Commentary/Dilip D'Souza

Corruption Is Our Destiny: The World Thinks So

The day I reached Jerusalem, about a month-and-a- half ago, the Jerusalem Post carried a column by Yosef Lapid titled "Corrupt The Legal System." He discusses corruption in Israel and some other countries, building an interesting thesis that I won't get into here. But doing so, Lapid makes an oblique mention of India. These few lines from his article will tell you just what that mention is about:

'In other countries, Mexico for instance (or India, or Nigeria, or Egypt, or Romania, or a hundred others) ... there is also no need to check whether a politician is a crook. Everyone there, from government ministers to the mayor of the most far-flung town, knows that corruption is his destiny. No one bothers to check whether a policeman is corrupt. They pay up in advance -- cash on the table, according to fixed rates -- whether it's to the chief of police, or to the village cop. In those countries everyone knows there's no point wasting money on hiring a lawyer, when you can buy a judge for less.'

What struck me about these lines was the matter-of-fact tone, the offhanded way in which India was included in that little list. It's as if Lapid thinks India's corruption is so entirely self-evident, it needs no explanation. He does not find it remarkable, or even just unusual, to equate India to corruption. It's just one of those things, just another fact of life. Like: Bill Clinton is the president of the USA, the Sahara is a vast desert in Africa, India is a land of corruption. One day, if not already, all these will be in general knowledge books, one fact no more noteworthy than the next.

I read the column in some dismay, because this is the image the world has of us. We can rail against it all we want, argue the truth of what Lapid writes, shout loudly that nobody looks at the positive side to India. There's merit in doing all that, but it really matters not one tiny bit. Around the world, India is seen as a place where corruption rules. Simple.

That article is partly why I have gone on and on in this space about education, health care and the state of our people. It's why I am busy inflicting just one more column in that vein on you right now. If you're groaning already, treat it this way: this is a break from all the analyses of Governments and coalitions and elections and Kesri's garments that you see elsewhere on these pages. In that spirit, bear with me.

Actually, I've already had my come-uppance. A breathless sort accused me of knowing nothing about national honour when I questioned our vast defence budget here a couple of weeks ago. I had wondered about spending instead on less glamorous things, like education, health care and drinking water. The breathless sort is right, of course. Because our national honour is truly pushed in our faces by articles like Yosef Lapid's. That's the national honour we have to lug around: the honour of being one of the world's most corrupt countries. It's true: I have just no idea what impact enormous spending on defence has on that honour (though there is the little matter of Bofors guns).

Now even Lapid indicates that corruption is a widespread disease, that India is not unique in suffering from it. From Indira on down, our leaders have regularly reminded us of that too, only so that they can hide behind that fig-leaf and refuse to do anything about it. I cannot pretend hope that we will ever be free of corruption, or even that its pervasive presence will wane anytime soon. I do know, however, that if left unattended, corruption will remain the first thing people think of when they see the word "India": just as the Jerusalem Post article showed.

So how do we attend to it? Corrupt ministers and officials must be punished, nobody should give or take bribes: these are things we should be working to achieve. But what does "should" translate into in real life?

I think about this a great deal. You see, I don't own a gun, I'm not even sure I would know which end one fires from. I have simply no influence with the law, with the police, not even with God. Though if I did, using it would probably make me corrupt anyway. Simply put, I have no way to stop corruption, no way to force it to be punished. I think that's true of most of us.

Of course, there is one thing I do have. My voice. So again and again, I return to just one conclusion: none of those things -- an end to bribes, punishment of the corrupt -- is going to happen until enough of us stand up, use our voices and demand that it happens.

Think about it. How is it that 10 years later, the CBI can still claim to be investigating Bofors instead of having clapped the guilty in jail? Why were the hawala investigations soft-pedalled for four years, then selectively pursued, only to see that selective pursuit eventually shot full of holes by the Delhi high court? When tens of millions of rupees in unaccounted cash was simply lying around in his house, how is a Sukh Ram so able to delay investigations that he is essentially a free man? Why is it that we have so many scams -- telecom, fodder, housing, stock, locomotive, cobbler society, hawala, choose-a-name -- but not one single punishment?

Yes, I know that justice demands we presume men innocent until they are proved guilty. I also know that justice delayed indefinitely is no justice at all. So why is it so slow in coming?

This is when I return to that same conclusion: In the end, it's because too few of us demand justice. Because we don't use that only weapon we have, the corrupt get away with their corruption.

This is also when I can't help making one final connection: Too few of us demand justice because as a country, we have managed to educate just too few Indians. We are not a corrupt country solely because we have corrupt people. We are corrupt also because we have people who stay silent. We are corrupt also because millions of us don't know how to demand punishment for those who cheat them -- or even, indeed, that they can demand punishment. There are simply too many Indians who think corruption is the way things must be.

What does education have to do with this? A lot, actually. Educated people demand services, justice, their rights. Educated people also know how to demand those things: they know the law, how to make use of the courts, the press, the power of public opinion. And perhaps most important of all, educated people are better able to hold rulers politically accountable.

I'll hastily admit here that an educated India may not necessarily be a corruption-free India: Italy, Japan and Korea know that truth quite well. But a half-literate India is certainly fertile soil for corruption. Among innumerable others, this is just one more reason governments have approached education so half-heartedly through our 50 years.

There is, I am convinced, a deep and twisted connection between illiteracy and corruption. Education, questioning, the survival of democracy and governance: these are intimately connected ideas. To me, these are the reasons we need to question that defence budget; at least, its obscene scale when compared to spending on education. We can pile up all the military hardware in the world to protect us from those inimical foreigners who surround us. But what will protect us from the enemies right here in India, men eating away at our country in the most insidious way possible?

When we accept defence expenditure as some kind of investment in national honour, when that makes us indifferent to the need to put young Indians in school and keep them there, we will get national honour all right. The kind Yosef Lapid touched on in his article.

I think we can do better.

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