Will Indians Against Corruption win?

Will Indians Against Corruption win? appeared in The  Hans India on December 29, 2011

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As a tumultuous year winds down to become history, the one issue that seems to resonate with the common folk is that of corruption and the government’s insouciance to combat it. The year opened with the unravelling of the 2G scam and the fall of the high and mighty. There were other scandals, such as the CWG and Adarsh Society scam, as venal as the telecom swindle, but it was the magnitude of perceived corruption and the nexus between politics, big business and the media involved in 2G scam that shocked the nation.

The clamour for democracy in the Arab street was a distant thunder. The ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement energised the anti-capitalists and perhaps briefly the communist ethos in its death pangs. But it was Anna Hazare’s first hunger strike that struck a chord and truly awakened the citizenry of this country. The groundswell of public anger against corruption fuelled the movement that was reminiscent of Mahatma Gandhi’s mass Satyagrahas. 

The most redeeming feature of Hazare’s movement is that the youth of our country have been at its vanguard, giving the lie to the popular perception that today’s youth are selfcentred and uninterested in political movements. Taking a cue from Hazare’s campsite in Delhi, hunger strike camps across the nation displayed pictures of Bharat Mata in the background. This was because today’s youth is proud of our rich and ancient culture, history, philosophy and spirituality. Unlike their counterparts of a few generations ago, they are not burdened by the tugs and challenges of ‘intellectual fashions’, which demanded disavowal, denial, denigration and negation of anything remotely connected with India’s glorious past.

However, this was where the first sign of discord in the coalition against corruption surfaced. The naïve Gandhian that Hazare was, he did not understand the importance of symbolism and nuances in India’s ‘secular’ political discourse. Hazare was advised by the ‘secular’ members (it is needless to point out that the ‘secular’ members in any ‘civil society’ group are ‘more equal’ than others) of his entourage that displaying Bharat Mata at the campsite would offend the ‘secular’ ethic of the nation as it amounted to crass majoritarianism. He meekly obeyed and banished Bharat Mata.

Be that as it may, Hazare was successful to the extent that he forced the government to bring in a bill that had eluded political consensus for over 60 years. As this piece is being written, the Bill as conceived the UPA was passed by the Lok Sabha, though many feel that it was not a strong weapon to fight corruption. However, the UPA failed to provide a constitutional status to the proposed Lokpal as it failed to garner the required number of votes. And it is yet to pass the test in the Rajya Sabha.

It would be unwise to assume that corruption, so deeply ingrained in the body-politic, could be excised with a single movement, howsoever popular the movement might have been. A small battle has been won but the major war is still ahead. The demon, so long used to feasting on the common weal of the populace like a gigantic parasite, is not going to give in easily.

It is going to fight back with magnified virulence, which can take many shapes and forms. We can already see the ‘dogs-of-war’ let loose by the principal Opposition - in this case, the ruling clique - attacking the fight against corruption on many fronts. These include smear campaigns against the movement’s principal protagonists and dilatory tactics like calling for reservations in the Lokpal, something which was unheard of in the constitution of Constitutional bodies. Even if the government gets the Bill passed through the Rajya Sabha, the reservation part might yet come under judicial scrutiny. 

TAILPIECE: The kickbacks involved in the Bofors scam were peanuts compared to the magnitude of today’s scams. But the subject of corruption in third-world countries inspired Geoffrey Archer enough to include it in his anthology of short stories, ‘A Twist in the Tale’, published in the aftermath of Bofors. Here are two snippets from it:

The finance minister of a third-world country approaches a Swiss bank, ostensibly to investigate the account one of his country’s politicians had with the bank. The senior official of the bank whom the minister approaches refuses to confirm or give any details of the account. The minister’s pleas in the name of ethics, morality, humanity and what have you and threats to close down all his country’s accounts with the bank were of no avail. Even his threat to kill the official drew a blank. The minister walks out but suddenly hoists his brief case on to the table and says ‘how about opening an account?’

Two ‘third-world’ government ministers meet in an international conference held in one of their capitals. They become friends and the minister of the host country invites the other minister to his mansion for dinner. The guest was amazed to see the opulence of his host’s mansion and wonders how he could build such a mansion in so poor a country. The host takes him to the top of the building and shows him a nearby river and a dam on it. He asks him ‘do you see the dam?’ The guest replies he does. ‘Well! Ten percent of it’, he says.

The next conference was held in the guest’s national capital and naturally the earlier guest now plays host and invites his friend to dinner. It was the turn of the other to marvel at the opulence of his friend’s palace. So the host takes him to the top of the building and points at the panoramic expanse of the nearby river. ‘See the dam there?’ he asks. ‘But I do not see anything there!’ replies his guest. ‘Precisely!’ says the host, ‘Ten per cent of it!’