When I was working as an engineer in India many years ago, I heard a story about octroi posts. For those of you who may not know it, an octroi post collects a tax for the movement of goods across a border, either a state, district, or city. What I heard was that a truck passing through a post had to pay the sum of one rupee to the person manning the post. This was a bribe to pass the truck otherwise it would be pulled over and kept waiting. My salary was about three thousand rupees a month, a fairly good some of money in those times, so a rupee didn’t seem much to me.
I remember traversing NH4, the old Mumbai-Pune highway, and watching trucks moving along the highway, inching along the Khopoli ghats. It was a never-ending stream of colorful trucks laden with goods, covered in tarpaulin, moving across the beautiful monsoon ghats. It was so mysterious and thrilling for an engineer. Goods were moving! The whole country was on the move. I am talking about the late 1980s when India was a stagnant economy in comparison with today. It is much more impressive today. But even then I understood how much an octroi inspector could make on one afternoon from that river of trucks. My education at the famed Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) brought me a job that could hope to pay only a fraction of the money that changed hands at an octroi post. This is corruption on a small-scale, which over the hundreds of thousands of octroi posts, leads to corruption on a larger-scale. It adds a hidden tax to the daily cost of life.
Graft and corruption, the giving and taking of bribes, is endemic in this poor country of ours. We use it as a way of getting things done, even though what needs to be done is our right, for which the people who are doing the job are already paid for. Thus, corruption in India is not just about personal gain. It is about an extra cost added to facilitate processes that are already paid for. We are paying twice. We first pay through taxes, and then we pay through bribes. The former is just and fair, whereas the latter is unjust and obscene, particularly for the poor. It costs our nation dearly.
As the Indian economy has grown, so has the sheer size and scale of corruption. It now staggers the mind. But what is galling is the brazen and sometimes open way in which public officials loot public funds and resources, or make demands of ordinary citizens. The correct word to use here is “shameless”. It is a quaint word used more often in South Asia than anywhere else. I rarely hear it used in the United States. Corruption in India has reached a level of shamelessness that even the cynical and indifferent Indian stares at it breathless, and with widened eyes. There seems to be no end to it, neither in its scale nor in time.
Corruption in India, as exemplified by the actual exchange of money between interested parties, takes many forms. It falls into three areas, graded according to the scale of money involved. First is in the sale of public resources, such as mining rights, airports, and large-scale public property. Second is in the enforcement of public authority with regard to the functioning of industry, such as the issuing of environmental clearances or other licenses. Third is in the private citizen’s right to individual privileges and the right to fair punishment, such as the issuing of passports, ration cards, traffic tickets, and such. In each and every one of these areas there are vast sums of money that exchange hands, never to benefit the public, but doubling our costs.
I would never have written this piece except for two egregious and shameful examples in recent times. The first is the scandal that almost destroyed the recently concluded Commonwealth Games (CWG) held in Delhi. The second is the sale of 2G spectrum carried out in 2008 under the stewardship of the disgraced telecom minister Mr. Andimuthu Raja. He resigned recently. These scandals are not about the day-to-day corruption witnessed, endured, tolerated, and even committed by our citizens. These scandals are about a massive looting of public resources and funds by publicly appointed officials. Thus, India lives in squalor, and it is made more squalid by the minds and the attitudes of its corrupt public officials.
Of the two big scandals, the 2G scandal is much the larger. Mr. Raja simply sold off the spectrum on a first-come first-served basis using 2001 costs. He made no effort to auction the sale and get the current and therefore best prices. To make matters worse he subverted the process, in collusion with telecom ministry bureaucrats, and allowed unknown players with no prior telecom experience to gain the upper hand. The sale of 2G spectrum and the losses involved are so staggering that it has shaken urban Indians. The estimate of the loss to the exchequer is about 1.76 lakh crore rupees (about $40 billion). This amount is about six times the 2010 budget for education (0.31 lakh crore rupees) and larger than the defense budget (1.47 lakh crore rupees). So we are not talking about chump change. We are talking about a massive loss of revenue to the people of India.
