Gandhi said, ‘politics without
principle is prostitution’. The former is the play of power, whereas the latter
is a set of rules based upon morality. It’s said that power has uncorrectable habit
of breaching the law and principle to assert its authority; at the same time,
only power has the potential to deliver justice in society. Both are
complimentary to each other’s existence. Therefore, power is the necessary evil
of society. Democracy is perhaps the only method of governing a society which
promises to present a nuanced view of use of power by checks and balances. But man’s Machiavellian mind has managed to invent
the ways to exercise power by subverting principle even in democracy. And, that
act of abusing power by undermining principle is called ‘corruption’.
In a democracy absence of a strong
opposition and continuation of a single party ruling the country for a longer
term without any break is indeed a sign of farce democracy; in undiplomatic term
it can be called a corrupt democracy. Such political system is prone to use
corrupt means of functioning and preserving power. In 1950 India coming out of
British colonialism became a democracy but could not develop a real essence of
it which means a multiparty platform of politics. Without multiparty or a
strong bi-party politics, a nation cannot claim to be a true democracy. Sadly for
India, its politics has been, apart from a short period of Janata regime (1975-77),
dominated by a single party, the Indian National Congress till 1989. Though
it’s a pure coincidence that as the year 1989 offered a new era in the European
liberal democracy with the Berlin Wall coming down in Germany; similarly, in
India with the concept of “Mandal and Kamandal” taking centre stage in Indian
politics, this year brought a new freshness to the democratic politics of the
country as since then the non-Congress governments, for whatsoever little time,
started making its presence felt in the national political consciousness. Though
political analysts did think that a politics based on ideas like caste and
religion would not bring any constructive outcome to the Indian society. But we should also recognize a fact that a political
issue is fermented upon the real social problems that it grapples with at a
given time; and the caste was, and is, up to an extent, a reality of Indian
society. So far as the topic of religion is concerned, it has always been used by
leaders which include Pundit Nehru to take political mileage; but, it was quite
naively used by Rajeev Gandhi by allowing unlocking the door of the Ayodhya Ram
temple and undoing the Supreme Court judgment of “Shah-Bano case”. All these
political events prepared a stage for a new “centre right” politics that was
grabbed by the chariot man, Lal Krishna Advani of the Bharatiya Janata Party who
made the Ram janam bhumi mandir an issue of national sentiment. That contributed immensely in bringing the BJP
laid alliance NDA in power at centre in 1998. Under Vajpayee’s leadership, the
country saw since 1947 its first non-Congress government completing its full
five year term in 2004. It introduced a new era of bi-polar politics which led India
to become a rather stronger democracy. Recent
surprising victory of the Aam Admi Party in the Delhi assembly elections brought
new winds of change into Indian politics; it appears to have made a new
addition on the path of making Indian political party system more democratic
and probably more transparent. The immergence of AAP generates high degree of
hope which only time will tell if they’re able to meet the expectations of
people or get reduced to just another de facto party with extreme Left ideology.
How has corruption as election
issue evolved over the years in the Indian political discourse? How has that topic
struck a chord with the people of Delhi that caused the victory of a barely twelve
month old party in 2013 assembly elections? Will a party floated on the plank
of fighting corruption sustain the rigorous tests of time in Indian politics
where emotional issue matters more than the serious one?
For the first time corruption in
public office came under light when the ‘jeep scandal’ case became a political
issue in Nehru’s cabinet in 1948. Since then, the cases related to scam and
misuse of power surfaced quite a few times in public space but people continued
to reelect the same party, Congress in power again and again. Partly, because
the opposition parties like the Swatantra party by Raja ji or the Jan Sanga by
Dr. Mookerjee had had very less influence in pressurizing the government of the
day in subjecting to a hard scrutiny; partly, the people of India were blinded
by the aura of Nehru and Indira, and they did not put any question to their
style of governance. The myth that Indira can never be wrong was challenged by
the Allahabad High Court’s verdict in 1975; in which Justice Sinha’s famous verdict
declared the election of Indira Gandhi null and void for using fraud means. In
order to remain in power, Mrs. Gandhi imposed ‘emergency’ by subverting the
constitution which is called the darkest hour of democracy in free India.
