:: P.C. Alexander

India at 62: War on corrupt top priority

P.C. Alexander

Augest.12 : Within two days from today, India will be entering the 63rd year of its existence as an independent nation. If one is asked about India’s greatest achievement and greatest failure during the post-Independence period, it will be difficult to single out any one achievement or failure. However, if I am pressed to give an answer to these two questions, I would say that the fact that India has remained a democracy for over six decades is its greatest achievement and that the all-pervasive corruption in our society its greatest failure.

Let me first explain why I give so much importance to the survival of India as a democracy. There have been flaws and imperfections in the practice of democracy in India, but it can claim that it is the only country among the developing countries of Asia and Africa which has remained firm in its commitment towards the concept of democracy throughout its existence as a free nation.

India’s achievement in creating and sustaining the institutions and principles of democracy, such as free and fair elections, independent judiciary, free press and apolitical civil service and military forces selected on competitive merit and promoted to higher ranks based on their performance, place India in a class by itself which no other developing country can claim to have equalled.

Many developing countries in Asia and Africa started as democracies after their independence, but very soon they transformed themselves into undisguised dictatorship. Leaders like Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, Soekarno in Indonesia and Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and several others were in the forefront of the struggle for liberation of their countries from colonial yoke. But soon after coming to power, they proved the wisdom of the statement — "power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely".

India’s leaders firmly believed that for a developing country, democracy was the most suitable system of governance. This is the main reason why they did not take the easy route of "one party democracy", "President for life" etcetra.

Immediately after India’s Independence, during its formative years, it was indeed India’s good fortune that it had Jawaharlal Nehru as the head of its first government. Nehru was a genuine believer in democracy. Apart from being a person of great integrity whom power could not corrupt, Nehru was trained to be a leader of the common people by Mahatma Gandhi — the greatest democrat the 20th century produced. Mahatma Gandhi, by his precepts and practice, had given a new content to governance, namely maximum good of the poorest section of the population.

Nehru had spent his youth watching with great dismay and concern the onslaught of fascism — one of the most detestable forms of dictatorship in the world. He had seen the rise of fascism in Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Benito Mussolini’s Italy and worst of all, Adolph Hitler’s Germany.

When Nehru got the opportunity to build India’s democracy, brick by brick, he became more vigilant than ever before in ensuring that the foundations of the institutions of democracy had a sound basis.

The country was fortunate that apart from Nehru it had several other enlightened leaders who had imbibed the values and ideology of Mahatma Gandhi on democracy and good governance.

It has become fashionable these days for some critics to find fault with Nehru for certain lapses in dealing with some problems. No one will say that Nehru was "Mr Correct" in everything that he did, but his contribution in laying the foundations of a strong democratic system of administration cannot be questioned even by his sharpest critics.

CORRUPTION IS the single largest factor that has retarded the pace of development in post-Independence India.

Corruption was certainly not a new phenomenon in independent India. It had existed during the 150 years of colonial rule and in the territories under the rule of the princes.

What is new about corruption now is that it has become all-pervasive and crept into almost all spheres of life. During the British rule and early years of Independence, corruption at the top levels of civil service was a rare phenomenon. But now people have become so tolerant of corruption that even when some senior bureaucrats, like secretaries to government and heads of departments, are found guilty of corruption, it does not shock anyone. Corruption has entered into professions that were once considered hallowed — teaching, medicine, even charitable institutions.

Massive evasion of taxes due to the government and fraudulent practices in real estate transactions have become the main source of black money in India and are not frowned upon by the society. On the other hand, a new value system seems to be emerging according to which what matters is not the correctness of the means a person uses to make money, but whether s/he has made money or not.

An indication of this tolerance to corruption was evident in the rather soft reaction of the people to a very disturbing news item about huge sums of slush money deposited in Swiss banks by Indians. In October 2008, most newspapers published the surprising fact that India was on top of the list of depositors in Swiss banks and that if our government sends a request for the list of depositors, Swiss banks will provide the information.

According to estimates, Indians have $1,456 billion in Swiss banks, which is more money than what the rest of the world has put together in these banks.

The total amount lost to the government through corrupt practices in the collection of income tax, customs and excise duties has not been correctly assessed, but it will certainly be more than adequate to lift millions of people below the poverty line to tolerable standards of living.

In India, the poverty line is marked so low that lifting people just above that line is no guarantee for mitigating the rigours of poverty for them. Successive governments in India have accorded low priority to a determined fight against corruption though corruption continues to grow along with the growth rate.

One can only continue to hope that without much delay a leader would emerge in the country who will place the fight against corruption on the top of the agenda and who will have the ability and credibility to organise a nationwide movement against corruption on the lines of the nation’s struggle for freedom.

P.C. Alexander is a former governor of Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra