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Political Diary
Affectionately Yours….
MAYA REWRITES ‘CORRUPT’ RULES
By Poonam I Kaushish
New Delhi, January 15, 2008
“The element of love and affection relate to emotions
of a man. One may be impelled by his conscience or may be
moved by emotions to part with his wealth or property and to
give the same to a particular person for whom he has developed
love and affection. Such a desire can be developed any time
and on any ground.” Pearls of wisdom from Freud? A chapter on
the intricacies of the human mind? Or, perhaps a
psychiatrist’s verbose on love? Neither. These pearly gems
flow from none less than the pen of the aam aadmi’s moral and
ethical conscience keeper: the income tax officer.
The foregoing “maya” of love and affection was showered last
week on the BSP supremo and UP Chief Minister Mayawati by the
IT Appellate Tribunal. In one fell stroke, the Tribunal
affixed a legal stamp of legitimacy on the Dalit icon and her
clan’s huge wealth of properties and cash not commensurate
with their known sources of income in various cases of
disproportionate assets pending before the IT department.
Shockingly, it whitewashed Mayawati’s sins of commissions and
omission as “gifts” received from supporters just out of
“veneration and personal esteem” for her. Incredibly, it
accepted in toto that her chelas’ love for her transcended new
heights wherein they even inflicted heavy financial burdens on
themselves by taking massive loans only to buy properties for
presenting them as ‘offerings of love’ to their living
Goddess. Sic.
In a land where political and public morality is virtually
non-existent, it needs no guesses to know that only a
politician could be wallowing in the sunshine of the IT man’s
largesse. Certainly not the aam janata, which is treated with
increasing contempt or as culprits. Aren’t we now accustomed
to paying bribes for everything --- from getting a ration card
to a driving licence. Never mind that it continues to burn a
hole in our aam pocket. Clearly, when gold speaks, all tongues
are silent!
In this swirling eddy of corruption, la affaire Mayawati has
once again conclusively shown the depth to which India’s
democracy and its leaders have sunk. Wherein our polity has
not only legalized corruption and put a seal of approval on
the culture of plunder but continue to be a law unto itself!
In the bargain, the lion-sized corruption continues to gorge
itself on the vitals of the nation.
Look, its raining scandals for our netagan. Why only Mayawati?
How is she any different from Mulayam Singh, Jayalalitha,
Laloo, Sukhram, Ju Dev etc? Remember Suraj Mandal, who blew
the whistle in the JMM case in 1996 in the Lok Sabha. He
asserted: “Paisa boriyon main ata hai, gathriyon main nahin.”
Not one MP present protested.
Why should they? After all, haven’t our leaders reduced graft
to a farcical political pantomime. So easy to blame everything
on the “system”. Wherein India’s brand equity has been xeroxed
as corrupt. Now naked, unashamed, public and brazen. Sanjiva
Reddy’s words haunt and taunt us. Prior to his retirement as
the President of India, he had told INFA candidly: “Anyone who
has the opportunity to make money but doesn’t do so is a
bloody fool.” How true.
We’ve had a surfeit of scams and their number keeps growing.
Starting from Mudgal accepting a bribe of just Rs.2,000 in the
early fifties to the Bofors Rs.64-crore pay off in the
eighties. Nothing changed in the nineties except the magnitude
of the scams snow-balled. From the Rs.5,000 crore bank scandal
down hawala, sugar to UTI, petrol and Tehalka, which exposed
the underbelly of defence deals in 2000. To Telgi’s Rs.30,000
fraud in 2004. Followed by Natwar Singh’s Volcker UN
food-for-cash, down to the MPs cash-for-question and
cash-for-projects scams under the MP Local Area Development
Scheme. Onward to the fake passport racket and the latest
wheat import scam.
Only political reactions have changed with the changing times.
From 1951 to 2008. For Nehru corruption was “always
distasteful” which he considered as “highly derogatory and
highly objectionable.” In fact, so averse was he to money that
once he urgently summoned the then AICC General Secretary
Shriman Narain to take charge of Rs.500 given to him as Party
donation.