Nehru weakened the Congress by
not nurturing a credible leader to replace him in his life-time. He could have
taken the decision of taking retirement from active politics in late 1950s by
transferring the leadership to a younger generation leader. But it did not
happen; secondly, the immature death of Shashtri made India leaderless for some
time. In that time of vacuum, reticent Indira became Prime Minister thanks to
Kamaraj, but she took some time to make a leader out of herself. As Narashimha
Rao puts rightly in his book, The
Insider, that she in course of time developed incessable thirst for power.
Her intense desire to remain in power brought dynastic politics that killed the
inner party democracy in Congress, and as a by-product of the latter, it
introduced the culture of fear, sycophancy and nepotism. Congress’ dynastic
culture encouraged other political parties to indulge into the same practice. The
dynastic culture is the largest contributor in making a party corrupt. As it’s
said that fish starts to rot from the head; similarly, the seed of corruption was
sown in the functioning of the political party that advanced to government,
then this poison dwindled down into higher and lower bureaucracy. The principal
reason of India being corrupt primarily lies in the fact that the political
party system is corrupt. Another reason in making Indian corrupt is the free
run of ‘License Raj’ from 1947 to 1991 that created bureaucracy a super
powerful institution. The people working under the shield of bureaucracy
considered taking bribe as their birth right. So, the centralized government
controlled by socialist economy is indeed one of the major contributors in
polluting the governance structure.
It happened quite a few times
that corruption became an election issue, ex: in 1977 by the Janata party and
by V. P Singh in 1989 after Bofors scandal. But, then after successive non-Congress
governments did not do much in catching the culprits; instead, they simply buried
them, and exhumed them time to time to gain electoral advantage in their
favour. People realized that all political parties are equally corrupt so none
of them would take any serious action against others because ultimately it’s
going to harm each one of them.
In 2011 after the notorious 2-G
scam broke, the stubborn government remained adamant in not taking any
appropriate action against the guilty ministers. The BJP, being the main
opposition party, did not let the parliament function for two weeks which drew
the attention of the entire media towards the magnitude of the scams that the Congress
and its alliance parties were involved into. The Prime minister and Congress president
instead of making a statement in front of media, tried to put a carpet over the
entire episode of scam. The more they tried to hide, the more curiosity and
anger it generated in people’s mind. During the same passage of time, momentous
gross scam of commonwealth games also hit the floor. All these events brought a
perfect time for a nation-wide agitation; only a leader with non-political
background was required. That gap was filled by an old Gandhian activist, Anna
Hajare, from Maharashtra came to Delhi to sit on Dharna for ‘Jan Lokpal Bill, a
strong law to curb rampant corruption in public office. Nervous government instead
of letting Anna exercise his democratic right of staging a Dharna, sent him to
Tihar Jail. This foolish decision of government backfired, and generated tremendous
amount of anger in people’s mind. As a consequence of that, the Anna movement
ended up becoming one of the most important political events so much so that
media compared that with JP movement of 1975-77. It made Anna a hero of modern
times, placing him near leaders like Gandhi and Jay Prakash Narayan. People around Anna, Arvind Kejrival, a Ramon
Magsaysay awarded activist and Prashant Bhushan, senior advocate of Supreme
Court became a household name as they appeared multiple times in front of media
to brief about the outcome of a failed negotiation process that went in between
them and the Congress leaders.
Finally, after a few backstabbing
from government, the team Anna understood that the government is deaf, and
democracy is dead as it refuses to hear the voice of people in street. So it provided a reason to Arvind kejriwal
and Prashant Bhushan to take that fight to a next level; thus, they decided to
take a plunge in electoral politics by floating a political faction called Aam
Adami Party. That was politically a wise decision to conclude the entire
movement by forming a political party that could enjoy the support of all those
middle-class people who stood by Anna team.
Then, it was required to take
first bold step which was to test the waters by fighting Delhi legislative elections.
They all sensed correctly the mood of people which was direly against the
Congress. So, the next correct step that they took was to challenge a very tall
leader in the electoral battle. In politics to achieve big, one needs to uplift
the height of a leader; one of the secure ways of doing that is to pit him against
a tall leader of adversary party in elections. If the underdog leader loses, he
wins people’ sympathy; if luckily he comes out as a victorious then the whole world
belongs to him. Risk in politic yields a mightier outcome. Kejriwal due to his
activist background has always been at ease in taking risks. He decided to take
on political heavy weight, three time Chief minister of Delhi, Sheila Dixit. Congress
and BJP both the parties took him quite lightly calling them a party with an
ambition of collecting funds only. But when the election result stunned
everyone even the Kejriwal team as well. The AAP ended up winning 28 seats out
of 70, which is a historic maiden performance for a less than a year old party.
