Dealing with corruption

How about a moral society?

My opposition to Anna Hazare's agitation to force his version of the Jan Lokpal Bill on the Government without bothering about Parliament and its law-making process has been misconstrued by many as support for politicians denuded of scruples and ethics. Contesting such bunkum is meaningless as critics more often than not have pre-conceived notions.

Most Anna fans are blind to reason and logic; sadly, they are also ignorant of how Parliament functions; tragically, they are disdainful of the parliamentary system of governance; ironically, they claim to uphold democracy while repudiating the very basis of our democracy: Our electoral system.

I firmly believe that a Lokpal Bill, call it Jan Lokpal if you must, will not cure our Government and society of the debilitating ailment called 'corruption'. Yet another law will at best serve as a palliative -- it will provide us with a sense of relief rather than kill the virus that is eating away at the innards of our nation.

What we need are reforms, radical and sweeping, to remove the reasons and incentives for giving and accepting bribes. We need to move towards minimum government, maximum governance. We need to take away discretionary powers from politicians and babus. We need to make Government transparent to the extent that the RTI becomes redundant.

We must not countenance any suggestion to maintain the status quo, or gloss over what are often described as sins of omission and commission but are in reality the pocketing of commission by those in power and authority.

Yet, we must not lose sight of the fact that our politics and bureaucracy are an accurate reflection of our society; after all, neither politicians nor bureaucrats come from an alien planet, they are elected and selected from amidst us.

Can we then, as a society, look within? And force fundamental changes in our outlook? Can we demand, and mobilise masses in support of that demand, radical reforms without even a day’s delay?

More importantly, can we strive to build a moral society which is strong and can resist the temptation of succumbing to the amorality that we now witness?

These are some of the issues I have raised in Vacuous morality and low cunning. Your views and comments, as always, are welcome.

Reforms alone can halt corruption

Slogans are no solution

Last Sunday, in my weekly column, Coffee Break, I argued the case for radical reforms over an all-powerful super babu called Jan Lokpal as is being demanded by Anna Hazare and his team of self-appointed representatives of 'civil society', to tackle the menace of corruption. I concluded with this comment:

Strait is the gate and narrow the path to redemption. If legislation and the creation of bureaucratic institutions could alone redeem us as a nation, we wouldn’t find ourselves in such a sorry mess. Populism has brought us to where we are today; populism of the kind being witnessed at Midan-e-Ramlila (and before that at Tihar Square) will only leave us stuck deeper in the mire of hopelessness. Anna Hazare is right up to a point. India does need a second freedom movement, but not to recreate the Inspector Raj of our socialist past. We need a second freedom movement to secure economic freedom and freedom from a system that intrudes into every aspect of our lives. That’s how democracies have dealt with the menace of corruption elsewhere in the world.

I have long held that till the reasons for corruption at various levels of Government are removed, or, to put it another way, the 'incentives' to demand and accept bribes are negated, corruption will continue to exist in one form or the other. A Lokpal (or Jan Lokpal) can act only on the basis of complaints. It is doubtful if most bribe-givers will ever lodge a complaint.

For instance, the Great 2G Spectrum Robbery did not come to light because any of the beneficiaries of A Raja's largesse-for-a-price 'policy' lodged a complaint with the CVC or the CBI. The scam came to light on account of two reasons: Sustained reportage by The Pioneer which persisted with the story, the audit report of the CAG and the interventionist role played by the Supreme Court.

Now look at it this way. If we were to opt for reforms that removed the discretionary power of Ministers and vested independent regulatory bodies with the requisite authority, such abuse of power would not happen. Either at the Centre or in the States.

The idea is to make Government responsible for its primary task: Governance. This would be possible if we were to opt for the principle of Minimum Government, Maximum Governance. As I have argued in my column, we need economic freedom, and freedom from Government's needless controls that serve as incentives for bribe-taking.

I would like to mention one specific reform that can go a long way in fighting corruption: Judicial reforms.

A hobbled judiciary that is short of staff and infrastructure means a ramshackle criminal justice system. This is felt in two ways: Cases pile up, delaying verdicts and appeals; and, some judges are tempted to convert the situation to their advantage and lining their pockets.

Just how ramshackle the justice system is can be gauged from what Justice VV Rao of Andhra Pradesh High Court had to say in March 2010 while delivering the keynote address on e-governance in judiciary:

Indian judiciary would take 320 years to clear the backlog of 31.28 million cases pending in various courts, including High Courts in the country.

"If one considers the total pendency of cases in the Indian judicial system, every judge in the country will have an average load of about 2,147 cases."

India has 14,576 judges as against the sanctioned strength of 17,641, including 630 High Court judges. This works out to a ratio of 10.5 judges per million population.

What we need are more judges with unimpeachable integrity, especially at lower levels of the judiciary -- that is, in the trial courts. We need trained staff and better infrastructure. We need to adopt a system of appointment of judges that ensures tainted persons are not appointed to the higher judiciary. We also need to have in place a mechanism that will ensure the immediate sacking of corrupt judges in the lower judiciary.

Unless we have a judiciary that is free and fair, and is able to deliver justice within a reasonable period of time in all cases, any 'crusade' against corruption will be meaningless.

Will the mere appointment of a Lokpal (or Jan Lokpal) ensure a justice system that works? Or will this merely result in more cases being filed and piling up, adding to the existing backlog?

Do we need a super babu -- or a super cop -- or a system that works?

[You can read my other columns here.]

Singh is King! Really?

Cash helped him win trust vote!
(A spoof poster that did the rounds after Congress won July 22, 2008 vote.)
The standard operating procedure which Indian politicians follow is tailored for our polity with its ugly underbelly. For instance, a politician’s ‘aide’ could be anyone who facilitates his or her activities in public view or behind the shuttered doors of the bungalows in Lutyens’ Delhi. Pimping for politicians is one of the most lucrative jobs in the nation’s capital and comes without an appointment letter or a paper trail: If things ever go wrong for our cynical politicians, there’s always plausible deniability. That option has been exercised by Captain Satish Sharma who has stoutly denied that he ever had an ‘aide’ called Nachiketa Kapur, leave alone using his services to bribe MPs in the last Lok Sabha to enable the UPA to win the crucial trust vote on July 22, 2008 after the Left withdrew its support over the India-US civil nuclear deal.

But neither Capt Sharma nor his party can deny that there was a person called Nachiketa Kapur or that he had access to the inner courtyard of the PWD-built haveli that has come to substitute Bahadur Shah Zafar’s court in amoral, if not grossly immoral, Delhi where issues of ethics are of least concern for those who claim to rule India. That Mr Kapur, whoever he may be, wielded considerable power (without accountability) and was politically well-connected is borne out by the fact that the American Embassy in New Delhi was sufficiently impressed to send him on a junket under the State Department’s ‘I-Vote 2008’ programme as an observer for the US presidential election.

It, therefore, stands to reason that the contents of the ‘Secret’ US Embassy cable of July 17, 2008, filed by its then Charge d’Affaires Steven White, are not without substance. The cable mentions, among other things, how the Congress mobilised funds to buy votes to win the confidence motion and the manner in which the funds were distributed and to whom. The ‘price’ for a ‘Yes’ vote was Rs 10 crore; the political counsellor of the Embassy was shown chests containing between Rs 50 crore and Rs 60 crore to be used for purchasing votes. The cable also mentions Capt Sharma providing details of how he was trying to target MPs within the BJP and its allies, for instance, the Akali Dal. He owed this much to the party which had bailed him out in 15 cases of corruption filed by the CBI.

