Factors that led to rise of political corruption in India after

Independence:

o Nehru's tolerant attitude towards corruption.

o License Raj.

o Lack of accountability in Judiciary.

o Labor aristocracy.

o Mafia Raj (or Goonda Raj or Jungle Raj)

o Black money

o Malfunctioning bureaucracy

Income Tax. search on properties linked to Minister etc.

o Thursday, August 2017

Karnataka’s Energy Minister D. K. Sivakumar and his brother, D.K.

Suresh was under search by the Income Tax department on 2nd August

morning. In a coordinated early morning exercise, Income Tax Department

officials on Wednesday carried out a multi-city search on properties linked

to Energy Minister D. K. Sivakumar and his brother D.K. Suresh (a M.P.

from Bengaluru Rural). In continuation of the raids Income Tax officials are

carrying out search and seizure operations at over 60 locations on

Thursday. It is claimed that about Rs. 10 Crores were recovered.

o Saturday, August 5, 2017

Income Tax officials confront Shivkumar with documents

Searches are not yet over.

o Officials sought explanation over his assets and investments in

several businesses in Bharath and abroad. Questioning continued.

o Correlation with his 2013 election affidavit and the I-T returns he

filed since 2013 and documents and financial transactions

unearthed are the questions that have to be answered by him.

IT officials from Mysore reached the house of Chetan Narayan on B.M.

Road in Hassan late on Wednesday night and began searches. Search

operations were conducted at their residences, hotel, petrol pump and

other establishments.

On late Wednesday night, the house and properties of a businessman and

his family in Hassan were raided. The SBG Group, run by three brothers -

Sachin Narayan, Chetan Narayan and Prithvi Narayan, has been into real

estate, hotel and other industries. The family is said to have close ties with

leaders of both the Congress and the BJP.

***

Extent of corruption in Bharath o Sports sector: Match fixing, Commonwealth games screw-up,

Nepotism in IPL.

o Health sector: In 2008, World Bank said it had uncovered

serious acts of corruption in its five health projects in India

amounting to $500 million.

o Telecom sector: A Raja was recently sacked after a CAG

report said his ministry sold 2G licenses below market prices

costing India nearly $40 billion dollars.

o Software Services: The founder of Satyam Co, one of the top

service firms in India admitted he had falsely inflated profits for

years and resigned in Jan 2009.

o Defence sector: In the 1980’s, the then Prime Minister Rajiv

Gandhi and several other officials were accused of receiving

kickbacks from Swedish arms manufacturer AB Bofors for

winning a bid to supply India with 400 howitzers.

o Police sector: Indian police is largely inefficient and

unreformed. The police act of 1861 has remained unchanged

over the past 150 years.

o Real estate sector: Three of Maharashtra CM Ashok Chavan's

relatives were involved in Adarsh scam. In Bangalore, CM

Yeddyurappa is accused of allotting land to his relatives.

o Judiciary: In Jan 02, S.P Bharucha, then India's chief justice

said 20% of the higher judiciary might be corrupt. As of Feb

2006, 33635 cases were pending in the the Supreme court

and more than 3 million cases were pending in high courts.

*****

July 10, 2017: Book Extraction: Corruption in era of Liberalisation

Why scams are here to stay: Understanding Political Corruption in

India, N. Ram, Aleph, Rs. 395/-

Corruption is intractable, all pervasive, and multifarious. It is asking three

measures of land by its measure, coming like a puny Vamana and when

you agree to give like Bali in your arrogance, the universe is measured out

in two steps by becoming Trivikrama and on your head lands the foot that

sends you down before you say ‘my foot!’

“In 1987-1988, without much forewarning, we at The Hindu found

ourselves in the deep end, investigating grand corruption of a kind that

India had not seen before,” writes N. Ram, chairman of Kasturi & Sons Ltd.,

and former editor-in-chief of The Hindu and Frontline, in his new book, ‘Why

Scams Are Here to Stay: Understanding Political Corruption in India’.

