Strangely, Manmohan Singh’s stint as Prime Minister has seen more scams than any of his predecessors. Prime Minister for six years and India's great economic reformer in his former post as finance minister, is universally held to be incorruptible. A clean leader is a necessary condition to create a clean government but it is not a sufficient condition for Manmohan Singh who is saddled with a coalition government with the most corrupt elements-among others, the DMK- not to mention his own corrupt congress party leaders. DMK leader, Karunanidhi, is the godfather of Indian political corruption and his recent splurging on 30 crores of Indian rupees for his grandson’s wedding has served to enhance this. Opulent and ostentatious wedding! Where did the 30 crores of Indian rupees come from? Where did the staggering moolah, other than from venality, of course, come from? Going to bed with his party, the DMK, to have a coalition government show how morally bankrupt the Congress Party and the so called ‘Mr Clean’ image’ Manmohan Singh has become.
A clean leader is a necessary condition to create a clean government but it is not a sufficient condition. The solution to endemic corruption requires an entire system, a set of institutions and social attitudes, not a "great leader" or a band of heroes.
2G scam: Of the 122 licences issued, 85 are marked as suspect. The $40 billion is the value lost to taxpayers in licence fees. It's breathtaking even by Indian standards, equivalent to a quarter of the national tax revenue for the year. The scale of the fraud is only one of three striking aspects of the 2G scandal, so called because the licences were for second-generation mobile phone services.
Corruption has patently reached so high a level in the Indian system. Indians are feeling a sense of being overpowered, indifferent and immune because it represents not a sudden outbreak of corruption but the third big public scandal in rapid succession. The 2 G scam is hot on the heels of other scams like- corruption in the construction of Commonwealth Games venues and Mumbai where apartments for war veterans and widows were corruptly allocated to powerful politicians and their families. The causality for the Mumbai apartments for war veterans’ scam was the scalp of the Maharashtra Chief Minister, Ashok Chavan.
World’s fastest growing economies like China and India are endemic with corruption of varying kinds. It seems corruption alone does not preclude rapid economic growth where India is growing at single digit-9 precent-while China is growing at double digits.
As akin to a terrorist has no religion, corrupt politicians have not belonged to a single political party but, it seems, they are everywhere in all political parties as well and corruption has become a scourge on the Indian political edifice. India's media and parliament are convulsed and enraged by corruption, points to the best hope for curing it. It is a cure that is not available to China. I really doubt it. Clamouring for action against corruption by opposition parties in the Lok Sabha and braying for the Prime Minister’s blood is sheer hypocrisy- so many corrupt parliamentarians are among themselves in the political parties clamouring for action against the 2 G spectrum scam in the Lok Sabha as akin to thieves are on board the ship. The BJP dichotomy-braying for the Prime Minister’s blood on the 2G spectrum scandal while protecting the charges of irregularities in land allotment favouring his family members by Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa. Moreover, BJP’s Reddy brothers are corrupt up to their neck. The TV footage of one of the Reddy brothers offering bribe to a Karnataka governor’s assistant to have Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa’s government dismissed is only a tip of the iceberg of political corruption. It has shed light on the endemic political corruption deep rooted in the Indian polity. The BJP’s holier than thou attitude has now exposed.
No sooner did the Pandora’s Box of corruption on 2G spectrum allocation open than people did involve in the scam are coming out like worms. Participating in the auction of 2G spectrum allocations is a group of powerful individuals, corporate houses, lobbyists, bureaucrats and journalists. Niira Radia, a lobbyist whose clients include the Tatas and Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd. They all have varying interests in several key sectors such as telecom, petroleum and natural gas where the republic of India is now on sale for the highest bidder. The proceeds from the sale, it seems, have gone to the pockets of the corrupt telecommunication minister, Raja and his benefactors, not to the pockets of Indian earthlings who, by and large, are living in abject poverty. It is a crime against Indian earthlings. People who have involved in the 2G spectrum scam, wittingly or unwittingly, are guilty. Unwittingly guilty are the ones who have connivance of the scam and did nothing to stop it. Wittingly guilty are the ones who have syphoned off 40 billion dollars’ worth of moolah which would have alleviated the abject poverty of the Indian earthlings who are at the bottom of Indian social ladder. The thieves are the charlatans-the ugly Indians- have plenty to be ashamed about and nothing to be proud of-apart from the loot has fattened their bank balances. I am an admirer of the Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh who has catapulted the Indian economy into the big league: developed economies. In India’s case only the second fastest growing economy that is destined to be the developed economy status in time. He, or, for that matter, Sonia Gandhi cannot absolve from responsibilities of this grand theft and other thefts of staggering proportions at the expense of Indian earthlings. While their inaction, the thieves with their loot laughed all the way to their banks.
The Indian parliament-both houses-is constantly held to ransom by various parliamentarians for their frivolous reasons. It happens at sickening regularity even after the speaker get assurance from the opposition parties to the smooth functioning of the parliament prior to the parliament session commence. The speaker is helpless and for the smooth functioning of the parliament and the speaker should be empowered to have the disruptive parliamentarians evicted from the parliament for the day. Indian citizenry are not getting value for money that they pay for their politicos-a staggering amount of money after the recent hefty pay rises. Every political party has criminals and under trials are in their parliamentarian stock. Most of them are illiterate and the motivations to become parliamentarians are on self-interest: feathering their nest with moolah aplenty. Mayawati and Karunanidhi are loadstar of this. Both had humble beginning. The former was a teacher and the latter a script writer for Tamil movies. Both have amassed wealth far beyond their imagination. As it says you paid for the things you have bought; Indians voted for the politicos they have.
India should have a powerful corruption watchdog with powers to bring to book anyone on the public purse is corrupt. The body should be under the purview of the Indian President to be free from beholden to the government of the day. The present disruption of the parliament and the opposition parties clamouring for JPC on the 2G spectrum scam is meaningless. The outcome of the JPC will be questioned by the government as not objective and as subjective-biased. There will be differing JPC reporting-government parliamentarians differ with the opposition parliamentarians. In the end both will be squabbling over each other’s reporting.
The solution to endemic corruption requires an entire system-the judiciary, the legislators, the executives, not to mention the long arm of the law, to say nothing of the bureaucracy-need a complete overhaul. Moreover, social attitudes have to be changed with zero tolerance for corruption. Young Indians have to come forward to take charge of Indian political system with zero tolerance for corruption by eschewing the old corrupt politicos- to be pensioned off to the political sunsets. Then there is hope for a better India rid of venality for the next generation. Again, then venality will only be etched in their distant memory as something their grandfathers accustomed to do.
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