The problem in Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA) is increasing gradually. Corruption and nepotism in the team selection have been a cause of concern for DDCA over the last several years. Recently, Captain Virender Sehwag raised his voice against all the corruption in the state cricket body and threatened to leave Delhi to join Jharkhand next season of Ranji Trophy.

 Well, many former and current players of Delhi also joined Sehwag, in an attempt to protest against the interference of sports committee in the selection process. Several senior players like Gautam Gambhir, Ashish Nehra, Aakash Chopra have also expressed their concern over the matter. Selection process is heavily influenced by the outsiders.

 The way country’s most popular sport is run in the capital is really very disgraceful. Delhi presented many great players to Indian cricket team in the past. In fact, Sehwag and Gambhir are the two regular openers of Indian team at this moment. So, I think, time has come BCCI should take some steps to eradicate all the corruption and nepotism in the Delhi cricket board. If the game is affected by corruption in the capital, the other parts of the country will gradually be affected too.

 I would like to mention one thing that many of officials of DDCA are also active in BCCI and they might try to lead BCCI in the wrong way. This is what I fear most at the moment. Besides IPL, BCCI should also ensure that cricket is being run in the right way in the country.

Yoga guru Ramdev’s stance on zero corruption is a farce, as he chooses to keep mum on alleged con man in his employ, say complainants

On March 31, 2009, iconic yoga guru Baba Ramdev slammed the government for being soft on netas, who hoarded money in Swiss bank accounts.

In fact, Ramdev has always projected himself and his organisation to be squeaky clean and free from any charges of corruption.

It is therefore ironical, that among Ramdev’s employees is  a man who has allegedly swindled a Trust he used to work with earlier, of Rs 6 lakh.

And more irony the man, Rajiv Dixhit, says he works for Ramdev’s anti-corruption organisation, the Bharat Swabhiman Trust in Haridwar.

Flashback

In December 2004, five donors from Dubai and Oman, handed Dixhit, who worked for a social upliftment organisation called Bharat Peetham, cheques totalling Rs 6 lakh for the purchase of charkhas for villagers in Varud village of Wardha.

MiD DAY has copies of the receipts given by the trust to the donors. Incidentally, Mahatma Gandhi had set up an ashram in Wardha in 1934, which still exists.

However, trustees of Bharat Peetham said that though they had received the donation of Rs 6 lakh, the money had never been spent on charkhas.

They  alleged that Dixhit had misappropriated the funds. Said Sanjeev Jha, senior committee member of Bharat Peetham, “Charkhas donated by another organisation were distributed in the village.

But Dixhit in his letter to Ajay Jain (one of the Dubai-based donors) said those charkhas had been funded by the Dubai donors, which is a lie.”

The matter came to light when Jain, called Bharat Peetham in June 2005 and asked whether the charkhas had been bought.

“Dixhit said he had bought the charkhas, but later changed his stance saying the money had been used for the tsunami victims and then for construction of buildings,” said Jain.

“We are extremely upset that the funds meant for the poor were misappropriated. I have also lost face with the other donors, as they contributed at my behest,” he added.

Over the next three years, says Jain, Dixhit fobbed off enquiries on the donations and in 2008, Jain and Dixhit met up in India. The latter  admitted he had lied and had never delivered the charkhas.

Joins Ramdev

The same year, Dixhit joined Ramdev’s Bharat Swabhiman Trust. Consequently, both the trustees and the donors shot of three complaint letters to Ramdev, asking him to address the issue.

Copies of the letters are available with this paper.

Said Jain, “Baba Ramdev is aware about the matter as a meeting had been called at his ashram on March 11, 2009.

Ramdev was present with the trustees, but nothing came of the meeting. I was also invited for the meeting, but could not make it.”

Added Abhimanyu Giri, another donor from Dubai, “Many letters have been sent to Ramdev on the issue, but he hasn’t dealt with Dixhit.”