Drawing on the experience of investigating Bofors, modern India’s defining

corruption scandal; he throws a spotlight on the intractability of corruption

— in its pervasiveness, omnipresence, and multifariousness — under the

prevailing circumstances in India, which is to say that without making deep-

going and radical changes to India’s political economy it will not be possible

to prevent and eliminate corruption. Yet, he argues counter-intuitively,

combating corruption is decidedly a challenge of the here and now. An

excerpt:

Gunnar Myrdal even came up with a ‘sketch’ of a theory of corruption in

South Asia by offering some ‘reasonable, though quite tentative’ questions to

be explored and hypotheses to be tested. These questions and hypotheses

attempted to relate corruption in South Asian countries to general socio-

economic conditions, to the stage of development, and especially to

institutional and attitudinal problems. But Myrdal’s sketch of a theory of

corruption in South Asia was ahistorical in one critical respect: it failed to

acknowledge the extent to which the colonial power had participated in and

nurtured the corruption, and the conditions engendering corruption, that free

India inherited.

Interestingly, while Myrdal saw the presence of corruption in South

Asian countries in somewhat static terms, as a legacy from pre-capitalist,

traditional society, he related the increase in corruption to the processes of

dynamic change in the social system, offering the insight that many of the

changes that had occurred afforded ‘greater incentives as well as greater

opportunities for corruption’. Most significantly, he called attention to the

active role of the business world in promoting corruption among politicians

and administrators.

Socio-economically and politically, India is a very different country

from the one Myrdal encountered during the decade he researched and

wrote Asian Drama (1968). But his observation that many of the dynamic

changes in the social system had enabled corruption on a bigger scale

proved prophetic for the post-1991 era of economic liberalization and

accelerated pursuit of neo-liberal policies. It is now well established that the

facts of corruption, that is, its magnitude, spread, and effects in the polity

and society, have increased exponentially over the past quarter century.

While the folklore has kept in step, the anti-corruption arrangements and

actions have been limping a long way behind.

The past decade-and-a-half has seen a spectacular outbreak of

corruption scandals, big-ticket, medium-sized, and relatively small. With its

tentacles spreading to virtually every branch of the Indian state and to key

sectors of the economy, and to the news media, corruption’s salience in

India’s political economy and public policy discourse has never been

higher.

28 scams and counting

For the period 2000-2013, Sandip Sukhtankar and Milan Vaishnav,

researchers in political economy, have come up with a shortlist of twenty-

eight scams, involving hundreds of billions of dollars, from the lists

compiled by five news outlets. They calculate that for this list of early

twenty-first century corruption scandals, ‘the mean scam “value” was Rs.

36,000 crore, and the median Rs. 12,000 crore. A major omission from this

shortlist is Vyapam, the mega-scam in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh.

There was a time when the stock explanation for corruption in India

was the ‘permit-licence-quota raj’— virtually everything could be attributed

to it. The prediction offered by a legion of neo-liberal economists and

political theorists was that deregulation and liberalization would lead to the

prevention, containment, and eventual elimination of corruption. Precisely

the opposite has happened: liberalization has ushered in corruption in a

much greater variety of forms and on an unimaginably greater scale than

anything seen under the so-called licence raj.

The interesting question is why and various answers have been put

forward by scholars and policymakers. The essential neo-liberal answer is

that many vestiges of the licence raj remain, enforcement capacity is still

weak, and the reform process needs to be given more time to bring down

the level of corruption. The evidence clearly and decisively goes against

such ideologically led reasoning that often sounds like casuistry. The real

explanation for the exponential increase in corruption in the era of

liberalization and high economic growth must necessarily be complex and

nuanced and, as we will see, it is to be found deep in the heart and entrails

of India’s political economy as it has evolved over the past quarter century.

The short answer to the question is that with deregulation and

liberalization, the state has played a different kind of role to the one it

played earlier. It provided access to scarce public resources as part of a

process of promoting private sector-led growth at any cost. State supported

without inhibition the omnipresence and play of private interests within the

public sphere. There is plenty of evidence to show that corruption tends to

be greater when pro-business strategies of governments bring on or

facilitate crony capitalism and ‘when there is a state-engineered

redistribution of wealth in favour of a few and at the explicit or implicit

expense of the many’.

A political reckoning over burgeoning levels of corruption was due

and it took place with certain inevitability. Given the unprecedented levels

of corruption witnessed over the previous decade, it was no surprise that

the issue figured prominently in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and was

responsible, in no small measure, for the rout of the Congress-led United

Progressive Alliance.

