SECOND FREEDOM MOVEMENT AGAINST
CORRUPTION IN INDIA
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Since the beginning of the Commonwealth Games (CWG), the country
has witnessed many types of crimes and corruption. Let us review a few of
them. The graph of Indian
character during the last couple of years has had an amazing run
– from notches down its Y-axis to a spectacular rise above and a steeper fall
way below its starting point. The run-up to the Commonwealth Games (CWG) in 2010 was marked by rains,
dengue, delay, corruption, dug-up roads, dirt and filth strewn all over the
city. The foreign press and the Indian media wrote off the CWG, citing Indian
inefficiency to host a major sporting event. The loathsome pictures flashed
on the BBC website and gleefully reprinted by the Indian media were meant to
show that India lives only in her toilets. No one questioned whether this
kind of reporting was the erstwhile Empire’s way of striking back? For nearly
six weeks, we ground our noses in muck and filth and looked gleefully at the
CWG as Corruption Wealth Games played in a Hall of Shame. Passively, we
accepted the sobriquet ‘corrupt’ for ourselves and painted our shame in all
its stains! India bashing had reached an incredible proportion.
When we thought we had arrived at the nadir, the Indian jugaad came into play. The stains
disappeared and India preened itself on ceremonial hosting, graduating with
honours at the end of an 11-day extravaganza. Our athletes lifted the Indian
morale to show that all is not lost in corruption and India still can shine
well. As the Indian flag went up 101 times, the graph peaked higher on the
Y-axis. But even before the victory bugle sounded the last post, the first
post was heard to mark the start of the investigations. The euphoria of the
nation’s sporting success did not last even 24 hours as reports about the
Games scam amounting to a staggering Rs. 8,000 crore started coming in. With
the graph rapidly descending into a bottomless pit, India shaming eclipsed
India’s momentary hours of shining.
The Adarsh scam that followed showed how former
defence officers were defenceless before greed and graft. The 2G spectrum scam put all the rest in the
shade! Is it possible to retrieve the graph after its hellish descent into
the dark vaults of shame? The famed Indian jugaad now pejoratively stands for Indian ingenuity for
corruption. One should be an outright optimist or be gifted with
self-delusion to affirm that despite the CVC, the CAG, and the CBI working together, we can erase the odium of
corruption!
I am an aam admi (aam-aurat
to be precise). Aam admi literally means ‘the
common man’ or in slanglish translation ‘the mango man’, playing on the word
‘aam’. The catchy phrase denotes masses and has been worn to a frazzle by
political parties of all shades and ideologies. Every political party at
election time places aam admi centrestage and pledges to bring prosperity and
happiness to him. The latest to pay obeisance
to aam admi is Arvind Kejriwall (Anna’s erstwhile right-hand man) by floating
a party by this hallowed name and promising him the moon. His vision is to empower aam admi and
enable him to influence policy decisions of the state- a truly Lincolnian
effort to translate into reality the meaning of democracy as governance by
the people, for the people and of the people.
But who is this aam admi whose
cause politicians like Arvind champion tirelessly –sometimes by incarnating
the Gandhian weapon of fasting and even exhorting the aam admi to civil
disobedience movement? Has he ever wondered whether his aam admi wants power
that inter alia demands hard work, understanding, commitment, honesty and a
vision for the nation? If that had been the case, our aam admis who
constitute the major part of our ‘babudom’ would have worked their fingers to
the bone to complete the tasks assigned to them. The pseudo call of our
politicians to fight corruption seems to exclude the aam admi who also practices
corruption but with a finesse that would show our netas as babes in the wood
I will give two examples of my
tryst with aam admi. We were not getting water bills in our house address
even though we were getting the regular water supply. As an honest citizen, I
applied to the Jal Board to include me in their list of payees. To my
surprise, within a day, a lower staff of Jal Board was at my door informing
me that he had included my address in the list and I would get my water bills
henceforth. I was happy about the prompt service and thanked him for doing
his duty. He smiled and kept sitting and talking about his daily hard grind
and the soaring prices and inflation. Looking askance at my dim wit as to why
I was not responding, he asked me if I would give him ‘chai-pani’. When I
turned to go in to make his’chai”-(I don’t keep in my fridge coloured pani or
any pani that gives you a ‘high’), he said he required no chai and would wait
at his desk for Saheb to meet him in the office to complete other
formalities. In the evening when I narrated this to my husband, he guffawed
and said that I was too much of an ignoramus and that our water supply will
be terminated if we do not oblige his chai pani. He sent Rs.500 which was
promptly returned because his rates were double that. Sure enough, we met his
demand to ensure our water supply.
