By
– Arup Baisya, written for Pragyan, A quarterly academic Journal, Tinsukia College.
Aristotle
ranked historical writing known to him as philosophically inferior to poetry
and tragedy, in view of the anecdotal particularism of such storytelling
accounts of events & circumstances in tune with the original Greek term of
history - “istor” – which means “eye witness”. But the ancient art form cannot
be compared with a modern branch of social science like history. With the advent
of the concept of dialectical materialism, study of history becomes a tool to
understand the development of human civilization and to form our vision to open
a discourse on any social phenomenon. As corruption is a social phenomenon,
it needs to be viewed from historical perspective.
In
Webster’s dictionary, we get the general meanings of the word “Corrupt” from
which corruption is derived as (1) Changed from a sound condition to an unsound
condition (2) deteriorated from a normal or standard. Though giving or
taking bribes falls on the second category, it is to be judged within the ambit
of general definition, especially when corruption at high echelons unveils the unholy
alliance of politicians, bureaucrats and corporate giants. Anti-corruption
movement in India
gained momentum in recent times after Radia Tapes revelation which is the
recorded conversation of the corporate honchos and other stake holders with
Neera Radia, the owner of the corporate lobbyist company VCC. There is an
element of doubt that the ministers and the high officials have been bribed
with huge sum of money by the spectrum –beneficiaries. There is no denying
the fact that the bribing the politicians, parties and the high officials by
the business-houses for getting Govt. largesse is rampant in our system.
The huge fund required for contesting election is raised by the political
parties from big business houses and thus become obliged to serve their class
interest. Conversely, to install their party of choice at the helm of affairs,
the dominant class supports them with all resources to ensure the victory of
that particular party whom they have funded. But this kind of funding is in
addition to the ideological hegemony of the dominant class over the society
established through the existing relation of production and controlled through
the existing structural and functional systems, and as such this dominant class
is called the ruling class. So if we consider the definition of the word
“corrupt” as “giving & taking bribe” in the larger continuum of change from
sound to unsound condition or deterioration from normal or standard, this type
of pre-election funding is accepted as normal or standard by the society where
we don’t find any hue & cry to a great extent or a public debate in
mass-scale. One such example can be cited if we turn the pages of history of
“Mundhra Episode” where the first finance minister T T Krishnamachari and
reserve bank governor Rama Rau had to resign at the instance of PM Jawaharlal
(the Socialist!) for TT’s pursuance to impose regulatory measure and for
moulding monetary policy to channelise hot money of private usurer capital of
Mundhra and his dominant block of business towards state controlled industry (source
: EPW). In Indian society, this bourgeois practice is not as full blown, open
and legally recognized as in other society like American. This practice in India is a
tacit understanding of ‘give
& take’ and under-cover lobbying. But in Asiatic society, especially in
India, the ideological hegemony of the dominant class over the society also moulded
the social mindset to accept the spending of public money by extending Govt.
largesse to the religious institution in exchange of their blessings towards
particular politico-bureaucratic formation. This servility towards religious
authority is the continuation of our civilizational historical past and is
intertwined with perverted path of capitalist development under primarily
direct and later indirect colonial set-up. The caste formation peculiar to
Indian civilization is a class at a primitive level of production, a religious
method of forming social consciousness in such a manner that the primary
producer is deprived of this surplus with the minimum coercion. The religious doctrines
that are so venerated by Indian Castes, minimized the need for internal violence,
thereby leading all social manifestations of the class-struggle in India
into religeo-philosophical channels of expression. In this sense, opined
Kosambi, caste is the negation of history, so that it is not in the least
surprising to find that Indian literary tradition has virtually no historical
sense or content. ( Kosambi : stages of Indian history). The servility
towards religious doctrine and religious amassing of wealth as expropriator has
been retained by the popular classes from their traditional past, as this
popular classes was the Sudra who could not be manumitted. Manusmriti 8.414
tells us explicitly : ‘Even if released
by his master, the Sudra is not freed from servitude : if (servitude) is his lot by nature, who can
remove that from him?(Kosambi : On a Marxist approach to Indian chronology).
So,
at all these levels mentioned above, the society does not recognize it as
corruption, as these are considered as normal or standard.