A political reckoning over burgeoning levels of corruption was due

and it took place with a certain inevitability. Given the unprecedented levels

of corruption witnessed over the previous decade, it was no surprise that

the issue figured prominently in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and was

responsible, in no small measure, for the rout of the Congress-led United

Progressive Alliance.

N. Ram [Author of a book reviewed above]

BLACK MONEY

o Unaccounted money.

o India's underground economy today is estimated to be about half of

country's GDP.

o Global financial Integrity Study in 2006 showed that the average

amount stashed away from India annually during 2002-06 is $27.3

billion (about 136,466 crore).

o External tax havens like Switzerland are only part of the problem.

o Its extremely common in India to skip that bill at the grocery store to

escape sales tax.

o Extremely common in India to evade income taxes.

o Unclear laws in this matter and lack of political will make it easy for

culprits to get away.

o Dawood Ibrahim is believed to be responsible for the flow of large

amounts of hawala money into Mumbai stock market.

o Black money is one of the chief sources of funding for terrorists.

Political corruption

o Misuse of power by government officials for their private gain.

o Various forms: Bribery, influence peddling, patronage, nepotism,

embezzlement, electoral fraud, kickbacks, so on.

o Political corruption - trickles down to every aspect of the society.

o Political corruption is not new. Cultures all around the world have

suffered with people in power abusing their power.

o Political corruption was the main reason behind the fall of Roman

empire, triggered French revolution and started October revolution in

Russia.

o Any kind of government intervention is a recipe for political corruption.

o The history of independent India is rampant with cases of political

corruption:

o Jeep scandal (1948), Mudgal case (1951), Mundra deals (1957-58),

Malaviya Sirajuddin scandal (1963), Pratap Singh Kairon case (1963)

to name some early few.

o As Indian economy grows at a rapid pace, the stakes have got higher

and the money involved in scams have blown up to gargantuan

proportions.

Corruption in Nehru era

It was believed that Nehru had a tolerant attitude towards corruption in his

ranks.

o A.D Gorwala, a civil servant says in his report he submitted to Govt

of India in 1951 - "Quite a few of Nehru's ministers were corrupt and

it was common knowledge".

o The Santhanam committee, appointed by the Govt. in 1962 to

examine corruption said " There is widespread impression that failure

of integrity is not uncommon among ministers and that some

ministers, who have held office during the last sixteen years have

enriched themselves illegitimately, obtained good jobs for their sons

and relations through nepotism and have reaped other advantages

inconsistent with any notion of purity in public life."

o Comments of Nehru on charges against Pratap Singh Kairon - “The

question thus arises as to whether the chief minister is compelled to

resign because of adverse findings on some questions of fact by

Supreme Court. The ministers are collectively responsible to the

legislature. Therefore, the matter was one, which concerned the

assembly. As a rule therefore, the question of removing a minister

would not arise unless the legislature expressed its wish by a

majority vote.”

o This attitude of tolerance towards corruption was further

institutionalized by Indira Gandhi. She held the posts of both Prime

minister and Party president and controlled the party funds. This

gave birth to money power in politics.

o Corruption cases like Fairfax, HBJ Pipeline, and HDW Submarine

deal came up since then. The famous Bofors deal is well known.

o Narsimha Rao was the first Prime Minister being prosecuted in

corruption charges. Cases like Rs.2500 crore -Airbus A-320 deal with

France involving kickback (1990), Harshad Mehta security scam

(1992), Gold Star Steel and Alloys controversy (1992), JMM bribery

case, Hawala scam of Rs. 65 crore and Urea scam (1996) also came

up during the period of Narsimha Rao Government.

o So long the BJP was in opposition, it was by and large known as a

party with moral integrity, but when it aligned with the political leaders

with shady background for the sake of power, the malady of

corruption infected this party too. BJP party secretary Bangaru

Laxman was caught on tape by tehelka.com accepting bribes and led

to the resignation of defense minister George Fernandes in 2001.

Labour Aristocracy

"Not getting fired is my birthright and i shall have it"

Socialist policies of Nehruvian Congress gave rise to conservative labour

laws which demonise industry owners and over-protect labourers.