Had the Congress party managed to present, and pass a bill almost like ‘Jan
Lokpal’ then today there would not have been any Aam Admi Party. Power brings
arrogance that eats up the ability of a man to think rationally, and to
distinguish just from unjust. That’s the
reason due to deep arrogance Congress could not perceive the direction of wind,
and paid the price in Delhi assembly elections for their lack of political
wisdom.
Skeptics say that today’s 24x7
media channel era needs political theatre which can be fed to viewers
continuously. No one will disagree that Kejriwal and his team are quite good at
sitting on dharna, and at attracting
a large crowd of young people which can provide instant topic for interesting
TV debate; but, they need to understand a fact that after forming government
the time of activism is over, and the time of delivering on the promises they
made pre-election has arrived. People seem to be apprehensive about the future
of the AAP. Can a party floated on the plank of fighting corruption sustain the
rigorous tests of time in Indian politics where emotional issues prevail over
the serious ones?
This is true that topic of corruption
has popped up time to time in public discourse but it has not yielded much political
dividend to leaders in elections. The issues that most likely appeal to people
are found to be related to identity politics. It’s a debatable fact that Indians
do crib about bad road, poor transport facility but when it comes to electing a
leader for one’s own locality then they’d like to choose someone who belongs to
their own faith, cast or region. Though this picture is not always true but for
a larger part of northern rural India, people do vote on the basis of caste and
religion. One needs to analyze it meticulously which says that India is a collectivist
society (tribalism). Collectivism is a value system opposite to individualism
which encourages a man to identify as a member of a community but not as an
individual. His decisions, even personal ones, are deeply influenced by his
family and community. Collectivist
people believe largely in belonging to a group based on linguistic, religious,
territorial sub-national identifying factors. A voter, therefore, from
collectivist society would want to see a man in power that belongs to his cast,
faith or region. This gives a sense of empowerment to the voter. Poltical
pundits explain through such theories the ascendance to power of leaders like
Mayawati, Mulayam Singh and Lalu Prasad. They all are known for their corruption
charges and poor track record in governance but still they got re-elected to
office of power.
Since 1989, this genre of politics
took a forefront thanks to leaders like V P Singh, Kanshi Ram, L K Advani and a
few others. The caste based politics seems to have lost its charm in early
1990s. Since 1991, entire political narrative of the nation got encircled
around two ideological poles, secular versus non-secular or communal. This divide
got sharpened aftermath of the Gujarat riot of 2002. In that dual completion of
secular vs. communal, the issue of corruption remained suppressed. It’s an irony that till a few years ago Indian
politicians were convinced that on the basis of either good governance or corruption,
they cannot win elections. The paradigm shift took place with the chief
minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi’s win in his second consequent assembly
elections which proved that if a government delivers good governance then it
can get re-elected on that plank. This trend remained maintained in the BJP
ruled states where good governance was, and is given importance. It’s worthy to
note that this trend has not received the same degree of reciprocity from the
Congress ruled states. It’s because Congress has always maintained in keeping
state leadership very weak and central high command in Delhi highly strong
which gives a free hand to the lady sitting in 10-Janpath to pick the Chief
Ministerial candidates as per the interest of the central leadership,
especially the one family. In the play of power distribution in between centre
and state, people of India got the raw deal of bad governance in Congress ruled
states; Maharashtra is one such example.
The need of the hour hints that political
parties ought to work upon making governance an election issue but not
corruption because the latter is a by-product of the former. If a country is
governed well, then it will create an atmosphere that would dissuade corruption.
Under good governance, it includes moralizing public office, judiciary and
police. By focusing merely on
corruption, it will not solve the problem but it will only show a dreamy land
to people for a certain time, and then after it will leave them completely disillusioned
and angry again. Therefore, the Indian electorate has to get mature then only the
narrative of its polity can move from secular versus communal divide to performing
versus non-performing political party.
