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Centre of gravity of corruption lies elsewhere too

By Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal. Dated: 3/4/2015 10:34:49 PM

Anna Hazare has staged a come back with yet another agitation, this time against the draconian land ordinance which gives the government sweeping powers to acquire land, including fertile agricultural land to pave way for setting up private enterprise projects, all in the name of ‘national interest’. Some have chosen to criticise Anna reasoning that he has deflected from the core issue of corruption. This amounts to presuming that land ordinance is only about bad practices without an ulterior motive. The land ordinance, touted by its votaries to address the issue of employment and growth, is tailor-made to suit the interests of powerful corporate lobbies and big business houses. If government policies are dictated purely by the greed of the corporate, there is sufficient reason to deem the policy itself a part of the vicious cycle of corruption, whether or not there is any visible evidence of kickbacks and commissions. A government that should seek to pander to the interest of less than 1 percent of the country’s population while forsaking the needs and aspirations of a majority section of the people can only be seen as morally and ethically corrupt. Corporate houses that arm twist a government through various means including kickbacks in subverting country’s institutions in insidious ways to satiate its greed are equally guilty of such moral and ethical corruption.
The dire need today is to redefine corruption itself. It is and ought to be understood as something beyond the simple notion of bribes and kickbacks and as something where the sole villains are the corrupt netas and the corrupt babus. The basic principle of corruption is that both the giver and beneficiary are culprits. The centre of gravity of corruption lies as much in the domains of those whose greed dictates the actions and policies of the government as it does inside the government offices, elected or appointed to perform and serve the interests of the public. The discourse on corruption thus requires a paradigm shift in pursuit of a holistic cleansing and once that is done, the very moves like land acquisition ordinance will neatly fall into that category. The ordinance is both aimed to project a growth that runs counter to the narrative of increasing disparities that the policy will inspire as well as suit the interests of certain business lobbies to set up projects for profit, not for the misquoted national interests. It is misleading to state that the land acquisition ordinance is aimed at providing massive employment since it completely overlooks the huge population that faces the threat of unemployment through draconian ways of usurping their land including agricultural land at prices that are meager and promise little future for the marginalised individuals. Besides, the policy adversely hits the agricultural sector and is built on the false notion that industrialization can take off without ensuring sustainability and by encroaching on the growth of the agricultural sector, also that it can address unemployment issue by carving out jobs for skilled workers but pushing hapless landowners with no control over their destiny to great jeopardy. It belies the promise of inclusive growth and all this gives sufficient reason to believe that a policy aimed to benefit a few and deprive a huge section of society is a simple act of corruption.
The half baked notion of corruption is something that needs to be discarded since it seeks to nail only public functionaries and not beneficiaries. In the several scams that have come to light in the last decade or so, the absence of fair and fast tracked probes apart, there is no earnest bid to prevent business houses from escaping the noose. At best scapegoats at middle rung of these corporate companies are nailed when the problem actually lies at the top. That has been the hallmark of scams like 2G and coal blocks. Once again, under a new government, the corporate espionage scam reported to have put at risk the national security simply mentions the names of corporate giants in passing as if they were caught in it just as a by-passing victim. A dispassionate analysis would reveal that they indeed are the brainchild behind such dangerous liaisons that lie at the root of corrupt acts, not only aimed to rob the national exchequer and the nation’s resources but also designed to create serious issues of national and territorial insecurity. If it weren’t quite due to business greed, such cases would have invited slapping of legal provisions like sedition.
How does one expect to fight corruption in this country by allowing special privileges of immunity from legal punitive action to those with huge money power, those who wield their influence and might in designing government policies and subverting public institutions? Anna Hazare’s belated realization of the limitations of fighting corruption simply by seeking a Lok Pal, which at best aims to bring government office holders under scanner, and his bid to take the corrective course of fighting corruption holistically is indeed welcome.