The second encounter was
pipsqueakish in comparison. My
adventure to get a passport was almost like what we say in Tamil-‘foraging a
mountain to catch a rat’. The postman came to hand our passports. While I
signed the delivery receipt, he grinned and asked ‘Hamen kya milega?’(What do I get?) He
stood at the door and there was no way I could slam the door on his face. I
reached out to my purse and gave him a fifty rupee note.
How
many in that gathering in Jantar Mantar and earlier in the RamLila grounds
organized by India Against Corruption have bought a simple gadget from a shop
and asked for a Bill to pay the legitimate sales tax? The other day, I saw a
policeman asking for legal papers on a construction site supervised by a
lady. After a quarter of an hour’s haggling about papers not being available
or that they will be shortly procured for submission etc, the lady opened her
handbag and shoved a few thousand rupee notes for the policeman to do the vanishing
act. Will the shopkeeper in the first case or the policeman in the second or
the customers in both cases report to the Lokpal? Corruption is endemic in
our society.
How many of the aam admis are not
drawing power illegally and how many of them are not sucking water directly
from the mains and depriving fellow citizens of water? Will politicians go on
fast demanding action against these aam admis? I am also an aam admi and I
pay my water and power bills in gratitude for getting these amenities without
resorting to unethical means. I am a law abiding person and I know nothing
comes to me gratis and I am happy about that. It is in the last 2-3 years
Delhi has had uninterrupted power supply even in the hottest months of summer
and coldest months of winter. The problem is when development takes
place to provide comfort to every citizen of Delhi (that includes aam admi),
the price also increases. Power cannot be generated free of cost.
This does not negate the truth that there is a distinct malaise –an insatiable greed for
money – afflicting our society. The vulgar display of riches and the
glamorous lifestyle of the ultra rich picturised daily on page 3 of our
newspapers and on TV screens are the sources of vaulting ambition among the
middle class(aam admi has a middle class majority) to become instant-rich by
any means. The media which is aware of its reach and influence presents a
picture larger than life, shirking its responsibility to provide the audience
a broad sociological, psychological and truthful understanding of all issues.
It is true that the efforts of our policymakers to
liberalize our economy and bring about egalitarian capitalism have not
yielded the expected dividends; on the contrary, they have ushered in crony capitalism among many of the corporate biggies and
inflected the middle class to dream big and seek unhealthy satiation through
graft and corruption. The politicians have gained the most by their abuse of
power and a clever distribution of largesse to those select few who can
return their favours in equal measure.
The Media and in
particular the electronic media have presented humiliating images of India over
the last couple of years. While the ostensible whipping boy
is the ruling party, followed by politicians of all hues, at the core the
images flashed on our screens and in the newspapers are only about us, We, the People of India. One cannot miss the overt glee in the news
anchors’ almost daily litany that they have accessed new reports on one scam
or the other causing a loss of many lakh crores of rupees to the exchequer
that would make all the preceding losses seem trifler than a peanut. Nobody
seems to wonder (and worry) how Media gets access to reports before they are
tabled in the Parliament? Why such leakages- and that too- from the office of
the chief Auditor of India-go undetected and those who perpetrate them go
scot free? No one dares to question whether it is ethical for the media to
red flag reports in advance that are primarily the parliament’s privileged
documents. No one dares to ask the question as to how the Media
engineered this leakage. This cannot be obtained without pecuniary
gratification of some mole in the government. Is the media fighting
corruption by corrupt means? Media has
a constructive role to play but most of the time, in the name of ‘expose’,
its role is increasingly negative. The Media is well within its rights to
censure the government if the latter’s final decision is detrimental to the
nation. But to tie the government to a lamp post in advance and get it
flogged is going against media ethics. Today’s Media
calling itself the watchdog has appropriated to itself the role of the Judiciary
and goes hammer and tongs at all the dramatis personae of its daily soap
opera SCAM. Media’s scam news is by no stretch of imagination investigative
journalism. It is intrusive journalism-
intruding into Government offices and using underhand means of paying bribes to
get the reports leaked to the Media. The Media clearly jumps the gun
when it flashes in the Breaking News that another scam has broken. The old
adage that no one is pronounced guilty unless s/he is proved to be so, is now
reversed as the Media pronounces person(s) guilty till the ‘guilty’ prove
their innocence. The media ups the ante
on alleged scams to the extent that India has come to be seen as one huge
cauldron of corruption. For the last two years this theatre of decadence
has been on our news channels. Behind rampant ethical correctness, the media
has launched a blitzkrieg against Indian government, politicians and
businessmen alleging corruption here, there, everywhere except in its sacred
space. It is a cushy job for the Media lords anchored to their
studio desks to pontificate wisely, to wear their concern for the nation and
its people on their microphones and flay the government because they have the
wisdom( not just of hindsight, but of foresight as well) along with no responsibility or accountability to
anyone. The microphone is mightier
than the sword as it can make and mar reputations.