The
first reverberation in the Indian Society was the Gujrat’s Navanirman movement
that subsequently turned into a popular anti-emergency (Indira-fascism)
upheaval under the leadership of Joyprakash Narayan and then after the eighties
we witnessed V P Singh’s anti-Bofor-scandal stir that resulted in the change of
guard at the centre with new dispensation and subsequently culminated into
Mandal – Kamandal conflict. Now again at this juncture, we are witnessing the
anti-corruption movement under the leadership of ‘team Anna’. ‘Team Anna’ is
very meticulous when they state “the latest draft report of the Comptroller
and Auditor General of India(CAG) on hydrocarbon production showing contracts
and the transfer of officials to Reliance is only the latest of the mega scam
to surface in the country. The breadth and depth of corruption in India is clear
from the country’s plunging ranking in Transparency International’s global
corruption survey. Corruption has come to affect every citizen in the country.
Bribes have to be paid for ration cards, passport, building permits, and for
doing even normal business. Street vendors and rickshaw pullers are forced to
pay bribes for exercising their fundamental rights. Villages are forced to pay
bribes for getting their wages under NREGA or for any other entitlements in
other schemes. High-level corruption is plundering the public exchequer,
distorting Govt. policies, and creating criminal mafia, which has come to
dominate all institutions of power. Low-level corruption is making life
impossible for common citizens”. (Source
: The Hindu, 20 June, 2011)
The
exploits of Mundhras in Nehru-era looks like kindergarten staffs compared with the
achievement of their present successor. The high-level corruption is increasing
leaps and bounds with the increasing accumulation of capital in few hands
globally as well as nationally. When other India is starving and dying with
mal-nutrition, when real India in the villages & shanty-towns is witnessing
resurgence of killer diseases in epidemic-like situation, shining India cannot
enjoy their pelf & perks disregarding the conspiracy at the diktat of
IMF-World Bank to show very low number of BPL – people with a rat-eaten &
sluggish PDS to feed them with a view to transfer the bigger slice of public
exchequer for serving corporate world. Along with other means, huge black money
is also generated continuously through the holes in the PDS system. If this
money is piled up at a place, the mundane & rustic Indians will definitely
feel dwarfed in front of this currency’s peak. In an empirical study on the
transfer of Black money from India
during the period from 1948-2008 published in EPW, April 9, 2011, Dev Kar
estimated that a total of $ 213.2 billion was shifted out of India or about 17.7% of India’s GDP at end-2008.
All
these show what was within our system in a rudimentary stage during the
transfer of power from British colonial master has now grown to a big banyan
tree spreading its branches horizontally and vertically to all spheres of
lives. What appeared to the people as the “bags of wool” have now turned out to
be packs of wolves in sheep’s clothing. The high-level corrupt-bandwagon in the
present day has the skills in financial manipulation and sophisticated tool of
self-aggrandizement in their arsenal to continue their corrupt practices in
meteoric speed.
But
the moot question is when the society recognizes this as a corruption i.e.
deviation from standard or normal so that we can hear a social cacophony. Or
conversely, what does it indicate when society recognizes this and makes it an
issue. At the time of Jayprakash
Narayan, there was a systemic crisis that ended up with the promulgation of
emergency that was defeated by the people’s upheaval under JP’s leadership.
During V P Singh’s time, it indicated another phase of systemic crisis that
ended up with a transition from overwhelming upper-caste hegemony in the system
to a loose conglomeration of various caste groups. The post-reform period is
also the very beginning of the erosion of the edifice of our state-structure
based on constitutional democracy. The neo-liberal order of the present era of
globalization is not compatible with our constitutional system of surveillance,
regulation and control. It’s a crisis that has been emanating from a situation
where the neo-liberal forces are innovating various sophisticated tools to
dismantle the existing structure without any stable alternative structure in
sight. Corporatocracy without state-control is giving no solution, rather
creating new conflict zones with food riot, land riot, ecology riot in tandem.
Lokpal Bill is for introducing another
institutional structure to contain the erosion of the constitutional democracy.
But the cracks within our systemic-structure are so wide and deep that mere
tightening of the nuts & bolts cannot rescue it from its collapse.
The oligopolies and their
hangers-on are up in arms to dismantle the system of constitutional democracy
and the people with their increasingly loosening grip over the system have
upped the ante and started coming out to the streets. Only a move from a
‘democracy deficit’ to ‘democracy surplus’ through a process of severing the
linkages of the system with the forces of globalization striving with a neo-liberal drive can only lead us out of this
crisis. But for this, we have to pause, ponder and position ourselves to
organize new initiatives and thoughts. New characters other than ‘Sandeep &
Nikhilesh’ of Tagore’s ‘Ghore-Baire’ from among the social-groups who remained
the object of Tagore’s narration, along with rejuvenated & invigorated ‘Vimalas’
can be the torch-bearer of new dawn out of the crisis of darkness.