The air waves of our country, the spectrum that we have to share, are a national resource, just as much as its land, its minerals, its forests, and its waters. The revenue earned from it belongs rightfully to the people. To sell it off in this cavalier manner is a sign of sheer incompetence, or stupidity, or corruption. None of these are becoming of a cabinet minister. I heard Mr. Raja state rather blandly to the media that he believes he did the right thing. His actions as he claims have apparently ensured the entry of new players in the market, caused the lowering of tariffs, and led to the enormous expansion of the cellular base that India is currently witnessing. India is the fastest growing cellular market in the world today. And in a nation of 1.2 billion people, that is saying a lot. They are adding millions of users per month.
On hearing him justifying his actions, I laughed, then I cried, and then I fixed myself a stiff drink. In the face of the numbers of rupees involved with so many zeros, in the face of bright-eyed children walking to school barefoot and denied a mid-day meal, my only solace was hysteria and alcohol. Beaten verbally and disgraced, Mr. Raja resigned and went back to his native Tamil Nadu where he was apparently greeted with much joy and decked with garlands. Regrettably, garlands of flowers, and not garlands of shoes. I am not a violent man, but I wish that Mr. Raja is forever denied a cell phone, a television, a radio, and WiFi. Neither his speeches nor his face must ever be broadcast. After what he has done, he has no right to the nation’s air waves, nor does he have any right to its spectrum. He must be condemned to that dark place where electromagnetic spectrum is unavailable. In it he must spend the rest of his life.
Let us not even go into the CWG fiasco. All of you have read so much and are no doubt pained. While the 2G scandal leaves us shamefaced, the CWG fiasco left us shamefaced before the whole world. It really took genius to mess this one up. We descended to our lowest depths yet. In squandering public money by doling out contracts to the favored, in the shoddy and poor construction of facilities, in the way we railroaded the poor out of their shanties, in the way we sacrificed quality and pride, we really hit our low. We took no pride, no care, in preparing for the games. We did work that was shameful. We were left wretched and naked before the world, explaining why it was just fine to have dogs and people defecating and urinating in the athletes housing, sometimes in the bedrooms and even in the beds, and not discreetly in the toilet as you may presume. We even had a CWG official on national TV justifying our lack of hygiene, trying to pass it off as a Western fad. It was more than shameless, it was sad.
The 2G spectrum scandal is scandalous because of the scale of the sums of money involved. But both scandals have a similar cause. It is that the average Indian public official simply does not care when it comes to the public good. He has neither pride nor does he take pride in doing his work fairly. He is unconcerned and unmoved that he is running our country into the ground. It does not cause him sleepless nights. He does not care about destroying the faith that the public has placed in him, and he does not care about the lives lost due to his corrupt actions. All he wants is personal profit, even if it means that he has to sell the country to the lowest bidder. This is our average public servant. This is the man we pay, to manage our country so that he may make our lives better.
We love to talk about India’s past, its great stories and epics, our various Gods, our heroes, occasionally our heroines if the mood takes us, and the values originating in our spirituality and humanistic philosophy. We defend them with vim and vigor, always explaining ourselves to others. And so, our sentiments, be they religious or cultural, are also hurt very easily. So, there is always some unfortunate writer or artist whose work offends, or some offending liberal Indian who speaks out about love and lust, and Valentine’s Day. This gives us the opportunity to go on a rampage and ransack and destroy public property, or molest women on their way to enjoying an evening at a bar. The simple truth is that we care more for our imagined past than our present. We defend our past vigorously, and leave the present undefended.
It is paradoxical because our rage is directed at imagined slights to our culture, whereas the real slights occur in our governance. It is here that the Indian is truly being insulted and slighted. It seems alright that we should suffer a loss that is six times our annual education budget, or to be made a laughing stock about our inability to conduct an athletic event. But it is not alright for women to wear jeans or shorts, or have a beer, nor is it alright to write about Shivaji or Lord Ram in terms that are dispassionate and less than slavish. We can talk, but we can’t walk the talk. It is little wonder that we come across as a largely uneducated lot, incapable of thoughtful opinion or action, unable to discern the important from the irrelevant.