Is this the whole truth about We, the Indians? Media
says that as a watchdog, its duty is to expose. But this is not exposition as
that is the work of the investigating functionaries. Media preens itself with
the prosecutor’s robe and comes out displaying leaked papers with fluorescent
marking of the alleged misdeeds of the Government. The bias in reporting is
too authentic not to be missed. Every scam becomes ‘the mother of all scams’
(I do not know why the feminists are not up in arms) and the present
government headed by an honest PM and consisting of quite a few men of known
integrity is dubbed as the government of scamsters. For the media, this is
the truth and nothing but the truth. But
as far as it is concerned, it is above board, even if it makes moles out of
the government employees with cakes and ale. Can the media honestly own
that the fourth estate is absolutely honest and all such ‘scams’ are not paid
news and bought news!
The truth is corruption is not just an Indian phenomenon. It
is a global phenomenon that has ballooned up with crony capitalism (Assange
and Snowdon not to be missed out). It is there in all walks of life. Even the
mosquito sprayer who visits your house waits for a wad of notes threatening
to issue a chalan that your house is the breeding place for mosquitoes. It is
not unique to the present government; it was there during the previous years and
very much before - going as far back as the time when native Indians within
the kingdoms were bought by the foreign invaders to spy on their
masters. What is new today is the
electronic eye that with the sanctioned democratic latitude can see wolves
everywhere with absolute impunity. Media has become the Big Brother where
everyone is under its complete surveillance and it abuses
its autonomy and freedom of expression to malign everyone in the
establishment. An eerie atmosphere of fear and angst pervades the government
and the bureaucracy resulting in inordinate delays to formulate and implement
policies without inviting the Big Brother’s bash. The current scenario is ‘if you do, you are damned; if you don’t
do, you are paralyzed’. Anna Hazare came and
Media raised the furore beyond perceived noise decibels to tar all the PM’s
men and all the MPs of all the parties with the same brush of corruption The
Media gleefully affirmed that Indian government is for the swindlers, by the
swindlers and of the swindlers.
Media by trial goes on where media
functions within the precincts of the TV studios as the de facto opposition
party. The truth is one Kalamadi or one Raja does not make the entire
cabinet. No doubt, the summer of discontent of 2010-12 is too true to be
washed away. But Media has revelled in presenting a theatre of the Absurd
that has made every Indian ashamed of his lineage and democratic inheritance.
As a citizen of India, I feel angst and humiliation when newspapers and the
electronic media in the name of freedom of expression indulge in vilification
of the state without any sense of proportion. For all their self righteous
talk that ‘no one shall rein us, we will ourselves rein in,’ the
anti-establishment tirade the media resorts to make me wonder if we are
deceptive recipients of paid news. Media have denied us dignity and worth as
democratic citizens of India
How to regain our honour and dignity in the world polity?
Can we return the graph up on its axis once more? We, the People of India should rise against the cynical, sneering,
mocking and contemptuous reporting in the media that portrays India as a
corrupt cauldron. The truth is for one crook there are tens of thousands
honest and ethically uncompromising men and women in India. Their voices are
never heard as they don’t exist for the Media. But the truth is they do exist
and our nation survives because of them despite the Media’s all out efforts
to deny us, Indians any semblance of dignity.
Nearly 2500 years back,
the Roman humanist-saint Seneca( 4B.C-65 A.D) said that since we who live
among human beings we should follow “a simple, unperturbed
life in accordance with nature and duty
to the state”.
Duty to the state imposes some degree of restriction that makes it
difficult to hold on to our hereditary gift of being born free. We should be
satisfied if we enjoy freedom that is achievable within restricted limits.
