A V Rajwade: Governing the Republic

WORLD MONEY

As we look forward to celebrating the 56th Republic Day, we should also spend a few minutes on looking at how well it is being governed by the three branches "" the legislative/political, the executive/administrative, and the judicial.

Take the most powerful: the legislative/political. With each passing day, political corruption seems to be becoming all the more brazen. Money for parliamentary questions and corruption in the local area development schemes are but the tip of the iceberg. If the Mitrokhin Archives and the Volcker report are one part of it, the other is the illegal constructions in Delhi and Ulhasnagar (a suburb of Mumbai). Many of the more blatant transgressors of the rules and laws are our political masters. And, of course, they have their kin in the legislative branch only too willing to "regularise" their doings. The Delhi state Cabinet tried it, and Maharashtra is issuing an ordinance to stop the court-ordered demolitions. (But why blame state leaders? Didn't Rajiv Gandhi hastily amend the laws to overturn the Supreme Court judgement in the Shah Bano case?)

The criminal/political nexus is probably strongest in states such as Bihar and UP, where criminals with umpteen non-bailable charges against them are untraceable to the police force even as they come on our TV screens giving interviews. When some of them condescend to be arrested, they enjoy all the five-star comforts, to which they are used to, in the jails.

While criminalisation of politics is one facet of our legislative/political branch, another is the abject, feudal servility before the leaders. If the behaviour of the AIADMK legislators is one manifestation, the members of the ruling Congress Party hardly lag behind "" even when they do not literally fall at the feet of Madam. In the latter party, too, loyalty to the family continues to be valued over almost anything else "" competence, honesty, popular following. (Indeed, the last attribute is a disqualification!) The recent unfreezing of the accounts of Quattrocchi is only the latest instance of currying favour by doing things that the leader supposedly would like to be done. The earlier actions of governors in Bihar, Jharkhand and Goa, too, fall in the same category.

The executive/administrative branch has become an integral part of the criminal/political nexus, even while keeping a finger in every pie. The bureaucrats are often more possessive of state power than the ministers themselves "" and do everything possible to retain their power, privileges and primacy even post-retirement, by manning all possible "independent" regulators' posts. If corrupt politicians were closely involved in the illegal constructions, so were the bureaucrats. The Rojgar Gramin Yojana in Maharashtra, one of the better governed states, has proved to be a boon for making under-the-table money for village- and taluka-level politicians and administrators. (The beneficiaries of flats under Mumbai's slum clearance scheme have included the respective wives of a film actor and the head of a security company!) Its recently legislated big brother, the Employment Guarantee Scheme, will surely expand the scope enormously. And even where the administration is honest, it is rarely efficient. One recent telling example: Nokia's planned investment in India is likely to be shifted because of delays in notifying SEZ benefits. No wonder the prime minister himself remarked recently: "Our ability to create bureaucratic hurdles in the way of enterprise amazes me... as far as FDI is concerned, it is not the policy but badly designed procedures which act as a constraint."

What of the third branch of government, the judiciary? Better than the other two at the higher levels, but, the way the system operates, one doubts if the common man can ever get timely justice, when even the elite suffer. In the chinkara poaching case, going on for years in Jodhpur, Salman Khan recently pleaded: "Hang me if I am guilty but please decide the case at the earliest." Sonali Bendre's prosecution for a magazine cover photograph published in 1998 continues even in 2006. If Khan and Bendre find that court cases continue for years, what can you and I expect if we are unfortunate enough to get involved as complainant or accused?

Conspicuous consumption, to which socialists like Amar Singh and communists like Harkishan Singh Surjeet are also a party, and the widening income inequality, are other worrying aspects of the republic. No wonder the different branches of the Naxalite movement are getting stronger: more and more women are joining them, too. Would an increasing number of people in a republic without rule-based authority, transparent and efficient governance, dominated by a corrupt criminal-politician-babu nexus, prefer to become an authoritarian society? In Asian economic comparisons, this need not be a disaster! In that case, too, income disparities will widen, as they have in China, but many more below-poverty-line will move to above-poverty-line and, perhaps, inequalities may matter less.

Email: avrco@vsnl.com