- Strikes and HartaaLs became commonplace in the country.

- There was a time when having a government job was a hard requirement

for many parents in their futuregroom.

- Transfer the inefficient worker, not fire him.

- There was this case of Uttam Nakate, who was caught napping in his

office, but the company couldn’t fire him because of tough labour laws. He

went to court and it took 20 years for the company to the rights to fire

him.

- "Aside from highlighting the problem of India's lethargic legal system,

Uttam's case dramatizes how the country's labor laws actually reduce

employment, by making employers afraid to hire workers in the first place.

The rules protect existing unionized workers at the expense of everyone

else." - Gurcharan Das (former CEO of P&G)

- Too many laws: In India there are 45 labour laws at the national level and

nearly 150 laws at the state level. Ideal recipe for delays and red tape.

- "In 2004, there were 482 cases of major work stoppages, resulting in 15

million human days of work loss" - World Bank

- Short sighted laws. Situation 'A' is bad - so write a law to ban situation 'A'.

Not looking at the big picture.

- Finally all disputes end up in labour courts which are too slow to lead to

any speedy resolution – huge handicap in today's fast paced global

economy.

Corruption in India_ ‘an old article’ Andrew Sanchez

The momentum of last year’s hunger strike by the anti-corruption campaigner

Kisan ‘Anna’ Hazare lately saw India’s parliament wrestling with the

formation of a national corruption ombudsman. Hazare’s campaign rested

upon the proposition that the democratic ideals with which the Indian state

was formed in 1947 were all too often subverted by the self-interest of public

servants.

Hazare’s supporters argued that this process had two primary effects.

First, corruption allowed wealthier citizens to access resources and

preferential state treatment to which they were not entitled. Second,

corruption constituted a drain on the coffers of many ordinary Indians, in the

form of demands for bribes by state functionaries, without which their

services could not necessarily be procured. Hazare’s formulation was largely

correct, and if popular support for his campaign was any indication, he had

articulated a political frustration with bribery that was unique in spanning the

regional, ethnic and religious divisions of Indian society. However, the

discontent which Hazare’s movement expressed related to a corruption that

was broader than bribery alone. ‘Corruption’ in this context encompasses a

more pernicious subversion of the Indian state that had seen substantial

numbers of often violent career criminals enter parliament since the 1970s,

and had consequently weakened popular faith in governmental institutions.

The current relationship between politics and criminality was a

consequence of a culture of entrepreneurial corruption that adhered to Indian

public office. While parliamentary service remained such a lucrative

profession, it woud continue to attract individuals whose ambitions extend

beyond the confines of their position, and whose means of satisfying them

could include coercion.

The extent to which Hazare would find satisfaction in India’s corruption

ombudsman depended in the first instance on whether the ‘Lokpal’ (‘protector

of the people’) bill to which it relates was ever enacted; the bill was stalled in

the upper house of the Indian parliament and may never be fully realised.

However, should the bill be passed, it was unlikely that the scrutiny of an

ombudsman alone can provide the framework necessary to combat

corruption at the higher reaches of the Indian state. The task required a

substantial overhaul of the wider legislation that currently protected the most

powerful public servants who could abuse their positions, and a real

engagement with the influence of violence and organised crime on national

politics.

Anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International ranked the

national perception of corruption in India to be 87th highest in the world (in an

index of 182 positions). While many nations fared better than India in this

ranking, many evidently fared much worse, including regional neighbours

Pakistan and Bangladesh. However, the real significance of perceptions of

corruption did not lie in the extent to which phenomena such as bribery were

perceived to be prevalent across society. A more important assessment

was of how differing forms of corruption were deemed to be concentrated at

different levels of the state, and whether such practices were seen as integral

to the consolidation of power.

In India, public scandals of the previous twenty years, which link

numerous elected politicians and even government ministers to repeated

acts of parliamentary corruption, embezzlement, land seizure, blackmail,

extortion, kidnap and murder, served to erode the assumption of legitimate

political authority and the efficacy of the ballot box.

While bribery in its many forms undoubtedly impedes the proper

functioning of institutions, the preponderance of criminal politicians corrupts

the very notion of the accountable and democratic state on which the idea of

India rests.

