|
VIEWPOINT: FIFTH COLUMN
A
War Not Fought
Why is India so unconcerned about the issue of corruption?
By Tavleen Singh
 When
we talk about corruption in India we usually talk about it as a scandal-as
if it affected only the fortunes of some politician or official and not
the very fabric of our lives. So we remember Bofors and Tehelka, the Sukh
Ram scandal, the urea scam, the story of the income-tax officer in Mumbai
who owned more real estate than Ratan Tata could dream of, the municipality
sweeper caught recently with lakhs of rupees lying around his humble abode.
We rarely relate the illicit fortunes made by these individuals to our
own misfortune. What made me realise that we need to change our approach
were two statistics supplied by the chairman of Transparency International,
Peter Eigen. Speaking at the second Global Forum on Fighting Corruption
and Safeguarding Integrity held in the Netherlands last fortnight, he
pointed out that if the $7 billion that the Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha
stashed away in western banks could be returned it would "turn the
tide of the HIV aids epidemic" that currently devastates Africa.
Similarly, if Slobodan Milosevic's $70million, located in Swiss bank accounts,
could be returned to Serbia it would go a long way towards repairing the
damage to his devastated country.
 Translate
this idea into an Indian context and we come up with a long, sad list
of things that could have been. If the crores of rupees we have spent
on "eliminating poverty" had actually got to the poor, nearly
30 per cent of our population would not still be living below the poverty
line. The Planning Commission has admitted that sending monthly money
orders directly to the needy may have been a more effective way of eliminating
poverty. If the crores of rupees we distribute to our MPs and MLAs to
spend in their constituencies had been spent directly on development we
would by now have had real assets in rural India instead of leakages and
squandering. The ifs go on and on and tell the same story of corruption
preventing development, of taxpayers' money being looted and salted away
in hidden bank accounts.
If we ever get ourselves a government that is
serious about fighting corruption it will begin by investigating its own
administration to see where the leaks occur and how they can be plugged.
That this Government is not serious-despite the BJP's claims that it is
"a party with a difference"-is evident from the fact that it
did not even bother to send a minister to the Global Forum. There were
ministers from nearly every country in the world and they stood before
an international gathering of journalists to list what their countries
were doing to fight corruption. Even our old foe Pakistan sent Lt-General
Khalid Maqbool, chairman of the National Accountability Bureau, who was
eloquent in his denunciation of corruption in his country. Guess who spoke
for India? Najma Heptullah. She came on behalf of the Inter-Parliamentary
Union and not the Indian Government but in the absence of an Indian minister
she was given the floor.
At the conference I searched in vain for the
Indian delegation. There wasn't one. There was our high-profile Chief
Vigilance Commissioner N. Vittal and a few faceless officials. When I
returned home I made some inquiries about why we could not have had at
least one junior minister present and found that the main reason is that
it is easier for faceless bureaucrats to be frequent flyers than for ministers.
The prime minister is quite strict about letting his ministers travel
to foreign lands but it appears that this rule of austerity does not apply
to officials. They go where they want and when they want at our expense
and to no obvious purpose. The secretary from the Ministry of Personnel
who was apparently at this conference remained invisible. Why did he go
at all? Who knows-we are like this only.
Corruption is today considered an issue of such
global importance that most countries are coming together to discover
ways to curb it. There are reports available on how it can be curbed in
customs and excise, in tax collection, in government spending and in its
functioning in general.
There is much we can learn from these reports,
many ideas on how we can overcome the grave shortcomings in our own style
of governance but we seem not to care. So, as we can see from what is
going on since Jayalalitha returned in avenging-angel mode to Tamil Nadu,
corruption is not so much an issue as a political weapon.
It has to become an issue because it is why
attempts at doing anything in India always seem to fail. Why do we not
have the roads that we so desperately need? Why do our villages lack even
basic amenities? Why are our forests disappearing despite what is spent
on preserving them, and why do our children starve despite government
granaries bursting at the seams? Look under the surface anywhere and you
will see signs of the unfought war against corruption.
|
METRO TODAY
Web
Exclusives