Rs 1.47 cr
Cost of the Scottish isle Baba Ramdev bought to set up a wellness retreat

The Other Side

Dixhit, who is in Haridwar at Ramdev’s Ashram, maintained that all the allegations levied against him are baseless.

“I used the funds for constructing the Bharat Peetham building in Wardha with the prior information of all the donors, except Abhimanyu Giri.

He did not want the funds to be used for the building. All the charkhas were purchased from the funds and distributed to the villagers.

I am the secretary of the Bharat Swabhiman Trust and a reply was given to the donors by Baba Ramdev in the meeting at the Haridwar ashram six months ago.”

Tejarwala, a spokesperson of Baba Ramdev, said, “Yes, Dixhit is certainly part of our organisation, but he is not a secretary. He is a karyakarta, like the thousand others who work for Baba Ramdev.”

Baba in the News

July 2009: Yoga guru Baba Ramdev has approached the Supreme Court challenging the Delhi High Court judgment legalising gay sex among the consenting adults.

August 2007: Subodh Gupta, a corporate yoga trainer based in London, challenged Baba Ramdev for giving misleading statement or remaining silent on misleading news regarding weight loss achieved through his yoga.

Ramdev claimed that one can lose weight with yoga at a yoga camp in US.

January 2006: CPI (M) leader  Brinda Karat had alleged that human bone powder and animal parts were used in Ayurvedic medicines manufactured by Ramdev’s pharmacy.

Who is Baba Ramdev?

Baba Ramdev is known for his efforts in popularising yoga. He is also the founder of Patanjali Yogpeeth at Haridwar, said to be the biggest yoga centre in the world.

The Bharat Swabhiman Andolan, the umbrella organisation for the Trust was set up to eradicate corruption in India and restore prosperity.

Now that India is playing an ever larger role in the world economy, the issue of corruption, in both the private and public sectors, is coming into sharper focus. Two scenarios are possible: As India’s multinational corporations develop both economic and political muscle, they may act as a broom, sweeping corruption from the economic sphere.

On the other hand, entrenched practices may prove the stronger force, and corruption could end up being a significant brake on India’s economic rise.

The License Raj and the Spoils System

One strand in the knot of corruption is the legacy of the License Raj, which ended in the early 1990s. The system created bureaucracies that were all but self-perpetuating. In a context where government workers were routinely underpaid, graft became an industry all its own. Civil servants were, and remain, anything but disinterested administrators.

Wharton management professor Jitendra Singh and Ravi Ramamurti, professor of international business at Northeastern University, have been studying the emergence of multinational corporations in emerging economies such as India. In late June, they organized a conference on this topic in Boston; the conference’s papers will form the core of an edited volume which is planned for publication in 2008.

“In the bad old days,” Singh said in an interview, “particularly pre-1991, when the License Raj held sway, and by design, all kinds of free market mechanisms were hobbled or stymied, and corruption emerged almost as an illegitimate price mechanism, a shadowy quasi-market, such that scarce resources could still be allocated within the economy, and decisions could get made.

“Of course, this does not in any way condone the occurrence of such corruption. The shameful part of all this was that while value was captured by some people at the expense of others, it did not go to those who created the value, as it should in a fair and equitable system.”

The real failing, he said, “was a distortion of incentives within the economy, such that people began expending efforts toward fundamentally unproductive behaviors because they saw that such behaviors could lead to short-term gains. Thus, cultivating those in positions of power who could bestow favors became more important than coming up with an innovative product design. The latter was not as important, anyway, because most markets were closed to foreign competition–automobiles, for example–and if you had a product, no matter how uncompetitive compared to global peers’, it would sell.

“These were largely distortions created by the politico-economic regime. While a sea change has occurred in the years following 1991, some of the distorted cultural norms that took hold during the earlier period are slowly being repaired by the sheer forces of competition. The process will be long and slow, however. It will not change overnight.”

