If you ask any person on the street what they think is the most serious issue that they face they will say Corruption, apart from of course the increasing food price. One can be cynical about inflation as a cribbing point of self obsessed middle class but corruption is all pervasive, it very seriously affects most section of society in particular the poor and middle class. For poor people it is severely debilitating (take this example: if truckers pay 5billion$ every year as bribe-Transparency International study 2005-does the protest on fuel price increase make any sense!) as also ramification on environment (take for instance illegal mining). It is a well known fact that India is one of the most corrupt countries in the world. You might think the policy makers will make every effort to tackle this menace but no dear you are expecting too much from the self serving elite. I was reading Gunnar Myrdal (i have quoted him in my early blog also, and this one too will not be the last) he expresses surprise, as early as in 1950s, that Corruption is not acknowledged by the elite. Read this...“I recall how i once tried to interest a group of young sociologist in India in carrying out empirical research in order to pinpoint and analyse the type of difficulties a poor landless worker or sharecropper would encounter if he ven
tured to insist upon getting his due from the landlord or moneylender. My suggestion met with complete disinterest. ‘We know all about it without study’ one of them remarked, which is certainly a strange attitude for a scientist (Myrdal quotes “it is amazing how otherwise excellent studies on development problems in Asia and Africa avoid any serious reference to the fact of corruption. It is not that writers do not know of its existence but its relevance to the question of political stability and rapid economic development appears not to be fully appreciated”).The disinterest among the great majority of economists in the facts of corruption stands in strange contrast to the very lively interest shown in South Asian countries among the average literate people. Few issues penetrate the minds of people so deeply among all ‘educated’ even among those otherwise as this one...few are debated with so much excitement. Where there is freedom of public expression, as in India, the newspapers devote much of their space to alleged cases of corruption...i have sometimes felt that corruption takes the same place there as sex and race in contemporary American civilisation.
...anti corruption campaign are waged; laws are passed, vigilance agencies set up, special police establishment assigned to investigate reports of misconduct; sometimes officials mostly of lower brackets are suspended or punished, and occasionally a minister has to resign. And committees are appointed to set forth a general strategy for counteracting corruption....the ostentatious efforts to prevent corruption and the assertion that the corrupt are being dealt with as they deserve only seem to spread cynicism, especially as to how far all this touches those higher ups”.
Gunnar Myrdal writes something very significant here “people’s beliefs about corruption and the emotions attached to those beliefs are themselves important facts. They have their causes and also their effects, and there is no excuse for not making them the object of intensive research”
Myrdal quotes Nehru as saying “merely shouting from the house top that everybody is corrupt creates an atmosphere of corruption. People feel they live in a climate of corruption and they get corrupted themselves. The man in the street says to himself: ‘well, if everybody seems corrupt, why shouldn’t i be corrupt’. That is the climate that sought to be created which must be discouraged”. Myrdal writes in response “this analysis of the immediate effects of the folklore of corruption is probably correct. But Nehru’s practical conclusion, that he should not use his tremendous personal authority and the angry popular outcry for taking radical measures against the spread of corruption in high places, probably belong to one of his serious mistakes, as many of his friends told him”
Nehru’s mistake is what other PMs seem to have endorsed all these years nothing explains rampant corruption in this society. It affects us all the time. This blogger was in Chennai last month and took a GC (general) ticket to Vizag, when i reached the train the unreserved
compartment was so very full that i dropped the idea of travelling in that train-a decade back i would have hopped in-opposite the railway station there are people who can get you confirm ticket for money. And i got one for the evening train despite the fact enquiry showed ‘waiting list’. How did that happen?. Obviously money goes to the official, every day thousands of train and you know how much it’s worth. It’s not that they are not aware of this they choose to ignore (talking of trains this blogger would like to know on what basis is The Hindu distributed in Durontho trains?. I am surprised by the magnanimity of Mamata Bannerjee, that too for a newspaper that is prejudiced against her. Despite being distributed free most people didn’t take it...it is unknown in most part of the country. People should be given choice here. Ram seems to be having it easy: 1000copies per train is a good deal. The days of Tam Bram easy life is over, fixers in government must have been paid). Corruption is all pervasive and runs into billions and billions of rupees, in a country as poor as India this is not only criminal but violation of human rights. Don’t know if the present government in the centre realises this that the people are extremely angry and frustrated about these day to day scams that runs into millions of rupees (if middle class is vociferous then lack of protest from poor people doesn’t mean they aren’t affected indeed they take the major brunt). Corruption is the most serious issue the country faces. It strikes at the foundation of just society. Manmohan Singh government is a spectacular failure for maintaining status quo and not making any effort for systemic changes, it’s time that Congress (if it want to survive) reconsider his viability (if Rahul Gandhi is responsible for election victories then what prevents him to be appointed as PM by the party is something i don’t understand). We were under the impression that Manmohan Singh’s lack of charisma or popularity could be compensated by his sincerity (he is a nice decent man)...well it is not working. He seems to be more of a cold economist. Myrdal writes “...economist are also eager to appear open to ideas from outside their own traditional and narrow field and to be broadminded. After having made the most generous reservations and qualifications, they tend, however, to go on as before, reasoning in purely economic terms”. Myrdal gets quite damning “to that pretended sophistication also usually belongs having very scanty knowledge of the history of ideas and of the philosophy and
sociology of science. The raising of the problem of the role of biases in research therefore passes by without being understood”... “This lacuna in their understanding of social problems has in recent decades been fortified by the way in which economist are being trained...the result is that a student has been able to become professor of economics while having only the most fragmentary knowledge about the society he studying”
If Manmohan Singh can show agitation and put his job on line to get the ‘nuclear deal’ done, he could show a fraction of his “tremendous personal authority” (quoting Myrdal) to the issue of corruption that is eating the society from within. Removing few people doesn’t change anything we want radical systemic changes (ombudsman like Lokpal, depoliticising CBI, implementing Judicial reforms, Police reforms and so on). This Government seems to be singularly lacking the will or the intent to tackle the scrounge of corruption. Time for Mr Singh to go...he was quite competent as a Finance Minister but as a PM this blogger dare say he has become a liability to the expectations of the people of this nation.
I recall nearly two decades back the then PM made an amazing statement that even made it to quotable quotes section of international news magazines “not taking a decision is also a decision”. Many people thought it was funny, this blogger didn’t. If you cannot take decision then you should quit and give way to people who can.