Senior leaders of the BJP will confirm that during the week before the vote they were desperately scrambling to keep their flock together. The lure of lucre is not easy to overcome. In any event, few MPs wanted an early election -- if that could be avoided and easy money pocketed, where was the harm? Some back-benchers in the BJP had begun to question the wisdom of opposing the nuclear deal as a cover for their imminent act of disloyalty. The Akali Dal, not too sure of preventing its MPs from straying, wondered whether opposing the deal was the right move as there was a large Sikh community in the US and they wouldn’t take kindly to America-bashing. It may sound laughable in retrospect, but that’s exactly what was conveyed to the BJP. The BJP’s apprehensions came true when cash was actually handed over to some of its MPs by an ‘aide’ of Mr Amar Singh, who had also offered his services and resources to prop up the UPA regime.

Political parties are known to try till the last minute to avoid a mid-term exit from power. The NDA Government would not have fallen by a single vote in 1999 if its political managers had been alert to the Congress’s strategy of getting Mr Giridhar Gomango to participate in the voting despite his having taken charge as Chief Minister of Odisha. He still remained a member of the Lok Sabha and exercised his privilege, although it was both immoral and unethical to do so. Nor should we forget that JMM MPs were bribed to ensure the survival of the Government headed by PV Narasimha Rao. Such subversion of the ethical foundations of democracy comes naturally to the Congress.

That said, two points should bother us more than anything else. First, the Americans had a remarkably accurate sense of the voting pattern five days before the vote. According to their estimate, there would be 273 votes in favour and 251 ahttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifgainst the trust motion, with 19 abstentions. After the vote, the tally stood at 275 votes in favour and 256 against the motion, with 10 abstentions. Who briefed the US Embassy? Second, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was all smiles when he was greeted with cheers of “Singh is King” after he won the vote. The king today looks no different from the emperor without clothes.

(This appeared as my column in DNA.)

Yatha praja tatha Raja

We The People Are Corrupt!

It’s virtually impossible to check the veracity of AIADMK leader J Jayalalithaa’s assertion that the loss to the public exchequer on account of l’affaire Raja is more than the cumulative loot of India by its colonial masters during the days of John Company and later the British Raj. We could try and compute the official gains of the Empire from records in India House, but the value of the loot, in the strictest sense of the term, would be anybody’s guess. It is possible that the profits, both legitimate and illegitimate, that filled coffers in Britain over 200 years of its colonial enterprise in this part of the world added up to less than `1.76 lakh crore. Or, it is equally possible that it far exceeded the net worth of the Empire of Greed that A Raja built during his tenure as Telecom Minister under the tutelage of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Politicians are given to exaggeration and Ms Jayalalithaa is no exception.

Yet, the enormity of Raja’s loot can be minimised only at the risk of aping spokespersons of the Congress who refuse to accept that spectrum was sold for a song to firms many of which came into being only to grab a slice of the 2G pie. There is the additional risk of being seen as justifying the Prime Minister’s refusal to prevent the ‘Great 2G Spectrum Robbery’ since not to do so would be to repudiate the dharma of coalition politics. Needless to say, there was nothing dharmic about either Raja’s stunningly bald-faced defiance of all norms of probity or the Prime Minister’s resounding silence over the plunder that took place under his watch. By no stretch of the imagination does coalition politics mean allowing allies to denude the nation of its wealth: Rs 1.76 lakh crore is not exactly small change even in these days of rampaging inflation.

The outpouring of moral outrage over Raja’s crime may have served the purpose of forcing one of the most corrupt Ministers (by no means was he the lone wolf in the Cabinet) in the present regime to quit office in disgrace although he remains defiant as ever. But it has also swamped a revealing report on Global Financial Integrity that was released last week. The details of the report indicate the extent of corruption in India and confirm what we refuse to accept: We are a corrupt society with a corrupt system; a nation that silently indulges in corruption while raucously protesting against it, as is being witnessed at the moment.

The GFI report says, “From 1948 through 2008, India lost a total of $213 billion in illicit financial flows (or illegal capital flight). These illicit financial flows were generally the product of corruption, bribery and kickbacks, and criminal activities.” Illicit financial flows pertain to the “cross-border movement (or transfer) of money earned through illegal activities such as corruption, transactions involving contraband goods, criminal activities, and efforts to shelter wealth from a country’s tax authorities”. The total of $213 billion is a misleading figure because “the present value of India’s illicit financial flows is at least $462 billion,” the GFI report explains, adding, “This is based on the short-term US Treasury bill rate as a proxy for the rate of return on assets.”

What we are looking at is illicit financial flows of Rs 20.85 lakh crore over 60 years. This, however, is not the sum total of all illicit gains through corrupt practices. “This estimate is conservative,” the GFI report says, adding by way of a cautionary note, “as it does not include several major forms of value drainages out of poorer countries not represented by money”. Among these ‘major forms of value drainages’, the report says, are trade mispricing that is handled by collusion between importers and exporters within the same invoice; the proceeds of criminal and commercial smuggling such as drugs, minerals and contraband goods; and, mispriced asset swaps where ownership of commodities, shares and properties are traded without a cash flow. All this should sound very familiar to Indian ears.

The GFI report points out that the “total capital flight represents approximately 16.6 per cent of India’s GDP as of year-end 2008”; that “illicit financial flows out of India grew at 11.5 per cent per year”; and, that “India lost $16 billion per year between 2002-2006”. Who are responsible for this huge outflow of illicit funds? High net-worth individuals and private companies were found to be the “primary drivers of illicit flows”. India’s “underground economy is also a significant driver of illicit financial flows”.

The report explains that from 1948 through 2008, “the Indian private sector shifted away from deposits into developed country banks and towards increased deposits in offshore financial centres”, also known as ‘tax havens’ from where money was accessed by many of the fly-by-night operators who benefited from Raja’s largesse. The fact that deposits in tax havens have increased from 36.4 per cent of illicit financial flows in 1995 to 54.2 per cent in 2009 tells its own story.

The GFI report provides some other interesting insights. For instance, contrary to the claims of successive Governments, more vociferously by the UPA regime, India’s underground economy, which is “closely tied to illicit financial outflows”, continues to expand with each passing day. The present value of illicit assets held abroad ($462 billion) “accounts for approximately 72 per cent of India’s underground economy — which has been estimated to account for 50 per cent of India’s GDP ($640 billion at the end of 2008)”. Just above a quarter of illicit assets are held domestically.

Champions of unrestricted free market economics and liberalisation insist that these will help fight the menace of corruption and the acquisition of illicit wealth. But this is what the GFI report says: “In the post-reform period of 1991-2008, deregulation and trade liberalisation accelerated the outflow of illicit money from the Indian economy. Opportunities for trade mispricing grew and expansion of the global shadow financial system — particularly island tax havens — accommodate the increased outflow of India’s illicit capital flight.” What should also cause concern is the statistical correlation between increasing illicit financial flows and deteriorating income distribution.

A country where lobbyists have Ministers wrapped around their little fingers and can get policy tweaked to suit the interests of unscrupulous corporates, a society which sees nothing wrong with greasing the palms of babus, policemen and politicians to access services to which people are entitled, a nation whose people believe it is perfectly alright to jump the queue by paying middlemen and bribing the crook at the counter, and a people inure to the crime of all-round corruption should not feign anger and outrage over Raja emptying the till of the store he was supposed to look after and manage while cocking a snook at one and all, including a Prime Minister too effete to protest. A severely compromised media only highlights the rot within.

We are what we are, and so are those whom we elect to office.

[This appears as my Sunday column Coffee Break in The Pioneer on November 21, 2010.]

Corrupt system, corrupt society

66 die in Delhi house collapse. Does anybody care?

On Monday night a five-storey illegally constructed residential building in east Delhi came crashing down like a house of cards. By Tuesday, the death toll had mounted to 66.

The disaster occurred in the congested, filthy trans-Yamuna area of India's national capital. The parliamentary constituency of East Delhi is represented by Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit's son, Sandeep Dikshit, of the Congress.

Most residents are immigrants, a majority from Bihar. East Delhi 'colonies', which are large, sprawling urban slums with poor sanitation, near non-existent civic amenities, prolonged power cuts, poor water supply, offer cheap accommodation. Vast stretches of east Delhi have become a ghetto with over-flowing open drains, piles of festering garbage and potholed roads, for immigrants.