The costs of corruption are manifest in various parts of the economy. Inadequate infrastructure, of course, is widely recognized as a serious impediment to India’s advancement. Producing valuable goods is of limited utility if they cannot be transported in a timely fashion, for example. Transparency International estimates that Indian truckers pay something in the neighborhood of $5 billion annually in bribes to keep freight flowing. “Corruption is a large tax on Indian growth,” Ramamurti said in an interview after the conference. “It delays execution, raises costs and destroys the moral fiber.”

Corruption also cripples the effort to ameliorate poverty in India and to improve the country’s stock of “human capital.” The rate at which this happens varies tremendously from region to region. Edward Luce, for example, author of In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India, notes that “Rates of theft vary widely from state to state in India, with the better states, such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu, getting more than 80% of subsidized government food to their poor. Meanwhile, in the northern state of Bihar, India’s second poorest with a population of 75 million, more than 80% of the food is stolen.”

Indian MNC’s as Change Agents

“A few Indian companies,” Ramamurti said, “such as the Tata group or Wipro, have taken the high road, but most firms find it impossible to get anything done without greasing palms.” Wipro, headed by Azim Premji, is India’s third-biggest global tech services provider (behind Tata Consultancy Services (other-otc: TACSF – news - people ) and Infosys).

In Bangalore Tiger: How Indian Tech Upstart Wipro Is Rewriting the Rules of Global Competition, business journalist Steve Hamm writes that “Wipro is not just a company, it’s a quest.” That quest, according to some observers, is as much about moral rectitude as it is about business success. For example, according to Hamm, the company pays no bribes and has a zero tolerance policy for corruption.

“The paradox,” Ramamurti said, “is that even though India’s faster growth in recent years is the result of fewer government controls, most Indian managers would tell you that corruption has increased, not decreased, in tandem.

“How could this be? The explanation is that faster growth has created new choke points at which politicians and bureaucrats can extract payments, such as land regulation, spectrum allocation or college admissions–all of which have become much more valuable in [this century]. Faster growth has also raised the economic cost to firms of delays in public approvals, giving officials that much more ‘hold-up’ leverage over private investors.”

Bribery in the World Bank’s lending methods is as rampant as ever, says a former Bank official who has written a book on this corruption.

Steve Berkman contends that Indian IT majors Satyam [Get Quote] and Wipro [Get Quote], who were barred from World Bank projects for offering their stock to Bank officials, represent a miniscule problem compared to the kickbacks and commissions that go to government officials for approval of Bank projects.

Berkman, who was an advisor to various project teams within the Bank on human resource issues and capacity building, retired from the Bank in 2002. He is the author of an expose on corruption in this multilateral institution titled, The World Bank and the Gods of Lending, based on his 16-year experience auditing Bank projects, including the $800 million loan to health sector projects in India.

While most of his experiences were in Africa and Latin America, he said the corruption “I’ve seen there (in India) is no different than what I’ve seen in Africa and other places.”

In an interview with rediff India Abroad, Berkman said he strongly believes that Paul Wolfowitz was pushed out of his position as World Bank president after an entrenched bureaucracy at the Bank disliked his anti-corruption campaign and not because of the mini-scandal about his girlfriend, which “was more of a side-show.”

The problems for Wolfowitz — a former Bush administration official — began in July 2005 when Berkman said he suspended the massive Bank loan for health sector projects in India because of allegations of corruption.

“My experience has been that — and again, one of the things I was trying to shed some light on in my book — is that almost always (corruption) emanated from government officials in these developing countries. In my experience, they have always been the catalysts for the corruption and the fraud.”

Berkman, now 75 and living a retired life in Leesburg, Virginia, near Washington, DC, says the gods of lending are the international bureaucrats who run the Bank and are the ones who conspired to nail Wolfowitz using the mini-scandal with his girlfriend to call for his ouster.

“Quite often,” he argued, “everybody seems to be talking about the companies that bribe these officials, but what never seems to come out is that in fact, it is the officials who are the catalysts for this and they are the ones that are more of less coercing the business. That if you want a contract you have to pay us — that kind of thing.”

