In these passionate times when even WOGs (Westernised Oriental Gentlemen) have begun to shriek in order to drown the little voices of dissent, it is becoming difficult to follow the rules of civilized public discourse. But it is precisely in times such as these that it is particularly necessary to stick to reason and avoid rhetoric, whatever the provocations. As it happens, our attention span has become rather short and even distinguished men tend to miss the interconnections in an argument. So it may be useful to itemise the points I wish to make.
To begin with, let me say that I am not opposed to the outcry and struggle against corruption in high places. Indeed, on occasions I have joined it when I have regarded the behaviour of the individual concerned too scandalous. I believe that such struggles are necessary in order to impose some check on the doings and appetites of some of the more brazen among our public figures. But I would reiterate that essentially the task of ensuring reasonable standards of public morality is a hopeless one.
Corruption Unavoidable
My reason for this assessment is that corruption on a massive scale is unavoidable if the political-bureaucratic apparatus from the Union government down to the municipality and the zila parishad is armed with the kind of extensive powers ours is. The problem is bound to be aggravated if services and goods are in short supply, as these are in India, and access to them requires official political patronage, as in our case. In such a situation, a sufficiently large number of people are tempted to become rich overnight partly by bypassing the byzantine system of regulations and partly by buying influence in the right quarters.
This is human nature. In similar conditions, enterprising people behave in this manner everywhere in the world. I regard the talk of moral degeneration as so much nonsense. In fact, I am amazed that the same individuals, who applaud the weakening of the hold of traditional mores and speak enthusiastically of social change and upward mobility, should talk of moral degeneration as if it were an independent category. And if there are buyers of influence, there will be sellers of influence. The age-old law of supply and demand operates as much in the marketplace of politics as in that of goods.
The second point I would wish to make is while I favour electoral reforms and other measures such as the auditing of the accounts of political parties, I believe that all this can at best have a marginal impact on the scale of corruption in our political-bureaucratic life. These proposals are a classical case of tokenism and symbolism for which we are well known.
Politicians of whatever level are not a new variant of the Buddhist or Jain monk order, who will cheerfully accept a life of austerity if their minimum needs for survival are assured. They belong to the upwardly mobile. Only unlike counterparts in commerce and industry they trade in influence and not in goods. And how many members of the non-political elite do not trade in influence?
Lest I invite the charge of painting all politicians with the same brush, let me hasten to add that this is not my intention. I am aware that a number of politicians are reasonably honest, that is, they do not engage in large-scale corruption, though they are not sea-green incorruptibles. They cannot afford to be. But it will be interesting to examine the background of such individuals. They mostly belong to cadre-based parties (Communist parties and the Bharatiya Janata Party) which are a new expression of the old Brahminical order; they come from old established families (Mr V. P. Singh, for example) where the old concepts of honour continue to prevail despite the commercialisation of values around them; or alternatively they lack the necessary opportunities and daring; after all, a vast majority of our businessmen remain grocers.
Years ago Nani Palkhivala, among others, appealed to successful professionals and businessmen to join politics so that politics could be rid of corruption. The implication, even if not drawn by them, was obvious. Which was that those who had made their fortunes elsewhere would not need to do so in politics. The intention was admirable but the logic was flawed. I shall make two observations in this regard. First, why should men who had gone up in the world by one ladder abandon it in favour of another which is at once unfamiliar and highly risky (witness the failure rate in politics)? And how would they make themselves acceptable to an electorate which for generations has distrusted the rich and the successful? Bombay films are not at all unrepresentative of the popular view of the rich and successful. No wonder, Nani has not had many takers for his proposal.
Display Of Innocence
This display of innocence on the part of a highly articulate section of our elite was preceded by another – the formation of the Swatantra Party in the fifties – and is currently being followed by another. Which is that the government can be persuaded or forced to give up its powers on the economy and thus reduce opportunities for the power holders to engage in corruption. This brings me to my third point.
Despite all its failures, shortcomings and weaknesses, the present system retains sufficient dynamism and sufficient support to eliminate the possibility of its being overthrown in a popular upheaval of the kind we are witnessing in Burma. The mixed economy, with its bureaucratic controls and siphoning off of enormous resources into private pockets, delivers a rate of growth which is good enough to dissipate acute distress and mass discontent. Ironically, the parallel economy largely accounts for the strength of the system.
It is not for nothing that Mr Rajiv Gandhi has not dared privatise a single public sector unit and that the Union finance minister has had to publicly rule out a move in that direction. And can anyone seriously argue that all of Mr Rajiv Gandhi’s moves to “liberalise” the economy have reduced the powers of the officials and ministers and therefore the scope for corruption to any notable extent? We are stuck with the system, however much some of us may dislike it for whatever reason.
I would make a couple of points in this context. First, for all the brave talk by its spokesmen and supporters, the private sector in India lacks the entrepreneurial skills, resources and daring which can enable it to replace the state as an agent of development, especially in respect of the infrastructural services. Second, a substantial number of even leading business houses are not ready to face the cold winds of competition, so used have they become to the feather-bedding provided by the economy of shortages which the regime of controls has produced and sustained. Finally, Indian business lacks utterly the capacity and will to challenge the present political order. It cannot on its own strength annex in any general election even half a dozen constituencies.
We do not need to go back into history to find support for this assessment. Mr V. P. Singh’s popularity should clinch the issue. He was not a significant figure on the political scene even as Mr Rajiv Gandhi’s finance minister until he decided to raid and humiliate the captains of Indian industry – S.L. Kirloskar, Aditya Birla and Lalit Thapar, for example. And J.R.D. Tata and Dhirubhai Ambani barely escaped the wide net he had laid for them. Since then he has not had to look back.
The business community’s lack of access to power and the amount of money its members have to pay for carrying on what they regard as their normal business have begun to make them resentful. As their wealth has grown, the pariah status by way of lack of share in political power has increasingly become unacceptable to them. This is even more true of successful professionals, especially lawyers and judges, serving as well as retired, who are similarly denied access to political office by the electoral system. The press, without being aware of it, has become their spokesman.
Surprising though it may appear in view of his assault on their peers, Mr V.P. Singh has quite a substantial constituency among big business. But it is not on their behalf that he is trying to bring down the government. Behind his moral platform lies the search for power of another social sector – the landowning peasantry which too is not content with its share in political power, substantial at the state level and not so substantial at the Centre.
Locality Oriented
The components of this “class” are, in my opinion, too locality-oriented and therefore too divided among themselves to be able to provide a replacement for the Congress order in Delhi, centred on the Brahmins and the neo-Brahmins who alone, despite all their internal differences, are capable of furnishing the leadership and serving as the nucleus for an all-India order. So I for one believe that while Mr V.P. Singh can disrupt the present order, he cannot erect another peasantry-based one in its place. And even a transient set-up under his leadership cannot be any more moral than the present one. Anyone with any acquaintance with Indian history cannot possibly dispute this proposition.
This, in brief, is my view of the Indian political scene in relation to the issue of public morality. Its rebuttal should in fairness be similarly itemised. That could produce a healthy debate which, alas, is sadly lacking in our country.
The Times of India, 21 September 1988