Such
limited freedom is possible only in a democracy that promises its people the
basic human rights to live, think, speak and act without restriction. Democracy is our creation –that of We, the
People with the axiomatic assumption that
We are equal. Are we genuinely equal? Can we envisage a utopian human
race where everyone is equal? Human race like the five fingers has different
measurements in terms of intelligence, rationality, health, heredity and
economic status.
Even
Rousseau- whose Discourse
on the Origin of Inequality and On the Social
Contract are cornerstones for
democratic government and social empowerment- wondered how individuals who care only for their particular good can change
into people who can subordinate their personal good to public good.
Rousseau wrote “Man is born free. Everywhere he is in chains” to highlight
the paradox where public good demands a certain curtailment of one’s freedom.
The problematic factor in democracy is how to turn man with his love of
personal freedom into citizen, obedient to the laws of civil society to
ensure maximum good for maximum numbers. Rousseau’s effort was to persuade
men to give up some of the inherited rights nature has bestowed on them and bring
about a just and equitable social order.
We are
now in the 65th year of our independence. We have till now (but for a brief lapse
during Emergency) enjoyed the right to elect a government of our choice. But
now, more than at any other time in our post-independence history, there is a
sinking feeling that democratic governance has failed to serve the common
man’s interest. Nehru in his inspirational Freedom at Midnight speech had asked
the nation to redeem the pledge it had made many years ago to dedicate itself
to the service of India and its people and to the still larger cause of
humanity. But today the question is asked whether 65 years of democracy,
enjoying free and equal rights has created new despots whose primary concern
is self preservation and who act solely for their personal good! Sadly this
is the truth - those who are the people’s choice to lead the nation have no
belief in common good. Every five
years they go to the people to give them power to govern and exploit those
very people who have given them power for their personal good. These are the
new rulers with questionable morals and integrity who have derived their
power from democracy and turned democracy into oligarchy. The unrest and
chaos in different parts of the country is a protest against these swindlers
of democracy. The simmering anger at deprivation and denial of basic human
rights to live a decent human life is on the rise. It is a matter of time
when we may see the replication of London riots (2002) on our streets. Every
society has its share of lumpen elements who take advantage of the simmering
discontent and indulge in acts of lawlessness, thuggery, violence and criminality.
India is slowly sliding into a functioning anarchy, as savagely prophesied by
Churchill at the time of our independence.
The great
threat to democracy is the enslavement of the majority ( the vast, uneducated
masses in India) to public opinion that the political classes claim to serve.
This is really the ‘tyranny of the majority’ that shuts out independence of
mind. “The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure
uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities,that
makes it seem inconceivable that other ways are viable, that removes the cause
that there is an outside.” We can be
free in the true sense of the term from such tyranny if we cultivate reasoned
thoughts and cultivate humanity. We have to encourage philosophic doubt that
will resist the dominant majority opinion. Tocqueville said that this is the
function of university- to cure democratic blindness, to exist ‘not for the
sake of establishing aristocracy, but for the sake of democracy and for the
sake of preserving the freedom of the mind – at least for some individuals
within it. ” We talk incessantly of our demographic advantage, of the youth
power we possess. We have to harness it through protecting reason which is
the essence of openness.
Can
democracy survive in India? Will the next generation be privileged to enjoy
democracy? Yes if they are educated on reason and citizenship. Citizenship
requires primary loyalty to fellow human beings; the local, regional,
religious and class loyalties shall remain secondary. We should see
themselves as human beings bound to all human beings and understand how
common human needs can be differently realized in different segments of the
society. Citizenship training should endow us with the ability to think what
it is to be in the shoes of those different from ourselves and empathize with
their emotions and feelings. The ultimate goal is to make us transform from
being an individual to becoming a citizen, willing to subordinate our
personal good for public good. We have to encourage and realize the human
potential within us, without imprisoning the mind and that is the only way to
preserve and nurture democracy - the
birthright of We, the Citizens of India .
Our only
hope rests on the middle class that has always been the backbone of our
society. Gandhiji during the freedom movement mobilized the middle class to
sacrifice its dependence on the colonial masters. Today, we need a second
freedom movement against corruption. The middle class should sacrifice its
greed that is far greater now than before and build a corruption-free society
that values the elegance of a life of simplicity. Can India shaming turn into
India shining? Only if the middle class rises and says, “yes, we can”.
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