The building that collapsed stood a short distance from the 'world class' CWG Games Village. Lakshmi Nagar, and not the tinsel-and-glitter CWG facilities, presents the true face of Delhi.

Sheila Dikshit has washed her hands of any responsibility and slyly passed on the buck to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi where the BJP has a majority. What is not mentioned is that councillors have no executive authority which is vested with the Commissioner who reports to the Lt-Governor of Delhi.

MCD is a den of vice where corrupt babus and venal 'engineers' rule the roast. It's a babu-engineer-land mafia-developer-politician nexus at work. They are a law unto themselves. MCD exemplifies the cash-and-carry culture of Delhi.

But political parties are not free of blame either. Before elections, politicians promise to 'regularise' unauthorised colonies. The Congress, which for long has flourished on 'jhuggi-jhonpri' votes in Delhi, has mastered the art of 'regularising' unauthorised colonies. So its promise carries greater weight.

Before last year's Assembly election, Sheila Dikshit had promised to 'regularise' 1,200 of Delhi's 1,600 unauthorised colonies with illegally constructed buildings violating basic norms required for MCD sanction. The so-called 'Residents Welfare Associations' of these unauthorised colonies were given 'provisional certificates'. After the election, which the Congress won, the list was trimmed to 622.

Every time questions are asked as to why action is not being initiated against unauthorised colonies with illegal buildings, a counter-question is posed: Where will the residents go? That's a neat trick. Grab land, build houses which are death traps, rent them out to immigrants looking for cheap accommodation or sell floors to those looking for cheap housing or benami property, and voila, nobody can touch you.

Human life in India has no value attached to it. Nobody will be held accountable for these terrible deaths. To use a cliche, no heads will roll.

Those who pretend concern over corruption would do well to ponder over this: The loot at the top -- 2G Spectrum scam, Adarsh Housing Society scam, CWG scam -- symbolise the rotten icing on a rotten cake. As a nation, as a society, we are thoroughly corrupt. Or else the sprawling slums of east Delhi, which are loftily described as 'colonies', would not have existed.

Who gains from the Games?

If the people and the country have not benefited from the Commonwealth Games, then who are the beneficiaries? We don’t have to look far for an answer to this question.
(What's in it for her? A labourer's child at a CWG venue.)

Delhi is bedecked with huge banners and festoons in garish colours, creating a faux festive atmosphere to mark the Commonwealth Games which begin on October 3. Foreign sportspersons and delegates arriving in India’s capital city to participate in the Games can be forgiven for thinking that the residents of Delhi are celebrating a much-anticipated event which the organisers, in spite of the scandalous manner in which the preparations have been handled, bringing shame to India and all Indians, strangely insist will be ‘better’ than the Olympic Games at Beijing and the Commonwealth Games at Melbourne. Little would they know that the residents of Delhi, as also the vast majority of this country’s population, are seething with rage and do not share the enthusiasm of those who have let India down wilfully, smugly confident that they shall never be held accountable for their sins of omission and commission.

Nor will the foreign visitors get to see the ungainly sights of Delhi. All along the road from the Games Village, built on the flood banks of Yamuna violating all environmental norms and with an eye to the ‘premium’ that can be charged from prospective buyers of these apartments after the event is over, to the various stadia, huge boards have been put up, beyond which lie ramshackle ‘colonies’ that are in reality sprawling urban slums. Ironically, even if the visitors can’t see the ‘other’ Delhi, they will get to smell it: There’s no way the organisers can block the stench that rises from the open sewers of these ‘colonies’.

Yet, despite the last-minute sprucing up and the banners and festoons, India’s most pampered city doesn’t quite look pretty — or prettier than what it looked like till a fortnight ago. If anything, it looks tacky. A fellow blogger’s description comes to mind: It’s like lipstick on a pig. Apart from politicians, bureaucrats and contractors who had their snouts in the trough for the past seven years and have only now been sent scurrying by a Prime Minister appalled by the battering the nation’s image has received in recent days to try and salvage whatever can be salvaged, at this late hour, of the country’s dignity and honour, nobody is celebrating what was supposed to be India’s coming out party.

The banners and festoons are embossed with the seemingly seductive slogan, “Come out and play”. If the organisers thought this would make CWG 2010 a people’s event, like almost everything else to do with the Games, they have got this wrong too. For the people of Delhi, the sub-text of the message reads: Don’t you dare come out of your homes while the Games are on. Such is the apprehension of harassment on the roads, coupled with antipathy towards an event that has fetched abiding national shame instead of unleashing a tidal wave of national pride, that those who can afford to get out of the city have booked their passage. Sensing windfall profits, even low-cost airlines have trebled the cost of tickets.

Offices have offered their staff the option of working out of home. Vendors and kiosk-owners who make an honest living from a hard day’s work, unlike the organisers of the Games, have been banished. Thousands of migrant labourers who have toiled at the Games venues for the past many years, setting up home in hovels, have been told to pack up and leave, just disappear. For all practical purposes, the city will wear a deserted look during the Games.

Which brings us to the question: Whose Common- wealth Games is it anyway? When the NDA Government agreed to bid for the Games in 2003, it was obviously guided by those who sold the ‘India Shining’ lemon to the BJP. Confident that the NDA would win the 2004 election and the one after that too, they saw the Games as a celebration of India’s arrival on the global scene as a major economic player. The NDA, as we all know, did not win the 2004 election and lost further ground in 2009. But its legacy could not be disowned by the UPA Government; the Congress saw the Games as an opportunity to make political capital, at home and abroad: It would mark the triumphant return of the party to the centre stage of Indian politics from the margins to which it had been pushed.

So the Games became a party — and partisan — affair with control over its preparations and conduct vested with the Delhi Government, the Union Ministry of Sports, the Union Ministry of Urban Development and the CWG Organising Committee. Between themselves, they carved up the pie. Institutions became irrelevant as individuals emerged as key players. Understandably, there was neither accountability nor responsibility attached to the planning and completion of projects. And nobody bothered about the escalating cost of the Games as taxpayers, and not the Congress, were funding the extravaganza. From the initial budget of Rs 1,899 crore, the total expenditure now stands at anything between Rs 70,000 and Rs 100,000 crore. Such was the brazenness of the Delhi Government that it did not think twice before diverting funds meant for Dalit welfare to building roads that have already begun to cave in. And such is the disdain towards the people that Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit airily dismissed the import of a showpiece overbridge collapsing like a pack of cards by saying it was not meant for foreign athletes but spectators.

If anybody stands to gain from CWG 2010, an orgiastic celebration of everything that is venal and abhorrent about public life in India, it is the organisers and their political patrons. The sorry plight of India’s sportspersons will remain unchanged; they have gained nothing from this event whereas they should have been the focus of attention. In any case, the Common- wealth Games is not considered a major sporting event and is rated lower than the Asian Games. Yes, Delhi will have more flyovers and underpasses, but that’s a small consolation for a city turned upside down and whose people will now have to live with the ravages of the Games for years to come.

The question we should really ask is: What has India gained from the Games? The gross mismanagement, the discomfiting questions raised by auditors, the shocking disregard for financial integrity and the embarrassment of overshooting deadlines not by days and weeks but by months have caused enormous damage to India’s image abroad. More important, it has shaken the confidence of Indians at home — they are no longer too sure that their country can take on the world; for them, “Come out and play” is not a challenge but a taunt.

When CWG 2010 begins with the promised gala opening ceremony (provided it doesn’t rain and the organisers don’t make a hash of it) with dancers in sequined dresses gyrating to AR Rahman’s music (never mind the silly lyrics which, like everything else about this colossus scam, do not make any sense) and a spectacular fireworks display, millions of Indians will be left wondering whether what Sports Minister MS Gill calls a “big fat Punjabi wedding” is justified in a country where 37 per cent of the people live below the poverty line and children go to sleep hungry. If the people and the country have not benefited from the Games, then who are the beneficiaries? We don’t have to look far for an answer to this question.

