The phrase “Third World” became obsolete a long time ago but the writer V S Naipaul’s barb that India was part of the “turd world” is ringingly brought home to us today. As the country wades through the cumulative dirt of one financial scam after another (CWG, Adarsh Housing Society and 2G) costing the national exchequer thousands of crores of rupees, the question is: Are Indians impervious to corruption on such a massive scale? And if it takes the political establishment so long to wake up to the evidence, will it be as careless about cleaning up the mess?
Perhaps the blindness is akin to Naipaul’s description of the dirty old habits that permeate Indian public spaces. In his insightful, often scathing critique in An Area of Darkness (first published in 1964), he writes: “Indians defecate everywhere... But the truth is that Indians do not see these squatters and might even, with complete sincerity, deny that they exist: a collective blindness arising out of the Indian fear of pollution... and the resulting conviction that Indians are the cleanest people in the world.”
It is a fact well established that the Indian obsession with bodily hygiene does not extend to civic body, and, certainly not the body politic. Each of these sensational financial scams was widely reported by the media and known to the ruling class months, even years, before they came to be officially recognised. Dismissed telecom minister A Raja’s misdoings and lobbyist Niira Radia’s clout were known and written about through most of 2009 but nothing happened till the CAG tabled its report and knuckles were severely rapped by the Supreme Court. Financial jiggery-pokery in CWG contracts were in the public domain for a year before the Games began but their seriousness dawned on the government only when Suresh Kalmadi was booed by a cast of thousands during the opening and closing ceremonies. And the 31-storey tower in Colaba, Mumbai, built in the name of Kargil war widows, did not materialise overnight on defence land. It was in the works for three years but no amount of whistle blowing made the defence administration take any notice.
What will happen now? Ashok Chavan and A Raja have been thrown out, Suresh Kalmadi has been shown the door, and a few of his minions arrested. These are people accustomed to the profits and losses of political life and brazening out the bad times. A host of inquiries and investigations have been ordered and Parliament has ground to a halt.
The public has seen these half-hearted measures of appeasement before. What it wants to know is, how swiftly the loss of thousands of crores of rupees — Rs 1.76 lakh crore in the 2G scam alone — will be restored to the treasury? How quickly will the telecom licences be auctioned again or fines imposed? When will the CWG’s ill-begotten gains be made good? And how soon will Adarsh Housing Society flats be reallotted to Kargil widows or will, as Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh has advocated, the building be razed to the ground?
The cascading effect of financial scams is that they get lost in the labyrinth of investigation and redress. That is perhaps what Naipaul meant about a collective amnesia developing over the public mess. Arguing in the same book about why Gandhi’s many campaigns to raise Indian consciousness about their bad habits foundered, he writes: “(Gandhi) sees exactly what the visitor sees... He sees the beggars and the shameless pundits and the filth of Banares; he sees the atrocious sanitary habits of doctors, lawyers and journalists. He sees the Indian callousness, the Indian refusal to see. No Indian attitude escapes him, no Indian problem; he looks down to the roots of the static, decayed society. And the picture of India which comes out of his writings and exhortations over more than thirty years still holds: this is the measure of his failure.”
Is that why India remains the “turd capital” of the world?