In most developing countries, Berkman said, “the spectre of corruption throughout the governments in these countries — I mean nothing is done in some countries at all for the benefit of the people. It is merely for the benefit of the people who are running the show.”

“But as far as the Bank staff goes,” Berkman said, “for many years, I would have never believed that the Bank staff were also corrupt, but since the early 1990s, I think it has become obvious that we have some bad apples too.”

In his book, in a scathing castigation of senior Bank managers and board members — the so-called gods of lending — he writes that ‘they have created the myth that they are the “cutting edge” of development, while they hide the appalling number of failures within the Bank’s portfolio — failures that enrich the government elites of the Third World while creating mounds of debt that cannot be repaid.’

According to Berkman, ‘It is this single truth that exposes the hypocrisy of the whole business: The Bank pretends it is lending for noble purposes, while the borrowers pretend they will put the money to good use.’

Instead, he writes, how Bank funds are regularly ‘placed in the hands of officials with a history of looting national treasures.’

In the case of the $800 million loan to health sector projects in India, a team of investigators found dummy companies that were paid by the Bank for products and services that were never delivered and a plethora of bribes and kickbacks that went into the pockets of senior government officials. This was the basis of Wolfowitz’s suspension of the loan to India.

In the wake of allegations that by holding up a follow-up loan until the discrepancies in the earlier loan had been fully investigated and fixed he was ‘depriving the poor of needed health care,’ and that his actions smacked of political considerations, Wolfowitz told Newsmax that ‘The India example is particularly interesting because it refutes many of the objections that were commonly raised against the anti-corruption efforts.’

While acknowledging that India was indeed a close strategic partner of the US and a shining example of a successful developing democracy, Wolfowitz told Newsmax that it ‘didn’t make it right to turn a blind eye to corruption in World Bank health loans that were actually making people sick,’ because tainted pharmaceuticals had been bought by Bank funds and distributed to the public.

At the time a senior Bank official told rediff India Abroad that when Wolfowitz had written to then Indian finance minister Palaniappan Chidambaram about the alleged corruption and the Bank’s concern over corruption in India projects, an angry Chidambaram, irritated by what he believed was the Bank president’s patronising tone, had curtly responded that India was as concerned or more about corruption and implying that New Delhi did not need lessons about fighting corruption from ‘a holier than thou’ Wolfowitz.

India is the largest beneficiary of World Bank lending.

In the interview, Berkman acknowledged that since he left the Bank, it had “done a lot in terms of fighting corruption and dealing with it, but at the end of the day, I remain convinced that as much money is being stolen now through bribes and kickbacks and embezzlement as there was 10, 15 years ago.”

He said he did not believe “there has been any change although the Bank now talks openly about corruption and has taken some steps to deal with it.”

“I would be willing to bet that there is more money being stolen now than was stolen 10, 15 years ago,” he added.

In the wake of the Bank banning Satyam, Wipro and Megasoft Consultants Ltd for ‘providing improper benefits to bank staff,’ Berkman acknowledged that firms vying for Bank contracts may have devised new ways of bribing Bank officials through the offering of shares during Initial Public Offers and such.

“There are always ways to get around the system, but I don’t see any big fish being caught and that’s troublesome,” he said.

Berkman said the IPO offerings to Bank officials were “the least of the Bank’s problems. At the end of the day, whatever they may have gotten with stock options or whatever, I think is nothing compared to the rampant corruption that is being practiced on the Bank’s lending operations.”

“If one would just take 10 percent as the rate of corruption on Bank-funded projects — I think last year they disbursed almost $25 billion — then 10 percent is $2.5 billion,” Berkman said, “and in many countries the figure is much higher. When I worked in Nigeria, it was closer to 40 percent and most likely still is. That’s an awful lot of money.”

“So, in terms of where the Bank has come in the last 10 years, I feel that they have made some progress, but they still have a very long way to go — people are still robbing them blind.”