The popular perception of Indian political criminality was well

substantiated by the available data. In the then Indian parliament, of the 543

elected representatives of the lower house, 158 (29 percent) were charged

with a criminal offence. More shockingly still, seventy four (14 percent) were

charged with crimes in the most serious category of offence, comprised of

murder, rape, extortion, banditry and theft. While it was problematic to draw a

simple relationship between criminal charges and actual guilt, it is apparent

that politicians fall foul of the law far more frequently than almost any other

section of Indian society, posing the pertinent question of why particular

types of people are so often attracted to a political career.

Alternatively, though less plausibly, one could ask why it was that politicians

were so disproportionately targeted for spurious criminal investigations.

The distribution of criminal charges within the Indian parliament is weighted

towards MPs representing the smaller parties, whose support bases rely

upon the politics of caste and ethno-regionalism.

Among the two major parties, the Congress Party, whose ideology was

a secular state-socialism, had 5 percent of its 205 MPs currently facing

charges, while the Bharatiya Janata Party, representing a broad platform of

Hindu nationalism, saw 16 percent of its 116 MPs charged. At the other end

of the spectrum, the regional Samajwadi and Bahujan Samaj parties, who

predominantly represented the interests of untouchable castes, had 60

percent of their MPs also charged. Other ethno-regional parties fared

similarly poorly. Interrogating this phenomenon better substantiated the

contexts in which criminals were likely to enter Indian politics.

Many of the Indian political parties strongly associated with criminality

had their support bases in a vast northern swath of the country, running from

the state of Haryana in the centre west, across Uttar Pradesh to the eastern

states of Bihar and Jharkhand. Obscuring the understanding of political

criminality in these states was a popular national perception of this region as

a violent, culturally conservative backwater, plagued by poverty and

communalism. That some of the politicians who represented these

States should be criminal despots was often said to express the particular

troubles and cultural dispositions of the region. In reality, the emergence of

political criminality in this part of India related to the use of political violence

by the central Government from the 1970s, and the present relationship

between provincial criminal politicians and their ostensibly more legitimate

counterparts was closer than one would suspect. In explaining the rise of

India’s criminal politicians, one might consider the possibility that a new type

of charismatic political leader emerged during the 1970s that broke with the

‘statesman’ model of the Congress Party, and was valued for their

willingness to dirty their hands on behalf of their constituents. Certainly,

a profound change overtook political leadership during this period, as

violence began to be valued more highly by certain sections of the electorate,

particularly within ethno-regional movements. However, the widespread

incorporation of criminality into Indian politics stemmed apparently first time

from the use of coercion during Indira Gandhi’s ‘State of Emergency’ from

June 1975 to March 1977.

During this period, the Congress Party embarked upon a dictatorship,

ostensibly to secure national unity in the midst of parliamentary turmoil.

The ‘emergency’ saw many civil liberties suspended and political dissent

silenced through widespread arrest and coercion, a significant proportion of

which was conducted by criminal enforcers at the behest of the state. The

Congress Party’s use of violence made criminal enforcers an integral

element of political control in many areas of the nation; enforcers who

then subsequently used state connections and increased economic power to

consolidate their own positions. Dire ethical failings aside, the practical flaw

of the Congress’ use of violence lay in their failure to anticipate that the

criminals which they courted would remain part of the political landscape long

after their immediate usefulness had been exhausted. The most successful

of these criminals amassed sufficient power and influence to enter parliament

themselves, where the status of their office could further their enterprises.

Subsequent concentration of India’s criminal politicians in quite particular

areas of the nation might be explained with reference to the political

economies of the regions concerned.

Across Haryana, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, post-independence rural relations

had been characterized by a progressively open state of conflict between

lower-caste tenants and their upper-caste landlords. In this climate, the use

of politically orchestrated violence was increasingly salient, and charismatic

criminal leadership was more likely to flourish. In Bihar, criminal authority

was further entrenched by 1975’s statewide alcohol prohibition, which

created a lucrative market for bootlegged liquor.