[This appeared as my Sunday column Coffee Break in The Pioneer.]

Corrupt rulers, cynical people

The filthy underbelly of Delhi, best described in Kipling’s words as a ‘packed and pestilential town’, has been exposed by the CWG mess.
(Toilets at CWG Village. Organisers said hygiene is not an issue! - BBC)

August 24, 1690. This day at Sankraal, I ordered Captain Brooke to come up with a vessel to Chuttanuty, where we arrived about noon, but found the place in a deplorable condition, nothing being left for our present accommodation, the rains falling day and night.” The “deplorable condition” of ‘Chuttanuty’ (Sutanuti), laid to waste by the Nawab of Bengal three-and-a-half years ago, would have dampened the spirit of any other official, but Job Charnock, no stranger to Bengal, had set his mind on building the headquarters of East India Company at this place and remained undeterred. His persistence paid off when Calcutta was born of the union of three villages — Sutanuti, Gobindapur and Kalikata. Much later, it was to become the Empire’s Second City, the centre of British affairs in India.

Yet, for all its economic, political and social importance, Calcutta was not free of blots and blemishes. Two centuries after Charnock landed in Sutanuti, the celebrated chronicler of British India and for a while Assistant Editor of this newspaper, Rudyard Kipling, visited Calcutta and was not impressed either by its magnificent buildings that symbolised the power of the Raj or the splendorous lifestyle of the ‘White nabobs’ who controlled trade and commerce. Rather than lavish praise on the city and its residents, Kipling caustically wrote:

Thus the midday halt of Charnock — more’s the pity! —
Grew a City
As the fungus sprouts chaotic from its bed
So it Spread
Chance-directed, chance-erected, laid and built on the silt
Palace, byre, hovel — poverty and pride —
Side by side;
And, above the packed and pestilential town,
Death looked down.

Kipling was accused of being cynical and allowing his antipathy towards Hindoos who, though restricted to native quarters, shared the city with their colonial masters, get the better of his judgement. In retrospect, Kipling was just being prescient in his own inimitable style. Even before the Union Jack fluttering atop Governor House was replaced by the Tricolour at Raj Bhavan and the last British official, trader and fortune-seeker-turned-boiler operator at Victoria Jute Mill left Calcutta, the city had begun to crumble. Garbage and poverty, hunger and disease, death and decay enmeshed to become the leitmotif of Calcutta, compared to which Delhi, Bombay and Madras were small towns.

As Calcutta’s collapse gathered speed, Delhi — or rather New Delhi — emerged as free India’s First City, pampered at the expense of every other urban centre. Over the decades, Delhi has grown, “As the fungus sprouts chaotic from its bed; So it (has) Spread; Chance-directed, chance-erected”, but it has never had either the glitz and glamour of Bombay or the sedate respectability of Calcutta. It’s a city of ghettos, both real and of the mind, where the elite live in what are referred to as ‘posh colonies’ while politicians and bureaucrats occupy sprawling bungalows in Lutyens’s Delhi. Then there is another Delhi where people live in festering urban slums and ‘unauthorised’ colonies of various kinds. The chrome-and-glass malls, bridges and underpasses are an alluring distraction from the city’s filthy underbelly. If Calcutta was India’s ‘pestilential city’ in the 19th century, Delhi best fits Kipling’s description in India of the 21st century. For evidence, look at the alarming outbreak of dengue and swine flu. Neither class nor cash serves as a protective barrier in this “packed and pestilential town, (where) Death looks down.”

Despite the huge sums of money that are spent every year to make Delhi a “world class city” — a phrase popularised by Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit — there really is little to show by way of public services that are in any manner better from those provided in India’s other, and lesser, cities. A corrupt administration supervised by venal politicians who believe glib talk is a substitute for governance cannot be expected to perform any better. Delusions of grandeur no different from those that clouded the mind of the last Mughal Emperor whose writ did not run beyond the walls of his serraglio prompted Delhi’s rulers to believe they would be able to stage the “best-ever Commonwealth Games” and stun the world.

In the event, the preparations for the Games, which have cost India’s honest tax-payers upwards of `70,000 crore, have turned out to be no more than the Great Indian Rope Trick. Initial audit reports suggest limitless loot by those entrusted with the task of creating new and refurbishing existing infrastructure; a final assessment would reveal the enormous scale of the thievery that has taken place in the name of hosting the Games.

It would, however, be dishonest to blame politicians, bureaucrats and contractors alone for fetching such ignominy and abiding shame: India is being laughed at by the entire world; this nation has been reduced to an object of ridicule and pity. More than politicians and organisers, bureaucrats and contractors, it is the people of Delhi who are to blame. There is a certain callous disregard for values and ethics that sets apart the elite of Delhi from their counterparts in other cities. So long as their lives are not adversely affected, they are reluctant to take a stand on behalf of others, leave alone the nation. Scrutiny of Government’s actions that involve spending taxpayers’ money by citizens is an alien concept in Delhi.

Nor are the elite of Delhi easily moved by the horrific realities of life to which others are subjected in this city — poor sanitation, non-existent civic services, corrupt babus, rationed water, endless power cuts, ill-equipped hospitals and a criminally indifferent police force. It is amusing that there should be widespread anger over Games Organising Committee secretary-general Lalit Bhanot insisting that excreta-encrusted toilets and bathrooms at the CWG Village (which Ms Dikshit says is better than the one built for the Melbourne Games) are “clean to both you and us” but “may not appear so to some others”. If only newspapers had published, equally prominently, the bathrooms and kitchens at All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, we would have known that accepting filth and squalor as ‘normal’ is a way of life, and not an exception, in India’s “world class” capital city.

By this time next month the Games will be history; what will remain are the leftovers of an orgiastic feast at the taxpayers expense: Bridges that are badly designed and poorly built, roads that are no more than a layer of asphalt and stadia with leaking roofs nobody will use. Life will go on as usual. The slums will become more squalid than before. Yamuna will once again be reduced to a fetid drain. And we will still be ruled by the same lot who have let India down. As for the guilty men and women, none of them will be either shamed or shunned.

[This appeared as Edit Page Main Article in The Pioneer.]

CWG loot is a national shame!

What pride in robbing India of its wealth?

On May 14, 2010, the Times of India, quoting an NGO audit, reported that the cost of this year’s Commonwealth Games in New Delhi had escalated by a whopping 1,575%. The report said:

In the case of Delhi's Commonwealth Games, official cost estimates have gone up by a whopping 525% since the city won the bid. Unofficial assessments put the escalation at a mindboggling 1575% -- that is more than 15 times the original estimate -- according to an independent report.
India's bid document for the Commonwealth Games in 2003 estimated the cost of hosting the event at Rs 1,899 crore. After several revisions the estimates now range from an official figure of Rs 10,000 crore to independent experts at an astounding Rs 30,000 crore.

By end-July officials associated with the Games were admitting that total costs would be upward of Rs 35,000 crore. If the cost of various infrastructure projects (including extension of Metro services, power plants, etc) meant to showcase Delhi as a ‘worldclass city’ were to be taken into account, the grand total would shoot up to nearly Rs 1,00,000 crore.

The construction and renovation work was undertaken by agencies of the Delhi Government, run by the Congress. The ‘preparations’ include relaying of perfectly good roads which are now sinking under cars and buses, paving pavements that were spanking new, digging up vast stretches of the city and then leaving things that way, giving Delhi a bombed-out look.

The various stadia where the Games are to be held are still in a shambles after extensive ‘renovation’. Roofs are leaking, walls are damp, toilets are non-functional and premises are littered with debris and uncovered power cables that are a death trap. Many of the venues have not been checked for fire safety.

