Edit, Governance Now, July 1-15, 2011
Conceit reflected in brushing aside corruption will prove government’s undoing
The fiasco over the Lokpal Bill, which was not entirely unexpected, is a symptom of a larger malaise that has gripped this government in recent times: arrogance of power. For a while it did seem that the public sentiment against corruption had a salutary effect on the government which opened a dialogue with both Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev. A joint drafting panel was set up and discussions began on a serious note. But soon the arrogance of the state gained an upper hand. Peaceful demonstrators sleeping at the Ramlila grounds were teargassed and forcibly evicted, and Baba Ramdev was dispatched to Haridwar. A lukewarm response that this brutality evoked from the public and the political opposition emboldened the government to a point where negotiations with Team Anna on the Lokpal Bill became meaningless. Differences kept growing and the last couple of meetings of the joint drafting panel looked more like a farce.
These are not the only indications. There is a series of indiscretions. While the negotiations with Team Anna were on, the government took a decision to take the Central Bureau of Investigation, our premier investigating agency fighting corruption, out of the RTI’s ambit. When the transparency law was being framed in 2005, the CBI had no reservations in being subjected to this law but now it has found an alibi: it is also involved in intelligence work and hence needs protection. Going by its poor track record in bringing to justice the corrupt holding high public offices and the tendency to play handmaiden to the political masters, the CBI’s exclusion from the RTI is scandalous. Weeks earlier, the union home ministry had rejected the Delhi Lokayukta’s recommendation to sack Delhi’s PWD minister Raj Kumar Chauhan for intervening in a tax evasion case involving a businessman, without explaining why. This was a shocking development given the fact that Chauhan had himself confessed to his wrongdoing.
Two more developments have taken place since then to demonstrate that the government doesn’t give a damn to what you and I think about corruption. Investigations into the 2G spectrum scam by the government’s own agency, the CBI, have uncovered textile minister Dayanidhi Maran’s corrupt deals while he was holding the telecom portfolio. But just as the government tried to brazen it out before the supreme court intervened and forced Maran’s successor in the telecom ministry, A Raja, out of the government and into Tihar jail, it remains impervious. The Comptroller and Auditor General’s leaked draft report has uncovered another dubious deal, this time involving another minister and his officials, which points out how Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) was shown undue favours at the cost of the national exchequer. Again, the government is not moved and wants time to enquire into it while CPI (M) MP Tapan Sen and retired bureaucrat EAS Sarma have pointed out that they had been alerting the PMO about the scam since December 2006. The PMO, however, didn’t seem to bother.
While a series of scams – 2G spectrum, Isro-Antrix deal, CWG, Adarsh, IPL, RIL and so on – happened during the UPA-I regime, there was one redeeming feature. That government had passed progressive laws and carried out welfare measures by way of the RTI, NREGA and Forest Rights Act at the National Advisory Council’s prompting. The UPA-II has no such claim so far. In fact, development economist Jean Dreze has quit from the NAC, saying, among other things, that the present NAC “doesn’t seem to have the ear of the government”. But that would seem a minor aberration compared to the complete disconnect with the people on whose behalf the UPA holds office, at least on the most pressing issue of the day: corruption. A day after negotiations with Team Anna broke down and Anna threatened to fast again, Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh issued a threat: If Anna goes on fast again, he will get the same treatment that Baba Ramdev received. Little do Singh and his friends realise that their arrogance will render them ‘unelected and unelectable’ come the next round of elections.
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