On the other hand, his daughter Indira dismissed corruption as
a “global phenomenon” in 1977. Narasimha Rao merely called it
“a systems failure,” in 1993. Vajpayee asserted, “law will
take its own course” in 2003. Culminating in Manmohan Singh
helplessly dismissing it as “the compulsions of coalition
politics”!
Any wonder that in the last 60 years not one politician has
been convicted. Leave alone, jailed for corruption. With the
result that with each passing year politicians have become
increasingly brazen. Bringing things to such a pass that going
to jail is not far from becoming a badge of honour! In fact,
two MPs and a sprinkling of MLAs involved in criminal offences
have fought elections from behind the bars and won. A ghotala
of few thousand crores is not worthy of feeding the chara of
morality.
Sadly, the principle of “sovereign immunity” continues to
protect our netagan. Operating in our expended concept of
“instrumentality of state”. Never mind that the principle
itself is a contradiction of democracy. It was derived from
the English Common Law wherein the king could do no wrong. But
the principle should have been given a burial once we had
abandoned the kings. However, trust our polity to continue to
cling to this royal privilege. It was primarily intended to
protect a public servant from liability, not prosecution. But
today our rulers have extended this concept of prosecution to
even investigation.
What is extremely disquieting is that Union Ministers and
Chief Ministers accused of swindling crores of public money
are all living in great comfort and merrily enjoying their
high positions. Effectively exposing the fact that the crusade
against corruption has shamefully failed in India. Think. We
Indians pay over Rs 21,068 crores a year for ‘services
rendered’ to our powers-that-be, according to the Transparency
International’s Indian Corruption Study 2005.
Arguably, what is the future of society in such conditions?
More frustration, more chaos, more unrest and even bloodshed.
It needs to be remembered that corruption in the national
polity can only survive by paying a very heavy price of
increasing mayhem and violence in society. The tragedy of it
all is that our polity continues to merrily wallow in corrupt
self deception without a thought to the future and the
inevitable damage to the larger national cause.
This in a nutshell epitomizes today’s political culture. New
ideas are bandied about daily for eradicating the scourge of
corruption and enforcing some morality. Which like a
Jack-in-the-box surface each time a scandal breaks out. By
Government after Government. All setting up Committee after
Committee, each tom-toming more than the other. With what net
result? A big zero.
The problem of dealing with corruption is not merely due to a
lack of legal powers or absence of any enforcement agency. We
have had the Prevention of Corruption Act since 1947. The CBI
was set up in 1963. Nevertheless, no amount of legal powers or
creation of enforcement infrastructure will be of much help.
Simply because there is a lack of political will, genuine
desire to cleanse the political cesspool and courage of
conviction to fight for honesty and accountability.
The question then is: how does one eradicate this scourge from
public life? There are many remedies for what the people want:
transparency and accountability. That is the crux of the
problem of our polity, which has so far only preached, but
seldom practiced. The top has to be clean for the lower levels
to be clean. But the people at the top are just not keen on
honest anti-corruption drives, the stench, which fills the
political class, cannot be cleared by mere personal
assertions, abuses or denials.
The harsh truth is that no politician till date has been able
to overcome his greed to bell the big fat cat of corruption.
To quote Vajpayee in the Lok Sabha during the debate on the
hawala scam in 1996; “Politics has become a way of making
money.” One living testimony to this is Mayawati, who extols
her workers to fill her coffers --- openly, defiantly and
shamelessly.
If the Government is serious about purging the malaise and
reigning in the Dalit icon, now is the time to introduce
probity and cry halt to the legitimizing of corruption, as
implicitly in IT Tribunal’s bizarre decision. Galloping
corruption and the lack of integrity at the higher levels
needs to be curbed ruthlessly without further delay for the
health of our democracy. Failing which we will at best end up
letting Mayawati ‘affectionately’ continue to rewrite the
‘corrupt’ rules of a ramshackle corrupt democracy, where
honesty will no longer be viewed as the best policy! --- INFA
(Copyright India News & Feature Alliance)
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