A CVC report lists the lapses in detail. The Delhi Government has no credible response.

What began as the rape of Yamuna when the Delhi Government colluded with real estate firms to violate all environment norms to build the Sports Village on the river’s floodbanks (the apartments will be later sold at astronomical sums to those who can also grease palms) has turned into an open loot.

The Organising Committee is now found to have its snout in the trough too. Its budget alone is more than Rs 1,000 crore. Where’s this money going?

.A treadmill is being hired for 45 days for Rs 9.75 lakh. A cross trainer for Rs 8.8 lakh.
.Diesel power will be generated at Rs 80 per unit at some Commonwealth Games venues. .The market rate is less than a tenth of this.
.Umbrellas are being ‘hired’ at Rs 6,308 each.
.Chairs are being rented at Rs 8,378 for a month-and-a-half each.
.Tissue rolls are being purchased at Rs 4,138 each.

This is not all. An unknown London-based firm was hired, without any contract being signed and on the basis of what now transpires to be a forged e-mail, allegedly sent by a junior staff at the Indian High Commission in London, for services like the Queen’s Baton Relay for an astronomical sum. Curiously, the firm continues to be paid every month.
An IANS report informs us that the scandal surfaced with:

... British tax authorities wanting to know if there were any discrepancies in the payments made to AK Films by the Organising Committee for the services rendered.
Their attention was drawn to the payments when the OC approached them this March for a VAT refund of 14,000 pounds for the payments.
It is claimed that the firm and its sister concern, AM Car and Van Hire, were paid nearly 450,000 pounds by the OC. The British authorities apparently claimed that 25,000 pounds was continuing to be paid into the firm's account.
On his part, the firm's owner Ashish Patel denied receiving the monthly amounts and said the OC had paid him only 247,000 pounds and still owed him 147,000 pounds towards transport rental costs.

Similarly, the Organising Committee has signed a strange deal with a Singapore-based ‘marketing firm’ to secure sponsorships and revenue for the Delhi Games. A clause in the contract entitles the firm to a percentage of all sponsorship revenues. The firm till date has not secured any sponsorship for the Games, but it has made a huge amount by way of its commission from money given by PSUs, under instructions from parent Ministries in the UPA Government, as ‘sponsorship’.

There’s more to the shame and the scandal. The Delhi Government is now found to have diverted Rs 744 crore from Budget funds meant for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe welfare to the Commonwealth Games. Diversion of these funds are not allowed.

For further details, read It’s Common V/S Wealth, an excellent, well-documented report of an independent inquiry into the loot in the name of organising the Commonwealth Games.

All this amounts to no more than the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Easily this is the biggest ever scandal in independent India. People are being told not to talk about the loot of public money under the watch of the Congress Government of Delhi and the Congress-led UPA Government as the Commonwealth Games are a matter of “national pride”.

I see no ‘national pride’ in hosting a 12-day bogus sports event (even Asiad takes precedence over Commonwealth Games) which is a cover for looting India of thousands of crores of rupees. A country where 37 per cent of the people live in appalling poverty and millions barely keep body and soul together such criminal loot of taxpayer money is a matter of national shame.

Yatha praja tatha Raja

How steep has been our fall as a nation!

Bapu taught us simple living, high thinking. We must practice it. Then only will the nation progress… We have to do that.” And after quoting Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, after preaching the lofty principle of simple living and high thinking, that is, after donning the garb of moral integrity, Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav, the leader of Rashtriya Janata Dal who used the most innovative methods to loot the treasury of Bihar till there was nothing left to steal, gave the reason why he and his party had decided to support the UPA Government against the Opposition’s cut motion on the General Budget. “It was the BJP which instituted cases (of corruption) against me and (my wife) Rabri Devi. Congress did not set the CBI on me,” Mr Yadav said, asking rhetorically, “And you expect me to vote along with the BJP?”

That was in the Lok Sabha during the debate on the Finance Bill on Thursday, April 29. Our honourable MPs listened to Mr Yadav explain why he did not support the cut motion. People in our wondrous land who elect Mr Yadav and his ilk to Parliament heard him. There are parliamentary records to prove that he said what would be considered shocking and outrageous not many years ago — that political support can be leveraged by not proceeding against corrupt politicians. Today we have come to accept it as legitimate mobilisation of support in Parliament; adharma has become the dharma of coalition politics.

The BJP/Left-sponsored cut motion was defeated by the Congress through the expedient means of cutting deals with three tainted leaders facing prosecution for amassing wealth beyond their known sources of income. The first to fall in line was Ms Mayawati who instructed the BSP MPs to back the Government. She would. Look at the sequence of events. On April 16, the CBI told the Supreme Court that it had witnesses on affidavit to prove that Ms Mayawati had forcibly collected bribes and would like to press ahead with prosecuting the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. This was reported widely in media. A week later, as the Congress struggled with stacking up numbers in its favour, the CBI told the Supreme Court on April 23 that it was willing to consider Ms Mayawati’s request for a closure of the case against her. By Monday, April 26, BSP MPs were enthusiastically supporting the Congress. “We are part of the Government. After all we support it from outside. How can we vote in favour of the cut motion?” a senior BSP MP asked. On April 27, the BSP formally announced its support for the Government and opposition to the cut motion.

Similarly, the Congress used the CBI, or rather promised not to use the CBI, to ensure the support of Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav and Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav, the two leaders of the unwashed masses who would like to see India slide back to the age of lanterns and bicycles while their kith and kin prosper on slush money, hush money, tainted money. In Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav’s lantern-lit Bihar fictitious cows chewed on imaginary fodder; in the benighted Uttar Pradesh of Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav and Ms Mayawati, children feast on mica-laden lumps of clay and then cry themselves to sleep.

The Congress, of course, has no compunctions about sleeping with the tainted and the sullied. After all, the pot can’t call the kettle black. With a hugely corrupt Minister raking in millions of rupees by handing out 2G spectrum in a Cabinet headed by a Prime Minister whose publicists insist he is the epitome of honesty, integrity and probity in public life, and having mocked at the law of the land to exonerate an Italian crook known as Ottavio Quattrocchi who was caught with his snout in the trough called public exchequer, the Congress really cannot claim to be any cleaner than those with whose support it remains in power.

It would, however, serve no purpose to point fingers at those who brazenly flaunt their taint or misuse agencies of the state for political gains. That they are elected to Parliament is a reflection of the larger rot in our society, the cancer that is eating into the innards of our nation: We the people have voted for them, we have done so because we accord caste, community and faith greater importance than national interest. The end result of our cynicism is there for all to see.

Mrs Indira Gandhi had famously sought to gloss over — her critics would insist she was seeking to justify — corruption by insisting it was a “global phenomenon”. Between then and now, we have internalised corruption and made it a part of our lives. Earlier there was this perception that poor salaries forced babus and policemen to indulge in corrupt practices. Salaries have increased by leaps and bounds, so has the level and quantum of corruption. This is primarily because politicians whom we elect to sit in State Assemblies and in Parliament, to govern the nation, are not above corruption and see politics as a means of self-aggrandisement.

And so the nexus remains secure and safe. Politicians collude with babus. Babus collude with contractors. Contractors collude with criminals. Criminals collude with politicians or, better still, decide to become politicians. The vicious cycle is seemingly cast in iron and cannot be broken; it has come to represent the ‘system’. Sadly, the people want it this way. Or else they would have voted out the whole lot and, drawing inspiration from the good governance instituted by Mr Narendra Modi, insisted that all of India, and not Gujarat alone, must shine.

Tragically, that won’t happen. Voters will remain polarised along caste, community and other such faultlines that divide our society and help perpetuate the raj of the corrupt. The self-seeking and expanding middle-classes will insist its interests are protected. The poor will be led like so much cattle by those who shamelessly feed on their misery to live in comfort. It is in no politician’s interest to bring people above the poverty line, so the number of those below the poverty line keeps on increasing: Nearly two-fifths of our people are now categorised as ‘BPL’.