Why do we do this? Why is it that we lecture everyone to the point of boredom about the Bhagvad Gita when we do not even pay the barest of attention to what is said in it? What is the basic message of the Gita after all? It is that we should do our duty and carry out our work without concern for its fruits. So why then are the nation and its wealth being looted so brazenly and openly? Why do we seek personal profit from our position in office, from our position as citizens? Why are we so ready to come out and burn buses and torch the homes of Dalits and Muslims in the name of religion, culture, and honor, when we honor our duty so little? There is an inconsistency in our beliefs and our actions. We seem to care so much about this great civilization and culture of ours, and yet we care so little for our nation or its future.
We are magical in our beliefs, and thoroughly medieval in our outlook. Mr. Gill our honorable minister for Youth and Sports Affairs said that the CWG would come together and work out fine. He said that it would be chaotic and disorganized like an Indian wedding, where everything will fall into place at the appointed hour. But to the rest of the world, it is not the deed that is chaotic and disturbing, nor its eventual success. What is disturbing is our magical and wishful thinking. It is chaotic, unplanned, and childish. It is a make-believe wedding played by children. We hand out contracts to our mothers and brothers, making it some kind of family affair, without any seriousness of thought or action for the greater good. Our belief being that if we govern our nation like it is a family wedding, then everyone will be happy. No one will be happy Minister! Not those of us who believe that a modern India is one that ought to be run professionally, with careful and skillful husbandry, with wise use and disposition of our resources towards the best end. In management terms it is called “best practice”.
Thus, our arrogance and pride is confined to our past deeds, and not to present action. It is a misplaced arrogance, mired in a history that is lost and gone, and not rooted to the present. The arrogance and pride of the Germans and the Swiss, for example, come from their present capabilities. Buy any Swiss mechanical watch or a Bavarian Cuckoo clock. Open it, take it apart, and take a good look at it. They are masterpieces, carefully crafted, with precision and with pride. The little gears and wheels are machined to perfection. You can’t bribe one of those craftsmen to do a lesser job. Their countries too run like clockwork, where probity is the norm rather than the exception. They take pride in what they do. The governance of India should require no less pride.
I am not condemning India or Indians, at least not unnecessarily. If you look at the business practices of Infosys, Wipro, or Tata Motors, you will find similar pride and craftsmanship. These blue-chip Indian companies are going to change the way modern companies are run. But they are private entrepreneurs, not public officials and politicians running the country. India is no longer a conglomeration of villages or minor kingdoms. Its governance requires men and women of unimpeachable integrity, who work to make it a better country.
Public officials and politicians ought to take pride in what they do, for the sake of doing it, without looking for personal profit. We are indeed a great civilization, but the brutal truth is that the past does not exist, and the past does not make us better people. The Buddha said “the past is a corpse, don’t drag it around.” What India needs is public officials who do their job. They do not even need to look to the future. All that they have to do is look at the task in hand, and do it with devotion and with utter disregard for the fruits of their action. When they do, corruption and graft will disappear, and India’s people will be well looked after.
Not all is bad, and not all the criticism is universally applied. There are public officials who have done great service to India. They form not just the hope of our generation, but the hope of those who come after us. The person most respected in India today is the architect and builder of the Delhi Metro, Mr. Sreedharan. He does his job and he does it well. He probably makes mistakes, as everyone surely does, but from what can be judged, they are not made for personal gain. He has integrity. This is all that we ask of our public officials. When you undertake your responsibilities, do so with your eye on your duty. Do so for the benefit of others and not just for the benefit of you, your family, or your biradari. And if you are capable of larger thinking, although we cannot ask this of you, do so for India and its millions of poor people. They are placing their trust in you and this is the least that they deserve.
Note: This article was written in November 2010. Since that time a number of individuals have been arrested and indicted. In the 2G scandal it includes the former Telecom minister Mr. A. Raja (mentioned in the article) and another central minister Mr. Mr. D. Maran. In the CWG scandal it includes the former head of the Indian Olympic Association Mr. S. Kalmadi. All three are members of the ruling government. Let us see how the inquiry and trial proceeds. It doesn’t look good so far. On a recent surprise visit by a judge to the prison where Mr. Kalmadi is lodged, he was astonished to find that Mr. Kalmadi was enjoying High tea with the prison superintendent. And the prison cells, where the accused in the CWG scandal are lodged, are kept unlocked. Apparently the accused roam freely within the confines of the prison, converse with each other at all times, and enjoy a fairly comfortable life.
