Opinion Reducing Corruption to Twitter

Everyone is getting into the act from television anchors to big businessmen,supposedly high-minded politicians to ponderous political analysts and I fear that the end result is going to be zero. Shunya. This is because what we are not discussing at all are the changes that must be made for India to become less corrupt as a nation. It is easy to understand why politicians,no matter what their hue,would not be interested in serious measures to end corruption because they all want their turn at the trough. But,we in the media need to be more vigilant about leaked information and there is no sign this is happening.

We need to be more critical of this nonsensical stalling of Parliament over the demand for a joint parliamentary committee. It is a terrific way to divert attention from the real issue,which is that the reason why corruption has reached such unimaginable proportions in recent years is because the licence raj has not yet been fully dismantled.

Had it been,there would be no room for the vast discretionary powers that politicians and high officials continue to enjoy in our ‘liberalised’ economy. Had the Indian economy been truly liberalised,these discretionary powers would have been replaced by clear rules and regulations and there would have been real competition among big businessmen instead of the cronyism that remains at the core of the scams that currently hold our attention.

We are lucky that because there was a feeble sort of private sector in existence,despite decades of Nehruvian socialism,we did not end up facing what Russia did after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Our high officials could have ended up as oligarchs,as happened in Russia,but because there were real industrialists around,it was they who saw the opportunities that came after the economic reforms began and grabbed them. What our high officials ensured was that they did not give everything away for free and they ensured this by deliberate obfuscation in areas of policy. The most important thing that Niira Radia’s taped telephone conversations reveal is how much influence peddling is still possible and if this is possible,it must mean that the licence raj continues to exist.

This is not just in the aptly named ATM ministries,but even in such supposedly unprofitable ministries like education and health. Licences to set up schools and colleges have been so liberally distributed to politicians,that it is hard to find a major political leader these days who is not running some educational institution. The Health Ministry offers its own possibilities for profit and patronage and remains unreformed,despite everyone being fully aware that the main cause of rural debt is sickness. The real scam in India is that despite vast amounts of taxpayers money being spent on public healthcare and education,any Indian who can afford it,uses private schools and hospitals. Our appalling public services disable India and prevent millions of our citizens from benefiting from an economy that is today acknowledged as growing second fastest in the world. That is our real scam and we have not even begun to discuss it.

So if we are really interested in reducing corruption at high levels of government,what we must all demand,in loud voices,is a reduction in the discretionary powers that high officials enjoy. We need transparent and clear rules that would guarantee that nobody setting up an airline or a cell phone company can influence policy changes or reduce competition. This is what we should be talking about instead of twittering on and on about scams in this silly way.

Follow Tavleen Singh on Twitter @ tavleen_singh