While senior Bank officials declare that things have changed and corruption is not as rampant as it was, Berkman said, “my observations lead me to conclude that things haven’t changed at all. In fact, in private conversations with a number of people who are still there, the general consensus is that things are worse — I mean worse in the sense that they still circle the wagons and they are more concerned with appearing to fight corruption than in doing anything about it.”

Although making the case that Wolfowitz was forced out because he came up against the ‘gods of lending’ with his anti-corruption efforts, Berkman said, “Wolfowitz was a bad choice anyway. I mean he came to the Bank with a lot of baggage. Let uss face it. He was not popular to begin with and then he touched a very sensitive nerve at the Bank.”

India’s main problem is it’s so-called “democracy”.

India adopted “democracy” before it was ready for it. Both corruption and overpopulation are symptoms of India’s main problem, and not the main causes.

What India needed was an early period of benign and unifying dictatorship that focussed on eliminating societal divisions, eradicating illiteracy and creating employment, thus readying its people for meaningful democracy.

The word “democracy” stands for “people’s rule”. This implies that the people in question are capable of ruling, or, in other words, capable of voting for the right people to rule. Proper voting requires a certain minimum level of social awareness and sense of responsibility.

If the vast majority of a population is illiterate and uneducated, social awareness is poor, and elections have little meaning. Also, if the vast majority of a population is poor, social responsibility is low. When a person does not know where his next meal is coming from or when, he can hardly be expected to understand or worry about his vote.

Votes are therefore cheap in India. Anyone can buy them. The right price could be as little as a food packet or a pair of thongs (footwear) on election day. Truckloads of such items can be seen moving around towns and villages in India on election day.

Democracy in India is therefore a game that is all about numbers; about getting a majority vote in elections. It is not about HOW these votes are obtained.

How does democracy destroy a country if introduced prematurely?

I. Poor Infrastructure
Indian politicians have discovered that investment in important infrastructure does not necessarily get them elected in the next election. Handing out small gifts to poor people on election day gets them elected. The number of rich people directly using that infrastructure and therefore voting for them is much smaller than the number of poor people who vote for election-day gift-givers. Indian politicians therefore do not waste their energy on building infrastructure when it is much simpler to distribute tiny gifts on election day. Infrastructure in India has therefore remained very poor even after over 60 years of independence from British rule. Ironically, the best infrastructure in India, the Indian Railways, was created by the British.

By contrast, a country that has poor people, but where leaders do not depend on votes, is free to go ahead with important infrastructure projects. Example: China

Lesson 1: If a country adopts democracy before it is ready for it, its infrastructure will suffer badly.

II. Divisions in society
At the time of independence from the British, India was already a society divided on various factors, like religion, caste and language. Politicians took advantage of these divisions. They found that encouraging and furthering such divisions created permanent “vote banks” for them. The “arithmetic” for them was therefore very simple:

a. Promise all kinds of benefits to their chosen vote banks.
b. Get elected based on such promises.
c. Use public funds to provide the promised special benefits to their chosen vote banks at the cost of the rest of the country.
d. Generate resentment among the other groups that did not get these benefits, and further divide society to their own advantage.

Lesson 2: If a country adopts democracy before it is ready for it, its society will get heavily divided along every possible division (including language, caste and religion).
III. Overpopulation
Elections are all about numbers. The greater the number of poor and uninformed voters available, the better. Reckless population growth is therefore welcomed by corrupt Indian politicians, and even encouraged, especially within their chosen “vote banks”. Hard to believe, but governments in some Indian states actually pay money to certain communities (their preferred vote banks) to produce more children! India is therefore faced with the catastrophe of an out-of-control population growth — and no one seems to care. By contrast, China introduced a one child per family policy, as its leaders do not require vast numbers of destitute people in order to remain in power.

Compare 2008 figures:
China population 1,330,045,000; population density 138.6

India population 1,147,996,000; population density 349.2 (almost three times that of China)

Lesson 3: If a country adopts democracy before it is ready for it, its population will grow very rapidly and out of control.
IV. Corruption
The vast numbers of people competing for all kinds of services, leading to demand hugely outstripping supply, coupled with people’s ignorance and therefore lack of power, enables corruption to flourish in India. Providers of any service can demand bribes for just doing their job, and the public are willing to pay “extra” to get that elusive service. In a society that is poor, unaware and divided, politicians can afford to launch all kinds of huge public projects, steal staggeringly large amounts of money, and leave the projects incomplete.

