People's Democracy

MORE than a fortnight has passed since the Tehelka exposures. There have been no cases lodged or arrests made of those seen taking bribes in the videotapes. Faced with the demand to quit, the government has decided to brazen it out. There is increasing talk of a political conspiracy to destabilise the government by enemies known and unknown. As far as George Fernandes is concerned, it is a global conspiracy.

The cover-up operation has begun in right earnest. At the political level, the Vajpayee government hopes to have cut its losses with the resignation of Bangaru Laxman and Jaya Jaitely from their party posts and George Fernandes from the union cabinet. As for the substantive issue of tackling the institutionalised corruption, glimpses of which were graphically highlighted in the Tehelka tapes, the government is determined to brush it under the carpet. The appointment of a retired judge of the Supreme Court to head a commission of enquiry is a clear indication. The terms of reference confirm the motive behind this manoeuvre. The commission has been asked to find out whether the transactions relating to defence procurements, referred to in the Tehelka tapes have been carried out within the prescribed procedures. It has also been asked to determine whether, in any of the aforesaid programmes and transactions, illicit gains have been made by persons in public office, individuals and any other organisations.

It is not through violation of the procedures that bribery and corruption takes place. Any investigation would show that all the procedures have been gone through at all levels. It is in the choice the company from among the short-listed ones to supply the equipment, which have already been verified and approved through user trials, that the major kickbacks are given. A judicial commission would find that all the laid-down procedures have been followed. The question is also not about the quality of the equipment supplied. Nothing will be established about the way the whole procedure gets manipulated behind the scenes through the payment of bribes at every stage.

Jaswant Singh has, after taking over as the defence minister, appointed a one-man commission within the ministry of defence to undertake a similar enquiry. This is just another eyewash. The internal enquiry, conducted by a joint secretary, to find out whether the procedures laid down for procurement of defence equipment are satisfactory, cannot uncover the massive corruption which pervades the system.

It is only by launching criminal cases against all those implicated in the Tehelka tapes and their arrest and interrogation that the ramifications of the institutionalised corruption which has struck deep roots over the years can be uncovered. Such an investigation would threaten the nexus between the corrupt bureaucrats, officers of the armed forces and the politicians in power. That is why the BJP-led government cannot afford to take firm and decisive action.

While rubbishing the Tehelka tape disclosures and attributing sinister motives to the exposure, the BJP leadership finds it difficult to maintain its credibility with this posture alone. After the recent BJP national executive meeting, Vajpayee admitted that corruption exists and it would be wrong to blame the media for the exposure. He sought to pin down the electoral system as a source of political corruption. The loopholes in the election laws, he stated, allow the use of massive money power. It is the need for this money that corrupts the political system.

While dealing with this issue, it is relevant to point out that two half-truths are being widely propagated about corruption in high places. The first one is what Vajpayee said about the link between election and corruption. It is true that the bourgeois politicians utilise large amounts of black money for electoral purposes. But this alone is not the source of corruption. Corruption is more systemic. Its roots lie in the bourgeois-landlord system and the rapacious path of capitalist development. Outside the electoral sphere corruption has become endemic and institutionalised with the rapacious loot of public funds by public servants and the pollution of public life by the injection of illegal money by big business and MNCs to influence governments and policies for their private profits. A big part of the money illegally collected by bourgeois politicians, top bureaucrats and public servants is not for fighting elections but for enriching themselves and accumulating capital at the expense of the people. It is necessary to amend the election laws to plug the loopholes allowing the use of illegal money. But this alone cannot tackle the venality and corruption which has entered public life.

The second diversionary point being made is that corruption has always been there in the defence sector and the Tehelka tapes have only confirmed what the earlier Bofors and HDW scandals revealed. The defenders of the government claim that corruption has prevailed in the defence sector because of the secrecy associated with the procurement of weapons. According to them, corruption in defence is a global phenomenon. This argument overlooks the glaring fact that bribery and kickbacks are taking place on a large scale in every sector of government and public life. While it is true that the payment of kickbacks and the role of middlemen have got entrenched in the defence procurements, the situation is not any better in other sectors of the economy.

It is therefore necessary to have a proper understanding of the political economy of corruption in our society. The advocates of liberalisation, who have been embarrassed time and again by the corruption scandals which have erupted in the last one decade, claim that this is a legacy of the licence-permit raj of the pre-liberalisation era. According to this argument, corruption associated with the government is due to the regulations and controls vested with the government in the economic sphere. To get a licence or permit bribes have to be paid at different levels. The present cases of corruption are attributed to the vestiges of the regulation regime. There is no doubt that in the era of licencing the big business houses would bribe their way to acquire licences or exemptions from certain regulations. But this sort of corruption has been transcended and overtaken by a much higher scale with the advent of liberalisation.