Soon after he became Chief Minister, EMS Namboodiripad was asked by a journalist: “By when will the Communist Government keep its promise of taking electricity to every home in every village?” Namboodiripad looked aghast, and then shot back: “The day every house in every village has electricity the people will stop voting for us. You must be a fool to expect my Government to keep this promise.”

That was many, many decades ago. Much has changed in India since then. But voters, in a sense, remain unchanged. They still vote for politicians who they know will never keep their promise, who will lie through their teeth, who will stand up in Parliament and quote Gandhi and then sell themselves to the highest bidder or trade their vote in exchange of the CBI being called off from prosecuting them for theft and worse. If you don’t believe me, go back to the first paragraph of this column.

[This appeared as my Sunday column, Coffee Break, in The Pioneer on May 2, 2010.]

Bogus rage over IPL tamasha!

And while St Peter's thieves debate... (ELP, Works, Vol 1)

So, IPL is not only about adrenaline-pumping cricket! Here are some statistics about IPL’s third season: 57 matches, 54 parties, 270 hours of partying and 1,29,600 bottles of beer. And just in case you want to know what happens at these parties (to which, of course, you will never be invited as you don’t belong to the charmed circle of ‘celebrities’ who claim to represent ‘new’ India) check out Friday’s Telegraph which has published a set of photographs on the front page capturing the tide of testosterone that hit Dublin, the happening place at ITC Sonar Bangla in Kolkata, well past the witching hour. Apparently, discarding clothes to the rhythm of Flo Rida’s Right Round is de rigueur to celebrate the completion of an IPL match, in this case between Kolkata Knight Riders and Rajasthan Royals. Why else would KKR opener Chris Gayle and a starlet called Sherlyn Chopra make a public spectacle of themselves?

No, I am not taking a moral position on clothes being dropped at a private party (admittedly in a public place) or 1,29,600 bottles of beer being swigged over 270 hours of partying. What worries me is that such vulgarity should be seen as an indicator of India’s social and economic progress. No less worrisome is the widely held notion that much of young India aspires to a lifestyle stripped of all values, morals and ethics. If this is what globalisation and liberalisation have done to us as a nation, a people, then perhaps the Coca-colonisation of the world is not such a terribly good idea.

Yet, I cannot bring myself to even remotely support, leave alone endorse, the ersatz anger and bogus anguish of our Members of Parliament who have spent the past week debating, discussing and deliberating upon the great cricketing tamasha called IPL. The faux outrage of our politicians over IPL’s alleged financial scandals and scams deserves to be ignored with all the contempt that can be mustered, not least because each statement, every utterance, heard in Parliament reeks of hypocrisy and worse. It ill suits our politicians to be smugly moralistic and pretend self-righteous indignation.

It is laughable to hear, of all people, Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav, whose loot of Bihar is surpassed only by the sacking of Delhi by Nadir Shah, wax eloquent on the need for probity in IPL. Strange as it may sound, he is the president of Bihar Cricket Association. But it’s not strange to hear him demand that IPL should be ‘nationalised’ and Government should manage commercial cricket in the country. He would want that as it would open various avenues of grabbing a slice of the pie that has till now been denied to him. That Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav’s wannabe cricketer son has acquired neither fame nor money via the IPL route is not entirely inconsequential in determining his attitude towards the cricketing enterprise as it exists. Politics can be leveraged to the advantage of kith and kin if an institution belongs to the public sector: Hence the Rashtriya Janata Dal leader’s demand that IPL be ‘nationalised’.

Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav believes, or so he claims, that the alleged mess in IPL’s affairs is the “fallout of a lop-sided policy of promoting a foreign game at the cost of indigenous sports”. That’s very endearingly rustic, but it’s utter nonsense — or, as a friend exclaimed, it’s unadulterated tripe. Kushti and khokho are not exactly spectator sports, or else Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav’s many friends in the corporate sector would have by now done a Lalit K Modi with both. More importantly, the Samajwadi Party leader’s criticism of cricket is as antediluvian as his party’s Lok Sabha election manifesto which promised to abolish English and banish computers from Uttar Pradesh and (if he were to become Prime Minister) the rest of the country.

And then there is the irrepressible leader of the working class, the one and only Gurudas Dasgupta, who is known for his proximity to both trade unions and the managements against whom they stage periodic strikes and agitations, often with disastrous results. “At the root of the problem lies the fact that IPL is laundering black money, it is a caricature of cricket… It is nothing more than organised gamble,” the venerable CPI leader thundered in Parliament. Amazingly, the BJP has embraced the Left’s agenda by demanding that a Joint Parliamentary Committee be set up to probe, of all things, the shenanigans of IPL! High matters of state have obviously ceased to matter for the main Opposition party.

It’s the colour of IPL’s money that’s bothering our politicians, is it? If only they would disclose the colour of the money that is used for funding election campaigns and the source of the money that greases the giant, uneven wheels of our democracy and keeps them moving! Had the colour of money been of such great significance for our holier-than-thou politicians, they would have by now forged sufficient consensus to bring about sweeping electoral reforms to eliminate the role of big money, bad money, slush money and black money in elections.

Pilloried incessantly by party elders for his links with a certain businessman, the late lamented BJP leader Pramod Mahajan had once shot back at his critics in a closed door meeting: “He is not a prostitute with whom you can sleep at night and refuse to recognise in the morning.” On the eve of the Mumbai Maha-adhiveshan in 1996, a senior BJP leader had gone public with questions about the source of money to pay for the extravaganza. “I don’t recall you asking me whether the money I gave you to contest the last election was purified with Ganga jal,” Mahajan retorted. No politician asks that question — whether he/she belongs to the Congress, the CPI(M) or the BJP. Others don’t matter.

The rank hypocrisy of our politicians is further highlighted by the fake concern of our Prime Minister who is believed to be “very troubled” by the allegations levelled against IPL and the colourful stories that are being planted in our pliant, unquestioning, ill-informed media by the Congress’s dirty tricks department in the form of ‘startling discoveries’ by the Income Tax Department, the Enforcement Directorate and the Intelligence Bureau implicating not only Mr Lalit K Modi but senior politicians in other parties. It’s a shame and a pity that our libel laws are virtually non-existent and our judiciary entirely indifferent to defamation and political blackmail. It is equally shameful that media houses which thrive on cronyism should cavil at crony capitalism, but for which they would have been languishing. More to the point, our limp-wristed Prime Minister was nowhere near being as “troubled” as he is today when his Government subverted the law to exonerate Ottavio Quattrocchi. On the contrary, he thought it was a “shame” that the obnoxious Italian wheeler-dealer was charged with and prosecuted for stealing India’s money.

[This appeared as my Sunday column, Coffee Break, in The Pioneer on April 25, 2010. For other articles, see archive.]

*Visual courtesy The Telegraph.

L'affaire Shashi Tharoor

Of probity and provincialism

Nobody who is caught with his hand in the till ever admits to his guilt till proven guilty in a court of law; all sense of decency and honour, dignity and respect, evaporates and yields space to belligerence followed by maudlin sentiments of hurt innocence. So also with the disgraced former Minister of State for External Affairs who once famously tweeted to me that he was proud to be associated with the Congress because of its “tolerance” and “liberal values”.

That was in response to my tweet (not the one on 'cattle class' travel which led to his first taste of controversy!) pointing out his irreverent comments about Mrs Indira Gandhi and the Congress’s first family (“Had Indira’s Parsi husband been a Toddywalla rather than so conveniently a Gandhi, I sometimes wonder, might India’s political history have been different?”) in his book India: From Midnight to the Millennium and Beyond. This was soon after Mr Jaswant Singh’s unceremonious exit from the BJP following the publication of his book Jinnah — India, Partition, Independence and Mr Tharoor was all over Twitter, patronisingly gloating over a veteran politician’s fall from grace in his party.