Regional criminal organisations prospered in the 1970s by providing

coercive political services and fulfilling black market demands for consumer

goods. These organisations eventually diversified into labour contracting,

haulage, mineral extraction, metal trading and waste disposal as the region’s

industrial sectors expanded throughout the 1980s. During the 1990s, the

power of regional criminal politicians received a further boost from the centre,

as a series of weak coalition governments allowed the smaller parties on

which they were dependent to wield a disproportionate level of power in

parliamentary votes. It is during this period that the Congress Party became

embroiled in the ‘bribes for votes’ scandal, which saw Prime Minster

Narashima Rao convicted of corruption, and Sibu Soren, the head of the

ethno-regional Jharkhand Mukti Morcha Party, convicted for the directly

related murder of an alleged blackmailer.

It was not coincidental that the areas of the nation in which political

authority then enjoyed the least confidence (namely Bihar, Jharkhand and

Uttar Pradesh) were also those regions which afforded political

entrepreneurs some of the greatest economic opportunities. This was

through land seizures, industrial contracting, racketeering and labour

brokerage. The penetration of known criminals into parliament had its

clearest origins in the emergency’s use of applied violence.

One might also conclude that the class and ethnic conflicts of particular

regions explained why violence initially became a feature of charismatic

leadership in Indian politics.

However, it was the capacity of parliament to enable the consolidation

of personal power that presently explained the allure of a political career to

criminals, as well as the Indian electorate’s increasingly strident denunciation

of such forms of authority.

The challenge presently facing the Indian state was to restore public

confidence in the morality and capacity of the nation’s politicians, by ensuring

that criminals found it harder to gain entry to a potentially lucrative

parliamentary career. Meeting this challenge required an as yet absent

governmental will to reform the legislation that enabled those charged with

serious offences to stand for office, and to avoid future criminal investigation

once elected. The then governmental response to Hazare’s campaign

seemed encouraging, and was at the very least testament to the power of a

well-informed citizenry to press its demands upon the state. However, one

must doubt the depth and perhaps the sincerity with which the Indian

parliament presently searched its collective soul. Neither the issues raised by

Hazare or their proposed remedies were new. On the contrary, the corruption

and criminalisation of politics had been the subject of numerous

governmental commissions since the 1960s, most of which had reached the

same conclusions as Hazare, and had vainly made almost identical

suggestions for reform to those that were presently under discussion.

For example, the first Indian Committee on the Prevention of Corruption

reported its findings as early as March 1964, having been convened to

investigate a perceived rise in ministerial corruption since independence. The

committee concluded that India’s legislative framework was ill equipped to

deal with political corruption, and outlined a procedure whereby complaints

against members of parliament could be investigated by an independent

committee, prior to police referral. If the 1964 committee’s suggestions seem

well suited to the then political climate, it was because they were never acted

upon and the legislative failings which they identified have remained largely

unaddressed for the previous four decades. Likewise, the ‘Lokpal’ bill,

currently so fiercely debated, had a long and faltering ancestry in Indian

politics. Between 1969 and 1998, six separate Lokpal bills had been passed

in India, only to lapse with the dissolution of parliament. What the historical

farce of the Lokpal bills suggested was that the consistency with which

independent enquiries diagnose and prescribe against political corruption in

India, was matched only by the uniformity with which their activities were

ignored or obfuscated by the parliament. The fate of proposals directed more

specifically at flagrantly criminal acts of political corruption was worse still.

The 2010 background paper on electoral reforms prepared by the Indian

Election Commission had revisited two unheeded recommendations with

which to combat the criminalisation of Indian politics. Both of these were first

proposed in 2004. The Commission advised that prospective candidates for

the lower house of the Indian parliament be required to declare all previous

convictions, pending criminal cases and assets prior to standing. It

suggested that the withholding of such information should be made

punishable by a minimum of two years imprisonment. The commission

recommended disqualification for all candidates against whom charges had

been brought at least six months prior to election for the most serious

category of offences. While a number of the Committee’s wider

recommendations (regarding restrictions on the publication of exit poll results

and the closer scrutiny of deposit monies) had been enacted, the bulk of

suggestions that would curtail the entry of criminals into parliament had yet to

find favour.

The will to restrict the entry of criminals into politics had to date not

been present in any Indian government, and it was sensible to question the

likely effectiveness of a corruption ombudsman whose architects are

a parliament composed of such a high number of suspected criminals.

