T Thomas: Is India on the path of Redemption?
We as Indians have a lot to be thankful for in terms of the progress that
has been made towards a cleaner public life.
As a country, we have made progress in improving our position on the
international Corruption Perception Index, although our absolute rankings
could improve much further. In the 1960s and 70s, it was an accepted fact
that Indian politicians expected everyone to contribute to their private
wealth. The ostensible reason for collecting money was for meeting their
party’s election expenses. But it was well-accepted that the fund-collecting
politician would keep some of the collection for his own use and his family.
The existence of the licence-permit raj in that era facilitated this
practice and it won’t be an exaggeration to say that most private sector
companies, including some of today’s more respected business houses, found a
way of obliging the demanding politicians, whose cooperation was essential
for the smooth conduct of their business. It was considered naïve, if not
foolish, to not conform to this accepted practice among businessmen-as I can
recall from personal experience.
In discussing such corruption, it is common to blame exclusively the
politicians. The role of the “corruptor” businessman is equally deplorable.
In that era, businessmen competed with one another in illegal contributions
so as to get closer to the powers that be. Many businessmen enjoyed
flaunting their proximity to influential ministers and politicians by having
them at family wedding functions, company occasions, etc. The politicians
enjoyed these privileges and exploited them to gather more funds by building
a network of such obliging businessmen.
Apart from all the obvious moral and ethical reasons for not making illegal
contributions to politicians or political parties, there are some important
business reasons for not doing so. First of all, in order to make illegal
payments, which are usually preferred in cash by the recipient, the giver
has to generate the cash. That will inevitably imply complicity of some of
his own staff, usually in the purchasing department or the
sales/distribution department and certainly in the finance department. Once
these staff members know that the top management is manipulating things to
generate illegal cash, they are themselves emboldened to make their own
private demands/arrangements with the same group of suppliers/distributors,
secure in the knowledge that their senior management will find it very
embarrassing and even damaging to their interests if they questioned or
interfered with the process. So the malaise spreads uninhibited through the
different layers of the company, and this has contributed to the decline in
ethical standards.
As India has reduced controls on business, and therefore the political
interface with business, the scope for corruption has reduced. Tax rates
have been lowered, so there is less provocation for tax evasion. Price
controls have mostly disappeared, so there is less black marketing. Imports
can be done freely, and smuggling has been sharply reduced. In short, many
features of the licence-permit raj are no longer with us, and this has
reduced the scope for illegal activity and therefore corruption.
Fortunately, we also have a Prime Minister whom even his worst critics
cannot accuse of corruption. He is probably the only political leader of a
large country in the world who enjoys such an unsullied reputation. Even
George Bush and Tony Blair have had their share of scandal or allegations
about improper business links (like cash for honours in Britain); and
certainly there is no Japanese politician who can match Manmohan Singh’s
reputation for cleanliness. Dr Singh’s example has an echo in other,
successful professionals who have made their own contribution to a clean
public life. P Chidambaram, the finance minister, is an outstanding example.
As a cabinet minister, he makes in a month what he would have made in a few
hours with his legal practice! What we need are more people like them to
enter politics and make corruption an exceptional and shameful practice
among Indian politicians.
Among civil servants, corruption tends to become rarer as one moves up the
ladder of seniority. The most senior ones are usually very clean and they
are naturally eager to guard their reputation. But much more can and has to
be done to protect them from ever-present temptations, and thereby to
protect the integrity of the system. Members of the old Indian Civil Service
(ICS) had an immense pride (sometimes bordering on arrogance) in their
professional cadre. Today, senior civil servants are relatively poorly
rewarded in comparison both with their ICS predecessors (after adjusting for
inflation) and with senior executives in the private sector. At the end of
their years of service, power and status by themselves cannot sustain anyone
in retirement. A retired officer needs an adequate pension, decent housing
and medical cover, as large private sector companies provide for their
senior managers in retirement. Our senior civil servants deserve similar
terms so that they do not have to stoop to unworthy temptations and become
liaison officers for private sector companies.
The problem is more widespread in the lower bureaucracy, where petty
corruption abounds in the form of speed money. The solution here is to
introduce greater transparency into the government’s functioning, and to
make use of e-governance techniques, as some state governments and the tax
department have done to good effect. The new law on right to information is
also a powerful tool that can be used as a check on corruption.
It is unfortunate therefore that some of the international Press continues
to play up the smallest aberrations in India while largely ignoring the
progress that has been made. This is in sharp contrast to their uninhibited
adulation for the achievements of China-whose record on corruption (or state
brutality, for that matter) is certainly much worse than India’s. One can be
cynical and say that in international politics, a nation’s nuisance value
can add to its stature and vice versa. Now that Russia has ceased to be a
threat to the West, its status is diminished while that of China has
improved. India is not a threat to anyone because of the nature of its
society and polity. In the end, what matters to a nation or an individual is
the knowledge and confidence in oneself-not in what others think. In that
respect, we as Indians have a lot to be thankful for in terms of the
progress that has been made towards a cleaner public life.
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