For all its ‘tolerance’ and ‘liberal values’, the Congress has not been particularly tolerant about Mr Tharoor’s extra-ministerial activities or liberal towards his cavalier attitude. When push came to shove, the Congress disowned him and distanced itself from his interest in promoting T20 cricket in Kochi. It would be in bad form and poor taste to gloat over Mr Tharoor’s current plight, but it would be perfectly in order to point out that arrivistes in politics should resist the temptation of excessive preening.

It is not the least surprising that Mr Tharoor, whose Dubai-based fiancée was a beneficiary by way of free ‘sweat’ equity worth Rs 70 crore from IPL’s Kochi franchise deal (hours before he was given marching orders she offered to return the shares which only served to implicate him) should have pretended outrage, flown into a temper with journalists, belligerently asserted that under no circumstances would he resign from office, only to be told to put in his papers last Sunday evening. He has now predictably resorted to mawkish claims of victimhood.

Reading out a statement in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday, Mr Tharoor declared, though not for the first time, “My conscience is clear and I know that I have done nothing improper or unethical, let alone illegal… I am deeply wounded by the fanciful and malicious charges that have been made against me.” We have heard similar remonstrations of innocence before by those accused of compromising their integrity.

He could have, however, spared us the claim that he resigned from the Union Council of Ministers to uphold the “highest moral traditions of our democratic system” and to “avoid embarrassment to the Government”. He did not resign voluntarily when unsavoury details (including those of his role which went well beyond that of a neutral ‘mentor’) of the IPL’s Kochi franchise scandal surfaced in media, which would have been the honourable thing to do; he was told to go by his party bosses. Had he resigned immediately, or at least offered to resign, rather than arrogantly cavil at the suggestion that he should do so to uphold the “highest moral traditions of our democratic system” he now cites, his reputation might have been tarred but it would not have been lying in tatters today.

Nor is any purpose served by his informing the Lok Sabha that he has “requested the Prime Minister to have these charges (against him) thoroughly investigated”. Whatever else may be the Prime Minister’s shortcomings, and he has many, he is not known to be a man who acts in haste. Neither is Mr Pranab Mukherjee known for arriving at a decision without carefully scrutinising and considering all available facts. A formal inquiry should be conducted into l’affaire Shashi Tharoor, but irrespective of its findings, which cannot possibly controvert the facts of the case, the smooth-talking former Minister would do well to bear in mind that in politics perception matters more than reality and the past is often, if not always, swamped by the present. Politics is a harsh world far removed from the rarefied confines of the UN headquarters in New York.

It would, however, be churlish to deny Mr Tharoor the right to defend himself and clear his name; others with a far lower integrity quotient have been given that opportunity. After all, as he has eloquently pointed out in his statement in the Lok Sabha, he has “a long record of public service unblemished by the slightest tint of financial irregularity”. That he served the UN under Mr Kofi Annan, who will be remembered as a Secretary-General who fetched immense disrepute to the organisation and whose son was found to have benefited from UN contracts, is inconsequential. Although it could be asked as to whether his conscience troubled him every time media reported about Mr Annan’s, or his son Kojo’s, dubious deeds. Of course, the perks of office can have a numbing effect on the conscience of the most honest person, as can the loaves and fishes of office.

What is reprehensible is Mr Tharoor’s attempt — there’s nothing covert or sly about it — to provoke provincial resentment against his sacking from the Government. No doubt he has been elected to the Lok Sabha from Thiruvananthapuram, but he was a Minister in the Government of India, not the Government of Kerala. As an MP, he is tangentially responsible for minding the interests of his constituency as his primary job is to participate in parliamentary debates on national affairs and help frame laws on national issues. As a member of the Union Council of Ministers, his remit was to mind India’s foreign affairs.

By repeatedly referring to Thiruvananthapuram and Kerala, the “ethos of Kerala”, the people of Kerala (with whom he had no association at all during his growing up years in Kolkata and Delhi and the many decades he spent at the UN) he has tried to link high issues of ministerial probity with low politics of provincial identity. The unstated though clear message he has sought to send out is that an elected representative of Kerala is being unjustly penalised. That’s balderdash and Mr Tharoor, more than anybody else, knows it.

It’s strange that a suave, accomplished person with an impressive track record of serving an international organisation with distinction, and whose last tweet sent out at 11.16 pm on April 16 reads, “U folks are the new India. We will ‘be the change’ we wish to see in our country,” should fall back on the discredited ‘old’ politics of provincial pride and prejudice in his time of trouble. That’s as distressing as his fiancée benefiting from a cricket franchise deal that he ‘mentored’.

(My blog on the mess called IPL/BCCI will appear soon. And no, I am not a fan of Lalit K Modi nor do I fly the flag for IPL.)

[This appeared as the main edit page article in The Pioneer on April 21, 2010.]

Still waiting for Koda’s arrest!

Last Sunday (November 8) officials of the Income Tax Department and Enforcement Directorate were waiting to arrest Madhu Koda as soon as he was through with his ‘loose motion’. Newspapers and news channels breathlessly informed us that “Koda’s arrest is imminent”. Seven days later, Koda remains a free man, unrestrained by either the Income Tax Department or the Enforcement Directorate. Meanwhile, stories about how the former Chief Minister and his associates looted Jharkhand, invested the money in real estate, hotels and mines at home and abroad, and lived the high life — designer jeans, SUVs, holidays at exotic locations — have disappeared, first from the front page and prime time news bulletins, and then altogether.

It’s almost as if a decision has been taken — and such decisions can be taken only at the ‘highest level’ — not to pursue investigations into the mind-boggling cash-and-carry plunder that kept Koda busy during the two years he was Chief Minister of Jharkhand — or, at least, to go easy with the inquiry. Nothing else explains the sudden dip in the enthusiasm with which officials were raiding various premises (76 establishments in eight cities were raided in a matter of days), following up on leads and briefing mediapersons.

If there were popular expectations that Koda would be arrested (as is usually done with great fanfare in cases involving financial fraud and corruption of far lesser magnitude) they have been belied. Officials of the Enforcement Directorate have tamely handed over a ‘sealed’ brown paper envelope to Koda while repeating meaningless warnings to his two absconding associates, Binod Sinha and Sanjay Chaudhary, that they should behave like model citizens and turn up for a tete-a-tete.

A week ago we were being told how Koda and his associates had amassed anything between Rs 2,000 crore and Rs 4,000 crore in ill-gotten wealth; how nearly Rs 1,000 crore was taken out of the country through the hawala route to Dubai; how as Chief Minister he never allowed files related to granting leases for mines to accumulate in his office; and, how huge sums of money were paid to Bollywood starlets, ostensibly for the onerous task of ‘promoting’ Jharkhand. Koena Mitra probably wouldn’t be able to point out the State on the map of India. There are no more such delightful tidbits about the life and times of Madhu Koda to break the monotony of everyday news.

There are various stories doing the rounds as to why the official agencies are now dragging their feet. One story has it that the Congress, which thought exposing corruption in high places would help varnish its tattered image in Jharkhand, which goes to the polls beginning later this month to elect a new Assembly, discovered to its horror that Koda was not the only one partaking of the tainted lolly. Ranchi is awash with rumours that brakes were applied after investigators stumbled upon evidence that suggests Koda shared his riches with certain senior Congress leaders of the State. According to another story, officials had seized a diary in which Koda had made meticulous entries about whom he had paid how much and whose details, if they came to light, would embarrass the Congress leadership.

A senior journalist based in Ranchi told me that Koda, while recovering from ‘loose motion’ in the hospital where he had checked in immediately after the raids began, had called up certain Congress leaders in Delhi and told them bluntly that he would tell all if push came to shove. That did the trick and push never came to shove. Rather than risk a blowback before the coming election, the Congress appears to have decided that discretion is the better part of valour. In a country of a million scams, people would soon forget about Jharkhand’s latest plunder. Others caught with their snouts in the trough have settled their accounts by paying income tax, so too can Koda at an opportune moment.

