Questions of Economic Policies and Democracy that Confront the Anti-Corruption Struggle
Sandeep Singh
[This piece, which appeared in the Financial World on 9 August, has been reproduced here, somewhat modified for Liberation readers.]
There is widespread outrage in society against corruption – and most of all against the impunity enjoyed by the corrupt. This is why the demand for a genuine and effective Lokpal institution has touched a chord. We certainly need a Lokpal to investigate corruption and ensure punishment for the corrupt. But a Lokpal alone is not enough. We are at a juncture when it is crucial that we identify and address the roots of corruption.
In the whole debate over the corruption, the big elephant in the room, which is difficult to ignore but which few are willing to name, is the role of liberalization policies in present-day scams in India. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as well as other UPA Ministers have been known to caution the media that raking up scams might go against ‘national interest’ by jeopardizing the ‘reforms’ process. In truth, the UPA Government at present is not just protecting the PM and its Ministers – it is seeking to protect the liberalization policies from closer scrutiny and questioning.
Liberalisation in India has completed two decades. Young Indians have been hearing, virtually all their lives, that liberalization and privatization ‘reformed’ the ‘license-quota-raj’ in which corruption was in-built. But is it possible, anymore, to deny that scams have grown in size and scope in the past two decades? Or that chronic corruption and mega scams are a hallmark of precisely those sectors where natural resources – land, mining, spectrum, oil-and-gas – have been opened up for the private sector, creating the scope of hitherto unheard-of profits, and therefore unheard-of corruption? For instance, the Bellary brothers can literally dig up iron ore out of the earth, no holds barred, cart it all off and export it for enormous profit on a scale that would have been impossible before the mining sector was opened up to the private players. What gets paid as bribes is a small fraction of these mammoth profits.
We tend to identify the political class as the epitome of corruption. In terms of their responsibility as elected representatives, politicians must certainly shoulder the blame for corruption. But surely we also need to question the role of the private corporations in the scams? Instead of seeing political corruption in isolation, we should probe the dynamics of the corrupt nexus between politics, power and private corporations. The former Jharkhand CM Madhu Koda is accused of taking commissions for mining contracts to the tune of Rs 4000 crore. While we rightly castigate Koda, surely we need to pause and ask ourselves – which mining corporations paid such mind-boggling commissions? The very fact that they could afford to pay such huge bribes indicates that the profits they aspire for through unrestricted access to mineral wealth is several times the amount paid in bribes!
In the wake of the Lokpal agitation, there has been much angst and hand-wringing by UPA Ministers and Congress leaders about the supposed threat to (Parliamentary) ‘democracy’ posed by street protests, hunger strikes and so on. One gets the strange feeling, hearing these leaders, that they think citizens’ rights in a democracy are restricted to casting votes once every five years! Surely each one of us has a right to agitate for laws and policies of our own choice?
But we also need to ask – in our democracy as it stands today, who scripts the laws that are eventually passed by Parliament? Anna Hazare and his ‘team’ may be unelected – but at least their agenda is fairly transparent. Any of us could read their draft of the Jan Lokpal Bill and critique it. Most laws that make it to Parliament are scripted in more shadowy ways. We got a small glimpse into this murky world through the Radia tapes, which showed us how corporate agents are able to influence the appointment of Ministers; the stances taken by the government; in many cases, verdicts by judiciary and articles written by media commentators; and even the stances taken by leaders of Opposition inside Parliament!
The sheer scope of such corporate ‘influence’ cannot be underestimated. We are usually told that privatization will be accompanied by ‘regulatory’ safeguards. But time and again, we find that the very same interests that require regulation are actually present in the ‘regulatory’ bodies! Individuals linked to Monsanto (that markets Bt products) were present on the panel that was to decide on approval for Bt Brinjal; persons with links with soft drink companies were found on the Food Security panel that was to investigate the presence of poisons in soft drinks.
