes without saying, happen to be no part of the agenda.

The former adviser may, in his pique, have overdrawn the picture. That fact apart, the circumstances that have emerged are, most certainly, not the outcome of developments in the course of the past one year alone. Crony capitalism, if such be the appropriate expression, really began to gain ascendancy during Indira Gandhi's long, albeit interrupted, reign. The switch of parties and governing personnel within the government since her assassination has not made the least difference.

The animal spirit latent in the instinct of the greedy breed occupying society's top layer burgeoned during the tenure of her offspring. Subsequent regimes have been scrupulously mindful of the heritage and have dexterously built upon it.

Talk to the man on the street. The real estate that is the Government of India, he is firmly convinced, is by and large the property of contractors and contact men. Such specimens walk over all institutions which preside over the economic administration of the country, including banks, mutual funds and non-banking financial bodies. They decide on the quantum of subsidies for different sectors and commodities and the cuts intermediaries are to receive in each case. They decide on the flow of financial accommodation to this or that party and the nature of the government guarantees and counter guarantees called for. They have a say in the fixation of taxes, including rates of import duties. They also decide the categories and quantum of exemptions from payment of taxes and duties.

Since it is a free for all, parties seek patrons among ministers and ministers gladly convert themselves into lobbyists. The cry of prices thereby ushers in the ambience of a bargaining counter where buyers and sellers compete fiercely against on another across the table in, alas, Cabinet sessions even. A distorted, biased, wholly unfair presentation of the actual state of affairs? Perhaps it is so, at least up to a point. But then, the basic reality is near identical with the picture painted by the former adviser. Why beat about the bush, buttonhole the very first person you meet on the street, he or she will not need much provocation to unburden himself of the average politician. It is a brutally frank point of view.

The average politician is a scoundrel, a rascal and worse. And, to cap it all, he is a thief. By this time the person you have buttonholed is all worked up, he or she will not let up. He or she will quote to you the example of several politicians in the neighbourhood known to him or her. He or she will be even more specific. Thirty years ago, this fellow, hailing from the village right across the irrigation canal, was a poor school teacher or a low paid storekeeper with a wholesale dealer. Then he got into politics, was elected to the state assembly, then to Parliament, he soon became a minister. His political fortunes now waxed, now waned. But politics has been for these three decades, his only profession.

He had had no other visible source of income and yet he owns today big dwellings in each of the metropolitan cities -- New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Calcutta and Bangalore -- spacious bungalows or duplex apartments featured by superluxurious gadgetry and appointments. He has more than one can in each of these five residential locations, his wife is bedecked with expensive clothes and jewellery, his daughters go to New York or Amsterdam every summer for some earnest shopping.

This former schoolteacher or store-keeper, it is altogether possible, owns other benami real estate that is rented out. Rumour has it that he has a crony who manages his ill gotten gains, including bank accounts and such like. Speculation is rife regarding the millions and millions of dollars he has salted away in numbered Swiss accounts. He is supposed to be the blue-eyed boy of the largest growing industrial concern in the country. It is the largest growing concern in the country because of a number of special dispensations he had arranged for it while he was a Cabinet minister.

The neighbour or neighbours next door can narrate similar tales regarding any number of other politicians who have attained heights of material prosperity by virtue of their being in the business of politics.

True, some of these stories have a thin factual basis. Not all the rumours are, however, rubbishy stuff. The former adviser to the finance minister, it is quite possible, is an individual of poor credentials. Ordinary men and women are nonetheless prepared to lend him an ear because logical positivism asserts itself, ordinary men and women have seen with their own eyes how a run of the mill politician, by nonchalantly climbing the ladder of corruption, has come to acquire unheard of wealth. So much so that ordinary men and women are ready to paint all politicians with the same hue.

As you sow, so you reap. It is too late for the present government to assert that this former adviser to the finance minister is a fraud. Somebody has to be around to answer the question why such a person, in case he was a fraud, could still enter the innermost official circles and enjoy the most deferential treatment from the establishment crowd.

That a person of his particular background could climb so swiftly the rungs of power and privilege is itself a symptom of the pervasive corruption which defines Bharat, that is India. The polity is seemingly no longer in a position to distinguish between the sacred and the profane. Bad money, Gresham's law says, drives away good money. Profanity too in due course emasculates righteous instincts. It is a phase the nation has to pass through. Joint parliamentary committee or no joint parliamentary committee, the conditions will remain unaltered until and unless a convulsion of mammoth proportions takes place. There is no sign of that yet the horizon.

It is, however, necessary to propose one addendum to the summary of the goings on presented above. Crony capitalism did not start in the third week of March 1998. Like economic reforms, it too is a continuum: Bofors, Howaldswerke Deutche Werit, the stockmarket scandals of 1992-93, Karsan and the urea that was never there, the glorious erosion in the value of Unit Trust of India share etcetera, have a filial connection. Some will even venture to say that the so called economic reforms and crony capitalism go together.

Ashok Mitra