What is the difference between the nature of corruption before and after liberalisation? In the pre-liberalisation era, particularly till the mid-80s, the source of corruption at high levels stemmed from big business bribing to seek favours, either for licences or for bypassing certain regulations. Such instances of corruption involved a particular big business house and the minister or officials concerned with a specific project or regulation. Now with liberalisation and deregulation, the entire policy itself is put up for sale. Both foreign and Indian big business houses are free to make the highest bid for policies for an entire industry. Such policies can be changed overnight, if the price is right. This happened most blatantly in case of the telecom sector and is continuing with the liberalised policies in the power, oil and other major sectors. In fact, every policy decision, or change in policy, in most of these sectors are being made based on the money which is handed out by the consortium of Indian big business and MNCs. Whole institutions and state agencies are suborned by big capital. India is fast reaching the level of Thailand, Philippines and Indonesia -- countries which witness the free play of MNCs and crony capitalism.

It is ironical that while the minister for disinvestment and the erstwhile crusader against corruption, Arun Shourie, was holding forth inside and outside parliament on the virtues of the BALCO sell-out to a private company, soon after that, the Tehelka tapes graphically portrayed how at all levels the government is engaged in the commerce of bribes and commissions. After this, there can be no citizen in India who would believe that the BALCO deal did not involve payment of kickbacks and "money" for the party.

The progress of liberalisation has enormously expanded the scope of venality and corruption in high places. Some years ago, in 1995, under the Narashima Rao government, one of the iron ore mines in Bailadila run by the public sector National Mineral Development Corporation was sold to a combination of an Indian and a foreign company. The price quoted was Rs 16 crore for a mine which had made a cumulative profit of Rs 1765 crore over the previous two decades. Now an entire public sector unit, the BALCO, with assets worth over Rs 5000 crore was sold lock, stock and barrel to a private company for Rs 551 crore.

The last one decade has seen a succession of such scams. But public memory is short. Who remembers the telecom deal which benefitted the Himachal Futuristic Co. or the changes in the procedures of awarding contracts whereby Rs 20,000 crore were lost to the public exchequer?

Just prior to the Tehelka exposures, the Outlook magazine had carried a report about the role of the PMO in favouring certain big business houses and bypassing the concerned ministries in making policy measures favourable to them. Two of the biggest and shadiest big business houses, the Ambanis and the Hindujas, have been directly named as suborning and influencing the officials in the PMO. A former secretary to the government, E A S Sharma, confirms these facts in an interview to the magazine.

A few years ago, one of the worst corruption scandals erupted with the Jain hawala case. The money for the bribes came through the hawala route and was paid by some of the MNCs like Alshton and ABB for getting contracts. In a diary maintained by the Jain industrialists it was found that a total of Rs 65.47 crore were paid out as bribes to 115 persons. Of these the CBI identified 55 as politicians and 38 as bureaucrats. They included three ministers of the union cabinet of Narasimha Rao, many top executives of public sector units and a host of politicians from the bourgeois parties. In the list were both Congress and BJP politicians. One of those listed was L K Advani who was shown to have received two amounts from the Jain brothers totalling Rs 60 lakh. While Advani denied having received any money, another senior BJP leader, Madanlal Khurana contradicted him and claimed that Advani had received money while he was the BJP president, for party expenses. So there was no corruption involved. Bangaru Laxman was carrying on an established BJP tradition when he claimed that he received the money for the party.

The CBI investigated the case against many of the politicians including the three union ministers and the public sector executives. Chargesheets were filed in 1996 only after the Supreme Court intervened and directed the CBI to do so. Two years later all the accused were acquitted with a single judge of the Delhi High Court declaring that a diary cannot be treated as evidence as it is not an accounts book. One of the biggest corruption scandals in independent India was thus effectively buried.

The Vajpayee government has done something worse than the Narasimha Rao government. It has not even initiated criminal cases against those implicated in the Tehelka exposures. According to it, there was no wrongdoing. Even if Bangaru Laxman and Jaya Jaitely accepted money, it was for the party. The deal is fictitious, therefore the bribes were also fictitious. All that is required is to expose the political conspiracy hatched by the enemies within the country and outside. To expect the Vajpayee government to clean up the system is like asking the RSS to become secular.