Similarly, the corporate handwriting or fingerprints can be discerned in a range of Bills and laws that make it to Parliament. In many of these Bills, the very word ‘regulation’ is camouflage or euphemism for ‘deregulation.’ For instance, the Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI) Bill proposes to do away with the regulatory process itself by granting ‘single-window clearance’ to GM crops. It also has provisions for jailing those who question the safety of GM crops! Successive governments have stubbornly resisted having any provisions for regulating prices and royalty in the Seed Bill, in spite of the fact that farmers are at the mercy of exorbitant prices charged by MNC seed companies. In addition, the latest version of the Seed Bill opens the door for private organisations to conduct seed trials – a recipe for conflict of interest, whereby organizations run by Monsanto can then claim to conduct ‘trials’ on their own seeds! The draft Land Acquisition and R&R Bill continues to leave room for private enterprises to be defined as ‘public purpose.’ The Nuke Liability Bill reflected the intense pressure of the US nuclear companies to minimize the obligation of suppliers for compensation or clean-up in case of an accident. Similarly, many of the higher education-related Bills proposed by the UPA-II talk of ‘regulation’ but instead aim to free private and foreign education providers from regulation. For instance, Clause 9 of the Foreign Educational Institutions Bill and Clause 49 of the National Accreditation Regulatory Authority Bill allow the Government to ‘exempt’ foreign and private education providers from regulations that apply to government institutions.
It seems that the Government, with all its apparent concern for ‘democracy,’ has no qualms about corporate interests calling the shots inside Parliament and in policy-making. Not only is this pro-corporate thrust resulting in corruption on an unprecedented scale, it is eating away at the vitals of our democratic institutions. ‘Corruption’ can no longer be defined narrowly as the giving or taking of bribes, or even as the draining out of funds which belong in the public exchequer. The process whereby the Niira Radias of the corporate world outweigh public interest in policy-making and law-making is the most insidious form of corruption, with the most far-reaching and corrosive consequences for our democracy.
If we need to broaden the concept of ‘corruption,’ we also need to broaden the concept of ‘democracy.’ In a democracy, why shouldn’t students be consulted in framing education policies? Why shouldn’t farmers be involved in framing laws relating to land acquisition or seeds? Why should they not be asked if they want an SEZ Act at all? Shouldn’t tribals be asked what kind of ‘development’ they need?
Instead, those affected people who question government policies are met with repression and intimidation. Farmers who protest land grab and tribals who assert their rights under the Forest Rights Act are met with bullets in state after state. Rahul Gandhi does a ‘padayatra’ for affected farmers in UP – but in Congress-ruled Assam, Andhra Pradesh, or Maharashtra, farmers protesting eviction are shot dead just the same! Political rivalry notwithstanding, there is a strange unity of purpose between the Congress and BJP when it comes to such repression. The BJP Government of Chhattisgarh and the Central Government alike are planning to file a review petition against the recent landmark SC verdict holding Salwa Judum to be unconstitutional.
There are some who believe that the anti-corruption struggle can be waged in some sort of purely ‘moral’ realm, one that is ‘above’ politics. That position is difficult to sustain. If, as we have seen, certain policies breed corruption, it follows that fighting corruption calls for a political response, which can make the required economic and political connections.
Corruption has emerged willy-nilly as a foremost political issue in our times, and those at the forefront of the anti-corruption struggle cannot escape policy issues and political questions for long. In the face of the Government’s repressive response, democracy, too, has emerged as a central concern of the anti-corruption movement. Here, no self-serving definition of ‘democracy’ will do – either on part of the Government or on part of anti-corruption activists. We must defend the right to fast at Jantar Mantar – and at the same time, we must defend the rights of peasants and tribals to resist land grab. We have a right to agitate for a genuine Lokpal Bill with teeth – and we have a duty to agitate for the ouster of laws like the Sedition law and the AFSPA, which are being used to target voices of dissent and which ought to have no place in a democracy. Scams and black money are shameful manifestations of corruption. But when political power is used to unleash discrimination or violence against certain sections of society, thwart justice, protect wrongdoers, and cover up crimes like communal violence and fake encounters, it is no less a corruption of our democracy.
The countrywide student-youth campaign by AISA and RYA, linking the issue of corruption with broader policy issues and questions of democracy, and the barricade against corruption, corporate plunder and assaults on democracy at Jantar Mantar represents a strong current in the anti-corruption movement, that while supporting the need for a genuine Lokpal legislation, also feels the need to reverse the policies that are breeding corruption and link the anti-corruption struggle with the broader struggle for a democratic India.