Lesson 4: If a country follows democracy before it is ready for it, its society will be highly corrupt.

V. A continuation of these problems

It can easily be seen that India will always continue to have large numbers of poor, uneducated and ignorant people, as the survival of its politicians depends on these people. Education for all will continue to be given low priority in India.

Corruption hurts everyone, and it harms the poor the most. Sometimes its devastating impact is obvious:

• · A father who must do without shoes because his meagre wages are used to pay a bribe to get his child into a supposedly free school.
• · The unsuspecting sick person who buys useless counterfeit drugs, putting their health in grave danger.
• · A small shop owner whose weekly bribe to the local inspector cuts severely into his modest earnings.
• · The family trapped for generations in poverty because a corrupt and autocratic leadership has systematically siphoned off a nation’s riches.

Other times corruption’s impact is less visible:

• · The prosperous multinational corporation that secured a contract by buying an unfair advantage in a competitive market through illegal kickbacks to corrupt government officials, at the expense of the honest companies who didn’t.
• · Post-disaster donations provided by compassionate people, directly or through their governments, that never reach the victims, callously diverted instead into the bank accounts of criminals.
• · The faulty buildings, built to lower safety standards because a bribe passed under the table in the construction process that collapse in an earthquake or hurricane.

Corruption has dire global consequences, trapping millions in poverty and misery and breeding social, economic and political unrest.

Corruption is both a cause of poverty, and a barrier to overcoming it. It is one of the most serious obstacles to reducing poverty.

Corruption denies poor people the basic means of survival, forcing them to spend more of their income on bribes. Human rights are denied where corruption is rife, because a fair trial comes with a hefty price tag where courts are corrupted.

Corruption undermines democracy and the rule of law.

Corruption distorts national and international trade.

Corruption jeopardises sound governance and ethics in the private sector.

Corruption threatens domestic and international security and the sustainability of natural resources.

Those with less power are particularly disadvantaged in corrupt systems, which typically reinforce gender discrimination.

Corruption compounds political exclusion: if votes can be bought, there is little incentive to change the system that sustains poverty.

The conclusion – Corruption hurts everyone.

V Vijaya Ratnam, office superintendent and deputy mandal revenue officer of Putlur mandal in Anantapur district was trapped by the Anti-Corruption Bureau while receiving Rs 1,000 bribe.
Ratnam demanded Rs 2,000 from the complainant to release patta certificates, but later scaled downed to Rs 1,000. He was arrested, and later released on bail.
Incidentally, Vijaya Ratnam is the fourth gazetted ranking officer of Gudlur mandal to be trapped by the ACB for corrupt practices. The ACB had earlier caught two mandal revenue officers and an office superintendent while accepting bribes.
In a separate case, S Vijay Kumar, junior assistant working at MRO office in Anakapalli in Visakhapatnam district, was caught by ACB personnel while taking Rs 100 from a local resident for issuing a legal heir certificate, according to a press release.

“I would go to the length of giving the whole congress a decent burial, rather than put up with the corruption that is rampant.” — Mahatma Gandhi May 1939

This was the outburst of Mahatma Gandhi against rampant corruption in Congress ministries formed under 1935 Act in six states in the year 1937.  The disciples of Gandhi however, ignored his concern over corruption in post-Independence India, when they came to power. Over fifty years of democratic rule has made the people so immune to corruption that they have learnt how to live with the system even though the cancerous growth of this malady may finally kill it.  The recent Tehelka episode surcharged the political atmosphere of the country but it hardly exposed anything, that was unknown to the people of this biggest democratic polity.  

