Corruption and political hypocrisy

Nov 18, 2010

On the 1st day of Winter Session of Parliament JD (U) leader Sharad Yadav got agitated during a discussion on the corruption charges on Telecom Minister A Raja, CWG boss Suresh Kalmadi and Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chahvan.  In the heat of the moment the former Union Minister got so much carried that he made a politically not-so-correct yet candid statement that once being a part of the Union Government he is aware that in India investigating agencies are so much under the clutches of the ruling party that any investigation has absolutely no meaning and corruption & political nepotism remains a way of life.
Though the allegation of Sharad Yadav was meant to target the Congress Party, it actually proved to be a revealing statement on how the respective governments in India have misused the central investigating agencies, and hypocrisy is the only buzz word on the issue. The question here is that whether corruption actually is an issue in India beyond middle class hysteria. Well, your guess could be as good as mine. Had corruption been an issue then the ruling Congress party that has been responsible for institutionalizing it had not been ruling the country uninterrupted for almost three decades since independence.
The fact of the matter is that corruption has never been an issue in India and the governments who have performed even decent on the given parameter of governance (development, social justice or just plain PR) have repeatedly been re-elected even after being declared corrupt by the investigating agencies and the court of law. The political parties that are stalling the parliament year after year seem to have learnt the art of engineering the middle class hysteria over corruption, while they are all hand-in-glove, and collectively determined to laugh their way to banks while plundering the public wealth.
What Sharad Yadav said in the House is only the tip of the iceberg. The malaise runs much deeper in the system. Have not we all seen the then CBI chief Joginder Singh saying in Patna that prima facie there is no case to charge sheet Laloo Yadav in fodder scam and then stating otherwise in Delhi in a matter of few hours? After all, he was only following his boss’ (Prime Minister) order against the wannabe Prime Minster. Did corruption charge desert the massive vote bank of Laloo? There are a number of examples where the corruption and other criminal charges have worked the other way and instead mobilized the gullible voters even further.
With the change of time, corruption has only snowballed into a kind of media trial, with the political parties more interested in engaging the public and engineering vote bank than reaching to a logical conclusion. If that not be the case why are opposition parties today demanding JPC with more members of ruling alliance than a PAC with more opposition members? The fact of the matter is that all they are interested in is a drift of DMK from the ruling alliance and not taking the corruption to its logical end. The ruling UPA alliance is playing equally smart to let the bedlam happen and in due course pass the tide. Public memory, after all, is very short.
Had public memory not been that short, the principal opposition party, BJP would not have gathered morale to raise such a hue and cry over corruption. After all, the track record of their own NDA government has been equally pathetic, filthy and stormy over the issue. The telecom scam is not just confined to the grant of 2G Spectrum; it actually started within the NDA Government. When one of the upright ministers, Jagmohan stood out as whistle blower, he was ungracefully shifted from the ministry and sidelined. Who doesn’t know how Reliance was given license for local loop phone initially and then all the norms subverted to favour the corporate house.
When the corruption scandal had surfaced in the Defence Ministry of the NDA government, did the then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee showed the kind of leadership that the Manmohan Singh has now shown? The BJP had then gone “On Record” saying that it is the prerogative of the Prime Minister to retain and drop a minister, and he is not bound by the wish of the opposition party. It had led to a new precedent in the history of Indian Parliament when throughout the tenure of the NDA government, the opposition kept the Defence Minister George Fernandes boycotted, and never asked any questions. Of course, the common gullible middle class kept wondering that whether our leaders have stood so low that even the coffins of war martyrs at kargil were not spared.
It is due to the all pervasive political hypocrisy that a political party raises a toast over Adarsh Society Housing Scam in Maharashtra, despite the fact that their own Party President is one of the beneficiaries. How conveniently they forget that one of the Chief Ministers of their own party had shamelessly defended corruption with a couplet, “paisa koi khuda toh nahin lekin khuda ki kasam  khuda se kam bhi nahin” (Money may not be god but god swear is no less than god). May be the poor guy was just following the principles set by his Party President who was caught on camera accepting bribe, not leaving even loose currency of Rs. 10.
The country was not so shocked beyond middle class hysteria yet again. The rest had digested the first time whiff of power that brought the greed out of the holier-than-thou political party. They are any way not alone in becoming a poor Xerox copy of the Congress in terms of corruption. The respective Third Front Governments, often a by-product of disenchantment with the two leading political parties, too have been found lusting for the same booty through means fair and foul. Hence when a leading industrialist blew the whistle of being asked 15 crores for airlines license, nobody was surprised or shocked.
The moot point here is that when every political party has been equally shameless then whom to be blamed. The first blame goes to people like us for being hysterical with selective amnesia. So long we are a party to the political vote engineering in the name of whistle blowing on corruption, the soap opera called “war on corruption” will continue. As concerned citizens of the country our agenda should be to boycott the corrupt, and at the same time deplore those who have double-speak on the subject with a holier-than-thou war cry.

