Stainless Steal

Corruption is back in focus with the cash-for-query, MP Local Development Fund scandal and Volcker report. Hawala, Bofors and the fodder scam very soon found their place in the archive alongside scandals rocking the British East India Company in the eighteenth century. India is still struggling to improve its standing in the world corruption index

Sanjay Kapoor Delhi

A survey conducted by an organisation of women panchayat heads in Karnataka and Kerala came up with interesting findings. Contrary to the dominant view that women panchayat heads fight corruption and improve delivery of government programmes, the survey found them equally venal. In fact they were no different from their male counterparts.

This study proves the hypothesis peddled aggressively when women's organisations were demanding a 33 per cent reservation in parliament: that corruption does not come down when women are at the helm of affairs.

It surely did not need a survey of villages in south India (considered to be morally more upright than their counterparts in the north) to prove this. Women leaders like Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa and Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati (both mired in corruption scandals) bear ample testimony that women leaders love lucre as much as men do.

We Indians bribe for everything. It is speed money to deliver goodies that otherwise would be denied to us in a Kafk-aesque situation. The bureaucracy and the judiciary take advantage of labyrinthine laws and so the common people are forced to pay for everything. From getting birth and death certificates to getting a seat in an overcrowded train, Indians contribute substantially to the global bribery amount of $ 1 trillion. For a billion odd people fighting for a little share in a small pie, the scarcity mindset comes into play. People need to pay to survive. These needs acquire a different meaning when it involves corruption in high places and pertain to mega defence and aviation deals. For people in politics, bribery and corruption provide the necessary cash to carry on with the business of looking after their constituents and most importantly, fighting elections. With the breakdown of ideology, elections are an expensive enterprise. By a rough estimate, each parliamentary elections cost a lot more than the election commission stipulated limit of Rs 20 lakh. Rough estimates show that the costs could be in excess of Rs 5 crore. Any wonder where these MPs are getting their funds from?

During the investigation of the Jain Hawala scandal, which rocked the country in the 1990s, one of the recipients — an extremely wealthy man — when asked why he settled for a measly amount of payoff, replied, "In politics, one needs money all the time for all kinds of things." What compounds the misery of many professional politicians is that many of them have no transparent source of income. Save for some top-flight lawyers, most politicians have done nothing except "politics". It will be difficult for many politicians to explain their riches even in their disclosure forms submitted to the election commission before the elections. Many of the disclosures should have invited some close questioning from the income tax department.

Why blame politicians alone? Those who bribe public servants, many of them icons of the new India, zip around in designer business jets and in BMWs, have a dark past. They have bent the laws of the land to their advantage, do not believe in paying taxes and many of them are cronies who have taken advantage of the business of economic reforms. They have shown little stomach for foreign competition and they are the first ones to pack up when the going gets tough.