Politicians are fully aware of the corruption and nepotism as the main reasons behind the fall of Roman empire, the French Revolution, October Revolution in Russia, fall of Chiang Kai-Shek Government on the mainland of China and even the defeat of the mighty Congress party in India.   But they are not ready to take any lesson from the pages of history.   

The history of corruption in post-Independence India starts with the Jeep scandal in 1948, when a transaction concerning purchase of jeeps for the army needed for Kashmir operation was entered into by V.K.Krishna Menon, the then High Commissioner for India in London with a foreign firm without observing normal procedure.  Contrary to the demand of the opposition for judicial inquiry as suggested by the Inquiry Committee led by Ananthsayanam Ayyangar, the then Government announced on September 30, 1955 that the Jeep scandal case was closed.  Union Minister G.B.Pant declared “that as far as Government was concerned it has made up its mind to close the matter.  If the opposition was not satisfied they can make it an election issue.”  Soon after on February 3,1956 Krishna Menon was inducted into the Nehru cabinet as minister without portfolio.   

In 1950, A.D.Gorwala, an eminent civil servant was asked by Government of India to recommend improvements in the system of governance.  In his report submitted in 1951 he made two observations: “One, quite a few of Nehru’s ministers were corrupt and this was common knowledge.  Two, even a highly responsible civil servant in an official report as early as 1951 maintained that the Government went out of its way to shield its ministers” (Report on Public Administration, Planning Commission, Government of India 1951)    

Corruption charges in cases like Mudgal case (1951), Mundra deals (1957-58), Malaviya-Sirajuddin scandal (1963), and Pratap Singh Kairon case (1963) were levelled against the Congress ministers and Chief Ministers but no Prime Minister resigned.   

The Santhanam Committee, which was appointed by the Government in 1962 to examine the issue of corruption in its report submitted in 1964 observed: “There is widespread impression that failure of integrity is not uncommon among ministers and that some ministers, who have held office during the last sixteen years have enriched themselves illegitimately, obtained good jobs for their sons and relations through nepotism and have reaped other advantages inconsistent with any notion of purity in public life.” 

The following comments of Nehru on the memorandum of charges against Pratap Singh Kairon submitted to the President of India by the non-Communist opposition in Punjab suggest his approach on corruption – “The question thus arises as to whether the chief minister is compelled to resign because of adverse findings on some questions of fact by Supreme Court.   The ministers are collectively responsible to the legislature.  Therefore, the matter was one, which concerned the assembly.  As a rule therefore, the question of removing a minister would not arise unless the legislature expressed its wish by a majority vote.” (Pathology of Corruption by S.S.Gill) 

Thus, we find that while Nehru’s tolerance of corruption among his ministers legitimized this malady, his daughter Indira Gandhi institutionalized it by holding both the posts of the Prime Minister and party president.  By doing so she was herself controlling the party funds, which gave birth to the money power in politics.  The famous V.P.Malhotra (Chief Cashier of State Bank of India) case in which he got a telephone call believing from Indira Gandhi to pay Rs,60 lakhs to one Nagarwal remained a mystery.   Corruption cases like Fairfax, HBJ Pipeline, and HDW Submarine deal came up since then.  The famous Bofor’s deal is well known.  Narsimha Rao was the first Prime Minister being prosecuted in corruption charges.  Cases like Rs.2500 crore -Airbus A-320 deal with France involving kickback (1990), Harshad Mehta security scam (1992), Gold Star Steel and Alloys controversy (1992), JMM bribery case, Hawala scam of Rs. 65 crore and Urea scam (1996) also came up during the period of Narsimha Rao Government. 

Criminalisation of politics is another facet of corruption.  N.N.Vohra, Union Home Secretary in his report (1995) on this issue observed:- “A network of mafias is virtually running a parallel Government pushing the state apparatus into irrelevance.  Quoting some ‘DIB’ sources, he added, “….there has been a rapid spread and growth of criminal gangs, armed senas, drug mafias, smuggling gangs and economic lobbies in the country, which have over the years developed an intensive network of contacts with bureaucrats, government functionaries at local level, politicians, media persons and strategically located individuals in non-state sector.  Some of these syndicates have also international linkages including the foreign agencies.” 

