My time in the government gave me a first-hand idea of the imperfections of Indian democracy; my subsequent time in the press brought me much information about its scandals. Some went into this column, published in Business Standard of 18 March 2003.
UNDERSTANDING THE INJURED INNOCENTS
All law-abiding citizens will
celebrate the Supreme Court’s reinstatement of its judgment on disclosure by
election candidates of criminal cases against them. Hats off to Jaiprakash
Narain of Hyderabad for having petitioned the Supreme Court; while the rest of
us wrung our hands at the politicians’ brazenness, he spotted the one
institution that could stop them. But subjecting politicians to rudimentary
standards of disclosure is not going to solve the problem of their substandard
quality; and it should not stop us from trying to understand the system that
shapes them. Unless we understand them, we will not be able to change the
system. Although I saw impropriety reaching up to the highest level while I was
in the government, the convolutions of the political society still baffle me.
Recently I talked to a few people to understand how it works.
The first one used to be a civil
servant; he has now become a entrepreneur. He worked for one of the state-level
finance corporations. His job was to investigate bad loans. He found that in
most cases, the entrepreneur who had been financed was a politician – an MP, an
MLA – or his son, relative or protégé. The corporation was not serious about
recovering the money, and discouraged him from reporting what he had found.
Although he left, similar scams continue. Someone in that state captured the
chief minister’s interest with a calculation that the state’s farms generated x
million tons of straw, cowshit etc, which could be used to generate y million
tons of biogas, which in turn could generate z megawatthours of electricity,
which could be fed into the grid and relieve the power shortage. The state
government worked out an arrangement with the Indian Renewable Energy Development
Agency, which promised to fund the plants. A certain number were sanctioned for
the state based on the estimated agricultural biomass outturn. Licences were
given to MPs, MLAs and their kin and friends. If the actual investment required
for a plant was, say, Rs 20 million, they applied for a loan for Rs 30 million.
The difference was siphoned off by getting the plant manufacturer to
overinvoice the equipment; the bio-entrepreneurs used some of it to bribe those
involved in giving the licences, and pocketed the rest.
Some plants came up; then it was
realized that farmers liked to feed the straw they produced to their cattle,
and to burn the cowshit or turn it into compost. So the plants could not get
all the biomass they needed. They were allowed to use coal to meet 30 per cent
of their requirements. When an inspection was carried out, it was found that
the few plants that worked were really small, high-cost coal-burning
electricity generators, and sold their electricity at a high price to the state
electricity board. The rest had not bothered to set up plants; presumably they
pocketed all the money they borrowed.
My next interlocutor may be
described as a leader of tomorrow or an incipient politician. A well spoken,
well scented, well connected businesswoman, she is the Renuka Chowdhury of the
north – someone who would have been a member of Parliament if only she had been
a Thakur instead of a Brahmin. She gave me a rare insight into the world of
politics. She said that when BJP politicians first became ministers, they were
thrilled by the trappings of power – the villa, the car, the guards, the
flunkeys. But then they realized that they were babes in the wood; they had no
idea what they were supposed to do. They got a flood of files which they could make
neither head nor tail of. Rajnath Singh tried to make sense of them by ordering
that the notings should be in Hindi – an order that led to the notings becoming
briefer and more cryptic. But most politicians do not like to admit that they
are illiterate – they are all supposed to be graduates of one university or
another – so they just meekly sign the files that are put up to them. Whence
comes the feeling that civil servants are always pulling wool over their eyes.
Often ministers told civil servants what exactly they wanted, but the latter
found some way of frustrating the ministers. Thus the cause of the BJP
government’s non-performance lay in their innocence or civil servants’ cunning
depending on which way you look at it.
Non-performance would not matter
if there had been no expectations; the ministers would enjoy the luxury and the
ministrations of flunkeys while the Prime Minister’s pleasure lasted, and could
then go back to sharing dosas in the Parliament canteen. But a minister cannot
avoid expectations. As soon as he becomes a minister, supplicants start
arriving. They storm the gate, enter his house, and squat until they can collar
him. So the drawing room becomes unusable. The bolder ones might even enter his
bathroom and steal the soap. So the doors of the drawing room have to be kept
shut. Politicians have worked out ingenious solutions to this problem. For
instance, after Mujeeb was released by Pakistan and reached Dacca, the Indian
government sent an emissary with an important message. When he arrived at
Mujeeb’s house, he found it surrounded by thousands of followers. He managed to
make his way into the house and found Mujeeb; but he too was surrounded by
admirers, and there was no room in the house. Finally Mujeeb took him into the
toilet to receive the message.
N T Rama Rao was more
resourceful. He built a two-story house. He let his hangers-on spread
themselves on the ground floor; but the first floor was his. When he wanted to
come down, he put on a pair of very creaky chappals. They announced his
descent, and the devotees quickly sat up from the sofas they were sleeping on
and took their feet off the table. By the time he got down they were standing
in appropriately deferential poses. However, the BJP neophytes found it quite
strenuous to handle the hordes of supplicants that materialized; their
unpopularity must be attributed at least partly to their inability to oblige
everyone.
That brings me to my last
informant. He described to me the appointment procedure of a certain secretary
in a ministry which requires some financial expertise: the concerned minister
was ordered to take a certain candidate by the Highest Authority, who had been
spoken to in support of the candidate by an Adi Shankaracharya, no less (and I
am NOT talking of Shankar Acharya). The Highest Authority needs a lot of luck;
he could not risk being cursed by the emissary of God. That is how we began to
get some extremely holy and utterly clueless secretaries. We may not get great economic policies, but
we are going to be very lucky. Some day.
