The government nationalized
three refineries owned by Esso, Burmah Shell and Caltex between 1974 and 1976.
Since then, the Indian oil industry has been largely owned by the government of
India and controlled by a central minister of petroleum. He gave out licences
for petrol pumps, which were licences to print money; they entailed enormous
opportunities for corruption and patronage. After his Congress predecessor,
Satish Sharma, was caught red-handed, Ram Naik, the BJP petroleum minister,
passed on licensing powers to local committees headed by retired judges. But corruption
still reared its head, and the Prime Minister Vajpayee suddenly cancelled
licences, including licences of pumps that were already in operation. That is
what this column in Business Standard
of 13 August 2002 described.
THE LATTER-DAY MIRASDARS
At first I was taken aback. I
thought, what has happened to Atal Behari Vajpayee? Has he suddenly taken
control? Woken up? Become a reformer again? Does he really care for cleanness
in politics? Is he the hero we took him for on his accession to power? The
temptation to believe that he was was great, for the party he heads is an
antinational party with the moral standards of BSP, RJD or AIADMK. He was the
great white hope in this party – until he proceeded to destroy that reputation.
It seeped out rather slowly, as he kept making resounding speeches preaching
reforms, tolerance and liberal values while failing consistently to convert his
party. Then, suddenly in Goa he showed himself to be a loyal Swayamsevak; at
that point I wrote him off.
And then, just when his entire
party was vociferously defending Ram Naik, proudly declaring itself to be no
worse than the Congress, the PMO suddenly cancelled all the petrol pump and gas
agency allotments since 2000. He struck a blow against political nepotism.
Maybe he was the man we took him for.
Actually, it is painful to admit,
but I think Ram Naik is right. He claims to have cleaned up the Aegean stables
of pump and agency allocations by setting up district committees headed by
retired judges. The claim is true in one sense. If these committees have
favoured political protégées, they were not Ram Naik’s favourites. I think they
were the favourites of the local political Mafia, and the district committees
were suborned by these Mafiosi. If Ram Naik made a mistake, it was to think
that nepotism was all right as long as it was not his. He abdicated his power
on the face of it to good men and true, but in reality to his political
brothers and sisters who were individually no better than Captain Satish
Sharma. The proof of this is that the committees in states ruled by the
Congress have favoured the relatives and friends of Congressmen.
This is a familiar process. Bank
loans are a windfall since they do not have to be repaid by those in the charmed
circle; so they go to politicians or their friends. We had an aviation minister
from Karnataka who took a loan of Rs 800,000 in the 1980s; since he had never
repaid it, it had grown to Rs 5.2 million by the time he became minister.
Foodgrains are sold to cardholders with a huge subsidy. There is no control
over whom they are sold to, so there are fat profits in selling them in the
open market. A licence for a fair price shop is a licence to make money just
like allocation of a petrol pump. No one suspects the food minister to be
making money by selling FRP licences; but the shopkeepers will be found to be
favourites of various politicians – generally local ones. Political favourites
– or those who can win favours by a well-placed bounty – will be found to be
equally important amongst power thieves.
In the circumstances, Vajpayee’s
cancellation of the allocations is melodramatic – and quixotic. It bears his
stamp: it completely lacks application of the mind and awareness of how a
government works. The promises of a government are not lightly given; their
withdrawal can lead to a perfect legal mess.
Quite apart from the legal
ramifications, there is the sheer insensitivity of the act. Many people would
have already set up the pumps and the agencies, or spent money on setting them
up. Some might have started the facilities. Whatever their fault, whatever
their misgivings, waste of their money cannot be a part of the punishment.
True, the Supreme Court has done enormous pecuniary damage to common carrier
operators in the course of the conversion of their vehicles to CNG; it is
causing further inconvenience right now by forcing those vehicles to queue up
for CNG and block up roads. But that is the privilege of the Supreme Court; an
elected Prime Minister, a representative of the people, ought to be more
mindful of their interests.
Whenever they are accused of
wrongdoing, Indians point a finger at other wrongdoers. If they are accused of
having aided in a massacre of Muslims, their defence is that Congress did it to
the Sikhs in 1983. This time they are saying, Ram Naik has done nothing that
Satish Sharma did not do before him. And after locking up the pumps allotted by
him for years, the Supreme Court finally allowed them to reopen without any
penalty. Therefore, there is nothing wrong in law in favouring one’s protégés
with petrol pumps.
This type of thinking looks
pretty base and self-serving until you visit some powerful politicians. They
run their own courts. Minor partymen hang around them, kowtow to them, hang on
their every word, serve them hand-and-foot. When the leaders move, the
hangers-on follow them in a tight clutch. Then go and look at a politician out
of power, sitting all alone in the wilderness: the hordes of hangers-on have
flown off to greener pastures. They flock to those in power for precisely the
kinds of favours I have mentioned above. They are the bees who gather around
their fragrant leaders – and the leaders reward them with honey.
Why? Because the leaders would
not get into power otherwise. The followers are the people who herd voters to
the booth, who ensure that they vote for the right party, that those who are
inclined otherwise are shown the error of their ways. The power game is based
on a compact – that when they get into power, the leaders will enrich their
followers. We call ourselves a democracy, but ours is a modernized form of
Indian feudalism; the mirasdars and taluqdars of the Mughal empire would find
our system very familiar.
This is how it worked under the
Congress as well, except for one difference. In the Congress it was still
unfashionable to show off one’s wealth. Leaders wore simple clothes and led outwardly
lower-middle-class lives. They might have splurged themselves abroad when no
one was looking; Indian ambassadors had to be familiar with the local fleshpots
to keep visiting dignitaries amused. But the Congress culture ensured that
leaders did not try to emulate the rich.
The BJP has ended that. The
average BJP politician does not have to look back to Gandhi; he looks up to his
NRI brother and industrialist cousin. So aspirations have gone up. A petrol
pump owner can in a few years hope to own a mansion, buy the best saris for his
wife, fly abroad once in a while and drink to his heart’s content. While doing
all that, he will remember his debt, and will be a loyal supporter and
financier of the Bharatiya Janata Petrol Party.