Against the above-discussed historical background of corruption during last fifty years, the only contribution of Tehelka is that the exposure has forfeited the right of the BJP to claim itself to be a party with difference.  So long the BJP was in opposition, it was by and large known as a party with moral integrity, but when it aligned with the political leaders with shady background for the sake of power, the malady of corruption infected this party too.  Once the moral integrity is compromised it opens the door of corruption.  Perhaps the BJP leadership deliberately went for ideological compromise for capturing power at centre.  L.K.Advani put the responsibility on middle class when he reacted to a suggestion by an important ex-National Executive member of the party against the “dubious coalition politics”.  Advani reportedly said: “ The middle class does not like compromises and tends to be idealistic.  At the same time, it is unhappy if we lose power.  It wants power as well as ideological integrity.  This is the dilemma of the party”.  ( Inside BJP by Dr. Jay Dubashi published in Times of India dated March 22,2001).  Advani might have philosophised the situation but he cannot escape from the responsibility for the ideological compromise the BJP made for the sake of power. 

Corruption is an abstract term.  According to World Bank report 1997 abuse of public power for private gains is described as corruption.  But this appears to be too simplistic explanation of corruption.  In fact it is a multi-faceted evil, which gradually kills a system.  A basic conflict between the ethos and system has weakened the Indian polity.  The feudal outlook of the ruling class polluted the people’s mindset, which judge the status of an individual on his capability to flout the law to favour them.  This is the reason why corruption is no more viewed by people with abhorrence in Indian society.  Leaders like Laloo, Jayalalitha, Sukhram and others, who are facing corruption charges, continue to have wide range of people’s support.  Transparency, responsiveness, accountability, probity in public life and good governance are now only slogans.  The legislature has failed to make the judiciary, executive and even media sensitive to the cause of the common people.  The failure of the political leadership to take a principled stand against corruption has clouded the system to the extent that it is now difficult to understand whether the system is alive or dead.  

In the present context corruption is so much linked with power that our politicians have adopted a cynical attitude toward political morality.  Maneuvering the anti-defection law for electoral politics with the help of both money and muscle power and other unfair means for the sake of power have affected the political morality of all the political parties and as such none of them can claim themselves to be faithful to nation in true sense.  It was pathetic to see an excellent orator  of congress struggling to brush away the past of the congress in the recent “Big fight” programme of Star TV.  

The collapse of  the Janata Party Government (1977-80), fall of V.P.Singh and Chandrashekhar Government (1990-91), turning his minority Government into majority by Narsimha Rao, split in Telugu Desam Party (1994), defection of Ajit Singh with his supporters to Congress (1993), defection of S.S.Vaghela from BJP, maneuvering defection by Kalyan Singh to keep the BJP led Government in power in UP are some of examples to prove that a sizeable number of our politicians are not immune to corruption.   

With Tehelka exposure, we may like to refer to our ancient law book, which said, “That monarch, whose subjects are carried from his kingdom by ruffians, while they call aloud for protection, and he barely looks on them with his ministers, is a dead, and not a living king.” (Manusmriti VII/143)  Tehelka is simply an addition to thousands of past and present eruptions in the cancerous body polity of the country. 

 Manu may not be relevant to the present century, but as human nature more or less remains same and states either in monarchy or democracy are governed by the same human beings, he is still relevant.  License to govern does not mean license to be corrupt. Mahatma Gandhi believed in the need for creating a social climate against corruption, which meant creation of an atmosphere in which the corrupt could not thrive.  The need of the hour therefore, is to wipe off the tormenting system, which could be possible only after its thorough overhaul.   For this our national leadership is expected to devise a political mechanism to create a social atmosphere by empowering of people.  The on going war cry against corruption, which is nothing but a mad fight to replace one corrupt system by another is not going to transform the beleaguered nation to a sustainable social order.