Having sufficiently recovered from his tummy ache and ‘loose motion’, on Friday Koda left Ranchi halfway through his chat with Income Tax Department officials to participate in the election campaign. He was last spotted at Patahatu, his home base, where he shall remain for the time being. Officials of the Enforcement Directorate, who were scheduled to ‘interrogate’ him today, have rescheduled it for November 19. Seven days is a long time in politics.

Sensing that he has the Congress by the short and curly, Koda is now playing the victim of a conspiracy to harass and humiliate a tribal leader who has worked his way up the ladder and who is popular enough to be re-elected more than once as a legislator and as an honourable member of Parliament in last summer’s general election. Faced with arrest after being held guilty of committing murder, Shibu Soren, the hugely corrupt JMM leader, had tried the same trick: “I am being punished for fighting for Jharkhand and standing up for the rights of tribals.”

Koda used the same tribal card on Friday when he said, “There is a threat to my life. There is a conspiracy to annihilate me. I know who are doing all this. Whatever is published in the media is baseless. And, I am being harassed as I am a tribal belonging to a poor family.” Who is to tell him that it is he who has cheated the poor families of Jharkhand where 54 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line? That those whom he favoured with mining licences which allowed them to denude the State of its natural resources so long as they paid him a ‘fee’, that those who were given contracts to build roads and facilities which were never built, the Binod Sinhas and Sanjay Chaudharys of Jharkhand, have nothing but contempt for tribals living in gut-wrenching poverty?

Fed on relentless propaganda of the diku as the exploiter, Jharkhand’s moolvasis, the tribals whose interests Soren, Koda and their corrupt-to-the-core ilk claim to represent and protect, have become blind to the enemy within. Tribal loyalties invariably get precedence over better judgement and that explains why the tainted are elected time and again. Good governance and integrity are at a discount; if it’s caste preference in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, it’s tribal kinship in Jharkhand that plays a significant role in elections. That is the tragic reality of this wondrous land of ours.

So, we shouldn’t be surprised if the six ‘Independent’ candidates who will be contesting the Assembly election from Kolhan region with Koda’s support are elected. And if it is a fractured mandate, Koda’s MLAs, among them possibly his wife Geeta, will play an important role in Government formation. After all, that’s how he became Chief Minister. Politics, as PV Narasimha Rao was fond of repeating, is the art of the possible.

[This appeared as my regular Sunday column, Coffee Break, in The Pioneer on November 15.]

Loot of Jharkhand: Blame it on koyla?

The former Chief Minister of Jharkhand, Mr Madhu Koda, who these days represents Chaibasa constituency in the Lok Sabha, has done what others who have been caught with their snouts in the trough have been known to do: He has checked into a hospital where obliging doctors have found a bed for him in the intensive care unit. According to a health bulletin issued late Tuesday evening by Abur Razzak Memorial Weavers’ Hospital, whose doctors obviously hold the Hippocratic Oath in utter contempt, Mr Koda is suffering from a stomach-ache. Cynics would gleefully point out that it’s a case of indigestion caused by Mr Koda stuffing himself with too much lolly, but such frivolity need not distract us from the offences he has been accused of committing.

Nor should we hold Mr Koda’s humble beginnings — he was a welder and before that a mine worker till the late-1990s — against him. Others have risen from rags to riches by doing ‘social service’, which is how politicians describe their profession in their bio-profiles, and not all of them went to the right school, college and university. Indeed, politics offers a level playing field for those who have no compunctions about acquiring ill-gotten wealth. Perhaps that’s the way it should be — after all, there is no reason why those from the ‘masses’ should be at a disadvantage compared to those from the ‘classes’ when it comes to sharing the proverbial loaves and fishes of office.

Yet, Mr Koda’s alleged transgressions, ranging from illegal mining operations to kickbacks to money-laundering, are stunning because of the scale of the loot and the speed with which it was conducted. They also show that with the right determination and cunning, a nondescript milkman and the son of a chewing tobacco vendor can become the ‘business associates’ of a Chief Minister and front for him while negotiating ‘investment deals’ in places as far and wide as Dubai, Liberia and South Africa. But for their association with Mr Koda, neither Mr Vinod Sinha, who used to supply milk at homes in Ranchi, nor Mr Sanjay Chaudhary, whose father would hawk chewing tobacco (better known as khaini) from the carrier of his ramshackle bicycle, would have been among India’s most-wanted men today.

Mr Koda and his associates who are on the run would tell you that it’s all about seizing the right opportunity when it comes knocking on your door and not turning it away. For Mr Koda, who had contested and won the Assembly election on a BJP ticket, it came with the creation of Jharkhand in November 2000, a State carved out of Bihar ostensibly to ensure better governance and development for what was then considered a neglected tribal-dominated region. Statehood was considered fulfilment of the long-standing demand to protect tribal interests by delinking their fortunes from those of Bihar.

Mr Koda became Minister in the first Government of Jharkhand headed by Mr Babulal Marandi; he retained both his job and portfolio — Mines and Rural Engineering Organisation — after Mr Arjun Munda took over as Chief Minister. In 2005, Mr Koda was denied a BJP ticket, but that did not deter him from contesting the election as an ‘Independent’; he won with a handsome margin from Jagannathpur.

In a hung Assembly, Mr Koda and four other ‘Independent’ MLAs played a crucial role, first in helping the BJP to form a Government (in which they became Ministers) and later in pulling it down at the behest of the Congress, the RJD and the JMM. That was Mr Koda’s second opportunity: He manoeuvred himself into the Chief Minister’s office in September 2006 and remained in power till August 2008, when Mr Shibu Soren pulled the plug on him.

Apocryphal stories abound in Ranchi about how Mr Koda acquired huge wealth and clout in less than a decade. His iron ore-rich constituency became the hub of illegal mining: Trucks would be loaded and despatched across the border with Orissa to Paradip Port from where the ore would be shipped out to foreign destinations. A senior journalist in Ranchi recounted how industrialists were delighted when Mr Koda became the Chief Minister: He ran a ‘single window operation’ whereby those wanting to short-circuit the tedious process of submitting tenders and competing with others would pay him directly. Apparently, he had fixed ‘fees’ for favours — for example, he would charge Rs 1 lakh for every acre of mines being leased out; whoever paid the ‘fee’ got the lease.

It is, therefore, not surprising that he should have amassed assets worth Rs 4,000 crore, which is almost a fifth of Jharkhand’s annual budget, as is being claimed by the Income Tax Department. What is, however, surprising is that he should have thought of investing the slush funds in diverse businesses, including hotels, apartment blocks and shopping malls across nine cities. It is also a measure of the ingenuity of his two close associates, Mr Sinha and Mr Chaudhary, that they should have set up a bogus investment firm, Balaji Bullion and Retailers, in Mumbai, which funnelled money — according to one estimate, as much as Rs 990 crore — to a Dubai-based ‘investor’ called Abdul Bhai.

Was Mr Koda operating all by himself? Or was there somebody else, apart from Mr Sinha and Mr Chaudhary, who was advising him how to salt away the money he had looted? A former mine worker may be sufficiently brazen to demand bribes for favours and run an illegal mining operation, but would he be clever enough to invest in Liberian and South African mines? Recall how Mr Shibu Soren, far more crafty than Mr Koda, went and deposited the money he got for voting with the Treasury Benches so that PV Narasimha Rao’s Government would not fall, in a bank from where it was later seized and used to implicate him and his party MPs.

We could, of course, ignore the possibility of a larger conspiracy to mint millions by defrauding the people of Jharkhand, whom Mr Koda and tribal leaders of his ilk insist they represent, and blame it all on coal which has proved to be a boon to the unscrupulous few and a bane to the many who still wait for deliverance from gruelling poverty in one of India’s richest States.