Furthermore, the tenacity and success with which the prosecution of political

corruption will be able to proceed in the future required the redress of a

number of substantial legislative failings. These included inadequate

provisions for commissions of inquiry, courts and investigative bodies

such as the Central Bureau of Investigation that are open to nepotistic

appointments, and a legislative position of public officials that places them

beyond the scope of some forms of legal scrutiny.

Whether the Lokpal bill would be passed, and its associated ombudsman

proven effective remained to be seen. The bill’s critics argued quite

reasonably that the omniscient scrutiny of a central ombudsman potentially

trades one form of despotism for another, and it is prudent to ask whether the

commission can itself remain immune from corruption, even if the institution

were theoretically powerful.

Certainly, many of the proposals in Hazare’s original bill had been

considerably diluted in the version presented before parliament and the

composition of the ombudsman would be a matter of intense scrutiny in

coming months. As admirable as Hazare’s campaign had been, the wider

struggle against state corruption in India was unlikely to be fulfilled by the

Lokpal alone.

In addition to the Election Commission’s suggestions to broaden the

disqualification of criminal electoral candidates, at least three major reforms

were necessary to forestall India’s further slide into institutional criminality.

First, the state needed to address the substantial legislative failings

surrounding the pursuit of judicial and political corruption, which presently

grant public officials inexplicable immunity from prosecution in a bewildering

array of contexts. In short, powerful public officials must be not only liable

to public scrutiny, but also subject to the same forms and extent of

punishment as the citizenry.

Second, the state must endeavour to create a more transparent culture

of business, through a rigorous and systematic

enquiry into the context and financing of corporate mergers, the sale and

development of land, and the securing of contracts for the supply of labour,

goods and services. The chief avenues by which corrupt politicians presently

find their business profitable must be subject to far greater attention.

Third, the effectiveness of violent coercion by political authorities must

be curbed by strengthening and rehabilitating India’s law enforcement

agencies, which presently suffer from their own crisis of public confidence

owing to perceptions of corruption and institutional incompetence. If wielded

by the state at all, the use of violence must be the preserve of an

accountable and publicly trusted judiciary and not of political autocrats.

The lack of faith in state institutions, and the popular suspicion that

power is frequently derived from criminality, invites a critical reading of India’s

rise to superpower status. The global authority which the nation is likely to

wield in coming years is only to be lauded if power and prosperity is

distributed more evenly within India itself: a challenge which requires a

serious engagement with the problems of state corruption. Whilst the task

facing the Indian state is indeed substantial, the recent popular outcry shows

that the country is rich in the popular will to enact such reforms.

***

A number of factors explain this growing emphasis on fighting

corruption. Expansion and consolidation of democracy at the grassroots level

has enabled citizens to use the vote and new-found civil liberties to confront

corruption, prompting leaders and opposition figures to show a stronger anti-

corruption commitment. Internationally, since the end of the Cold War, donor

governments have focused less on ideological grounds for foreign assistance

and concentrated more on trade and development, both of which are

undermined by corruption. Countries with high levels of corruption, like India,

have found themselves less able to attract investment and aid in a

competitive global market. At the same time, business within the country has

faced ever stiffer competition with the gobalization of trade and capital

markets, and has become less willing to tolerate the expense and risk

associated with corruption.

Anti-corruption strategies are not simply policies that can be planned in

advance and isolation, but often a set of subtler insights that can be

developed only in conjunction with citizen participation.

Combating corruption is, therefore, not just a matter of making laws

and creating institutions, but rather it is deeply rooted in the activities of the

civil society itself.

Compulsions of electoral politics in independent India changed untainted

corruption free governance and the administrative as well as the police and

judicial services came to be charged with colluding with the political

leadership to indulge in systemic corruption, making a mockery of democratic

governance.

The fading away of the Gandhian and Nehruvian era of principled

politics and the emergence of new politics the keynote of which was

amorality happened in India. India’s experience with corruption has

shown that laws, rules, regulations, procedures and methods of transaction

of government business, however sound and excellent cannot by themselves

ensure effective and transparent administration if the political and

administrative leadership entrusted with their enforcement fails to do so and

abuses its powers for personal gain.