The bribe is just the
lowest common denominator. Will Kejriwal take on the basic arithmetic of
corruption in the cozy arrangements between big money and political power?
A minority AAP government is in place. It may
get a few days or even a few months. It may or may not deliver entirely on its
promises of free this and cheaper that. But if this ascent of people’s power
must become game-changing in the long term, we need to go back now to its
central issue of combating corruption.
Let’s look at the obvious first. Most of us
understand corruption as bribing. People like you and me are often forced to
bribe to access basic services, which are otherwise our entitlement or rights,
because people like you and me often demand those bribes.
Broadly, it is corruption of power. A cop or a
clerk or an autorickshaw driver finds himself or herself in a position of
authority and in control of a service that enables each to put an unwarranted
premium on it. The AAP has promised to end this practice with a helpline.
But do the bribe-seeking cop, clerk and autowallah have a choice in a system where positions of power must be bought? They do. They can turn sacrificing and heroic. The auto driver may pay from his own pocket, and not recover from riders, the bribe cops and transport officials demand. The government ‘servants’ – from collectors to clerks -- can also bear the ‘cost of posting’ (at times, the job itself) themselves.
The other choice they have is not to pay, not
to join the scam. That results in frequent transfers, harassment and loss of
livelihood or even life. But not everybody is expected to fight like a Sanjiv
Chaturvedi or die like a Satyendra Dube.
Let’s look at corruption a little differently.
Say, the autowallah is not overcharging you and me because he has to bribe the
cop. How about him bribing the cop so that he gets to earn many times that
investment by overcharging you and me? Of course, autowallahs (not the cartel
bosses though) are generally poor and it is not politically correct to tarnish
them even in a hypothesis.
But, wait, isn’t that the same story all the
way up, to every dealing between private enterprises and sarkari regulators?
Are corporate giants forced to break the laws of the land because they have to
scale up profit in order to make up for the hefty payoffs they make to the
political masters of the day? Or do they buy politicians and governments so
that they get to play outside the rulebook? It works both ways, perhaps?
Before you answer, consider the politician’s
choices. Yes, most of them have personal assets way beyond their legal means
but who would not help themselves to a few cups or bucketfuls while presiding
over a swell of illegal cash flow? Personal greed apart, why do you think our
average politicians are always on sale?
Elections take a lot of money. Since the EC
has set judicious expenditure ceilings, most of it has to be unaccounted cash.
As voters, most of us can be bought or coerced (or intellectually influenced
but more on that later). Some vote for a bottle and a few rupees. Others are
scared away with muscle power.
Both vote purchasing and rigging are expensive
exercises but they allow politicians to buy into power. Since this buyout is
funded by corporate money, it is natural that the sponsors get away with
breaking laws or even get to have the laws rewritten.
The biggest plus in the AAP upsurge is that at
least 28 per cent of voters in Delhi did not sell their vote this time. This
despite, as the AAP sting showed, attempts by other parties to bribe voters on
election eve. While electoral rigging has never been brazen in the national
capital, it was also equally significant that the AAP with its meager financial
means could counter, thanks mainly to volunteers, the booth management
machination of the traditional parties.
A corrupt voter is the root of all corruption
in a democracy. The AAP upsurge in Delhi is as much a success of its politics
of integrity as of a large number of aam aadmi who did not compromise their
biggest democratic authority.
It is not easy for a poor voter to resist the
temptation or withstand the intimidation. But it is certainly easier to stand
firm once than to be tested every day for five long years. If the AAP or
AAP-like movements elsewhere in the country are backed by similar show of
character by voters, the 2014 general election may well be transformational.
But, can the non-corrupt
voter have a game-changing impact on Indian politics by merely not being
susceptible to lure or intimidation? For starters, only a poor voter would sell
his or her vote for liquor or a saree or a TV set. The not-so-poor voter,
unless intimidated, cannot be bought with such meager entrapments. For every
compromised or absentee voter, another votes freely in most parts of India. Or
at least they are made to think that they are ‘freely’ exercising their choice.
By all means, most ‘free’ voters in the 2014
elections will decide between Rahul and Modi, secularism and nationalism,
liberalism and fundamentalism, dynasty and Parivar, corruption and growth, and
so on. These are the entirely superficial choices constructed by the mass media
to differentiate among parties that follow fundamentally the same policy when
it comes to governance. This is another major investment by political parties
and corporate interests to fund the intellectual corruption of voters who can’t
be bought for a bottle.
The enormous symbolism of it is mind numbing.
Even the AAP’s battle against corruption is so far only against the symbols of
it — cops and babus taking bribe, a water or power scam or even the 2G scam.
The real corruption is the corruption of state policies in favour of big money.
This corruption enjoys continuity irrespective of political dispensations in
power. That is why a Raja can always point fingers at a Shourie or the UPA can
cite NDA precedence on convenient coal block allocations.
There is very little, if anything, to
distinguish the policies of our national parties on real issues of governance.
It is a combination of allowing a freehand to industry to profiteer at the cost
of our health and natural resources and doling out wanton subsidies to garner
votes. All political outfits do these in the name of national interest that
legitimizes perverse government policies.
And yet, we do not vote on these issues. We do
not question why every government would need to subsidise the basic needs of so
many citizens if the use of natural and human resources was optimized to the
benefit of all rather than a few. Even the righteous middleclass voter, who
routinely pans the political freebies handed out to the poor, rarely questions
the politician-corporate nexus as long as she benefits – a few more jobs and
better salaries -- at the margins of this loot.
But of course the same middleclass voter cribs
about every corrupt cop she encounters. So does the mass media. And both are
rooting for the AAP till now because the party has so far targeted only the
trickle-down effects of big corruption. But it is one thing to back the AAP,
which may or may not extend its promises of change in time to what is
fundamentally wrong with the system, quite another to create illusions of choice
in the traditional politics.
Yet, the systemic intellectual corruption of
voters makes the Congress — the party responsible for a distorted history of
the freedom movement that banned any uncharitable portrayal of its leadership —
a liberal choice. Or it makes the BJP — the party that presided over the brazen
Karnataka mining scams and abandoned tribals in Dang and elsewhere in shining
Gujarat — a remedy for corruption and poverty.
As always, the comments on this article below
will show that a lot many of us believe in these constructs and vote
accordingly, thinking we are exercising our choices when there is none.
The spectacular success of the AAP has created
hope that a swelling proportion of Indian voters will refuse to be lured or
intimidated in the future. That in itself is a big disincentive against corrupt
political (and in turn electoral) funding and is great news for democracy.
Will that ‘free’ voter be able to see through
the entrapment of intellectual corruption next and demand an alternative to the
existing compromised political order? Will the AAP show the way by shifting
focus from mere symptoms to real malaise? That is the biggest challenge for and
expectation from aam aadmi politics in 2014.
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