Of, by and for the Corrupt

If the Naxalites can muster 'company strength of forces' to battle with the government, it may not be without support from those who feel angry at the inaction against massive corruption and blatant nepotism of the current system
MR Sivaraman Chennai

David Thoreau mused in his masterpiece On Civil Disobedience: "I believe that government is best which governs not at all." The article, which inspired Mahatma Gandhi to get us swaraj through civil disobedience, seems to be inspiring our government again.

Any governing authority exists on the consent of the people willing to be governed by it. From Plato to John Rawls and Amartya Sen, all have acknowledged that for everyone to enjoy liberty unhindered, everyone also has to give up some rights. Some inequality in power, positions and wealth thus becomes inevitable. According to John Rawls, for justice to mean fairness, there should be equal opportunity for everyone to attain positions and partake in wealth creation. But all of this should take place within the four corners of the law as accepted by the people.

Although India got its democratic government after great sacrifices by the forgotten millions, our government does not seem to believe that the law is meant for everyone. Cases of tax evasion launched against a giant industrial house and cases against persons responsible for the massive financial manipulation that led to the loss of hundreds of crore of foreign exchange (FE) through the ineptitude of the RBI and other banks in the 1990s (the present chairman of the Economic Advisory Council was then the RBI governor) - all initiated when Dr Manmohan Singh was the finance minister - seem to have withered away. (One senior IRS officer, who had pursued the FE manipulation case and arrested a number of persons, resigned in disgust.)

There seems to be cooperation among all politicians across the spectrum as no one of consequence has gone to jail for these violations or for corruption. Even if they are sentenced by lower courts, they are set free by the higher courts on flimsy grounds. Our courts direct the CBI to conduct enquiry against anybody except the members of the judiciary, even though there are allegations of rampant corruption within the judiciary at many places. One wonders whether there is a policy of give and take between the judicial system and political executives.

We tend to romanticise our past but never in our history has reason, justice and fairness reigned supreme. Today a substantial part of India is literate, democratic institutions are in place, and we are on an upward march towards prosperity. Yet governance seems to have been the victim.

But who are really marching up to prosperity? They are mostly the top two to three per cent led by industrial houses and their cohorts. The government does not want to compute the true GDP of India which must include its vast unaccounted income. It did revise it partially in 1998 after this writer persuaded the then finance minister. A senior officer of the finance ministry conceded in a public meeting recently in Chennai that our GDP was underestimated, but revising it would have serious consequences, including exposure of the highly skewed income distribution in India. Indeed, a nation that boasts of a huge number of billionaires also has the highest percentage of the world's poor.

A few days ago, P Chidambaram laconically stated that some intellectuals are supporting the Naxalites. Has he paused to think that the unpardonable violence of the Naxalites is but an expression of anger at the corruption and moral degradation of successive governments in India?