An open Letter to Bihar Chief Minister

Nov 6, 2010

Dear Mr Nitish Kumar
As you are poised to take over the realm of the second largest state in the country, Bihar the 2nd consecutive time, I feel like interacting with you directly over certain issues that I feel deserves due attention. You or even many of my friends may dismiss this letter as a publicity gimmick and question my locus standi to such an interaction. After all, why should a lone person without any political mass base and a non-Resident Bihari who does not even cast his vote in the state evoke your interest? Still I felt like writing an open letter to a man who is my Hero but yet there are shades of grey in his governance that is a matter of concern as well.
Mr Kumar, you may be more concerned with admirers and critics who matter the most as far as the political calculation of the state is concerned. But then all these admirers and critics also have some vested interest that has goaded them to their respective line of ideology. I have none. Still I am one of your ardent fans. As a non-Resident Bihari I have been quite vocal on the issue of Bihari Diaspora and their legitimate rights. And this is precisely the reason that you are my Hero as far as Bihar getting its pride back is concerned. Had it not been you turnaround performance as the Chief Minister of Bihar, the state would not have got its due place back. You have suddenly transformed Bihar into new power centre in this part of the world.
The average non-Resident citizen of Bihar is no longer living with subdued silence in exchange of a decent living across the country. The unprecedented development of the state in the last five years has equipped us with the kind of statistics that the outside world often wonders. Of course, it is also backed by the fact that many of those who left the state in the last couple of decades have made a mark with their impeccable merit, unquestionable hard work and live in a new aspiration driven economy. Still a large share of the credit for the new-found confidence goes to you. After all, it is not just about boasting our individual success, but the issue has been perception and projection of the state at large. 
Though you have absolutely no background in media, you have successfully cultivated the art of media management and the positive perception and projection of the state is a Case Study in itself. It is due to this dramatic turnaround that a section of regional parties mooting the possibility of another Third Front Government at the Centre think of you as the future Prime Minister. If that happens and when that happens, we all will hold our head high with pride. And it is precisely such a big picture in vision that I am compelled to write this open letter to you.
As we at the TRACK2MEDIA Consulting conducted election forecast survey in Bihar, I was wondering as to how opinion on your government’s performance has been diametrically opposite in different pockets. I can understand that normally in any given election there is a sharp contrast between the macro level indicators and micro level sentiments. But in Bihar there has been something more than what average pollsters would have noticed. For the last few days the political commentator in me was trying to figure out whether development always translates into votes. My understanding of Indian polity and electoral politics says that the governments who have performed even decently have got reelected in a democracy like India where political overtones on every nook and corner are most often silenced by the voters at large who are generous with least expectation level.
However, there are very many visible examples where development has not translated into votes. The question is if development doesn’t translate into votes, what else can be done? Well, it is just a matter of looking at development with a holistic vision-development for whom and at what cost? when development is confined into select pocket, when there is absence of inclusive growth and when the fruits of development are not shared equally in the society; it leads to not only the process of political marginalization and resultant mobilization, but also leads to long term social unrest. I wonder whether already divided Bihar (on caste and other socio-political parameters) can afford such unrest.
I understand that by and large you have served your constituency (caste, class, geographical and political) reasonably well. The failure has been more on the part of your alliance partner who remained so clueless with sudden found power in Bihar that they started repeating the same mistakes that Congress did during its alliance with the RJD Government. The BJP failed to either create a separate constituency or serve the section that has been its traditional strength in the state. But then the BJP today appears to be more Congressised than the Congress itself. They are well known to follow the Congress in their quest to understand the intricacies of governance, and their corruption and lust for power at every level is a testimony to it.  
As far as you are concerned, I, and many like me, expect you to be a statesman. A proven performer who can do wonders for the state. And it is in this perspective that I feel your second term as Bihar Chief Minister will be even more challenging. This can well be your make or break innings in the state. I am not saying this because there will be sky high expectations to deliver; rather I am more concerned with the fact that my Hero should set a new benchmark for the overall inclusive growth of the state. Destiny, after all, doesn’t favour those who take corrective measures only when confronted with the crisis. Even Laloo Yadav did his best when dethroned from Bihar to turnaround the Indian Railways. It proved to be too little & too late. I just wish that the visionary Nitish Kumar will not repeat the same mistakes.
Yours….
A Concerned Non-Resident Bihari