MAQBOOL AHMED SIRAJ compares the post-Independence period when Indian leaders were icons of integrity with the present corrupt times and says that democracy can thrive only in corruption-free atmosphere.
A news item recently drew my attention. Departing US Secretary of State Ms. Condoleezza Rice was showered with gifts worth $ 300,000 by monarchs of Saudi Arabia and Jordan on her farewell visits to those kingdoms. But the news item informed us that under US federal laws Ms. Rice would not be able to keep the gifts with herself. She would have to pass them on to the national archives or would have to be donated to charities.
A few years ago while visiting Albuquerque in the state of New Mexico (US), I stayed with a cousin. One evening he had been invited to the wedding of a colleague’s son in the establishment where he worked. With gifts, tips and donations almost being followed as a rule in the US, I expected him to carry a gift pack. Surprisingly, he did not. Enquiry revealed that a junior employee was barred from offering gifts to seniors in any manner. Reason: these are seen as financial inducements being traded off explicitly. Ingratiating seniors might be the route to win promotions, awards and enhancements of wages.
There are lessons to be learnt for us from such management rules in the US. Concessions and gifts are seen as incipient corruption and service rules outlaw them. No wonder why that nation has run so smoothly and efficiently and corruption in lower ranks being almost non existent. Had there been no need for privacy in certain aspects of life, perhaps some of the nations in the West may have asked the employees of the State to live in glass houses.
Umar, the second caliph of Islam, was once visiting the governorate of Yemen in the 7th century. He was invited by Governor Muaz bin Jabal for a dinner. Upon seeing a bevy of curios in his show case, he enquired about their origin. Muaz said they were gifts from people who visit him. Umar asked whether they would have come his way had he not been a Governor. Reply was in the negative. Umar ordered the curios to be deposited in Baitul Mal (the official treasury).
We also had the spectacle of a former president of India carrying presents in 33 large suitcases while laying down office in the Rashtrapati Bhavan and raising a museum in his new house in the ancestral town in Andhra Pradesh.
Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was extremely embarrassed when he learnt that his sister (namely Vijayalakshmi Pandit) had stayed in the Government Lodge in Shimla. The fact that nobody billed her as she was the PM’s sister, disturbed him. He sent a cheque towards her expenses clarifying that Pandit held no position in the Government then. Altruism characterised the lives of visionary fathers of modern India to the core. Nehru dedicated his ancestral house Anand Bhavan to the nation. Former Chief Minister of Karnataka, Nijalingappa did not build a house in Bangalore. Nehru’s Home Minister Gulzarilal Nanda (who was acting PM twice) did not own a house in Delhi. It was in late 90s that we saw media images of him sitting on a pavement in Delhi after being evicted from his rented house. Most of us had by then taken him to be dead. Not much later a reigning Governor of Punjab died while travelling to Simla, reportedly to ink a deal on behalf of the family for a five-star hotel. The helicopter he was using belonged to the State. Still later a sweeper found crores of rupees stacked in his bedroom.
In today’s morbidly depressing atmosphere we are witness to our corpulent politicians getting away with their opulent ways and their ego-boasting extravaganzas. Jayalalitha could come back to power despite the countless cases of corruption and the Rs. 400-crore wedding that seized everyone’s eyeballs. The Republican dynasties that proliferate and flourish in Indian states ease the corruption process.
With high offices reeking with corruption, extremely ordinary Government functionaries such as power board metre readers owning houses of demi-mansion proportions, and civil service officials leading flashy lifestyles, one wonders if we have any scope for returning to those halcyon days of democracy when an austere Kamaraj commanded respect and people were beholden to a diminutive yet spartan Lal Bahadur Shastri. They bound the nation with love and selflessness and wielded moral authority over party cadres. Today’s politicians and bureaucrats have to be protected from people, lest proximity allow chinks to have a peek into their glitzy, glamorous private lives dripping with ill-gotten millions. No wonder why their writ does not run beyond their flunkeys who survive on the loaves and fishes of office disbursed by them.
Corruption too got liberalised during the last 17 years of economic liberalisation. But few among us are aware of its pernicious grip on the governance and its capacity to ultimately undermine it. Tragically, perception of this catastrophe of character eludes us.