Opinion Rules of the House

The first message is that Indian politicians are never serious about institutions. They are primarily looking for pretexts to disrupt. They don’t pursue matters as serious as buying votes with any degree of consistency; they only invoke it as a talking point when convenient. So much so that they would rather treat a conversation in WikiLeaks as gospel than trust their own processes when convenient. The scandal is not what WikiLeaks revealed. The scandal is that all parties,including the BJP,had let go of what was,one way or another,a scandal. And now they feign horror.

The need of the hour is for Parliament to project authority. This has two aspects. The first is making parliamentary institutions more credible. So much political effort was put into securing a JPC that will yield doubtful results,just as the cash-for-votes scam investigation did. Not an iota of political capital has been put into strengthening the committee and oversight system in Parliament that could possibly have prevented us from falling into this morass. If the various standing committees that are supposed to exercise oversight over respective ministries had exercised their accountability functions and asked tough questions earlier,we would have been in a far better position. But the strengthening of their oversight of the executive is not even on the radar. Again,the pretext of accountability triumphs over its substance.

The second issue is this. Parliament is not merely a stage for expressive histrionics; it is an assembly meant to legislate. The range of pending legislation is staggering. Some of this legislation is critical: the more we delay tax reform,land acquisition legislation,etc,the more we are jeopardising our well-being. Adversarial jostling can go on. But Parliament’s credibility requires that actual legislative business now proceed. The public wants functioning institutions. Unfortunately,political parties seem to equate functioning with mutual exposé rather than legislation. If debating corruption becomes an alibi for not moving forward with critical legislation,it will only add insult to injury. In the zeal to embarrass each other,both the big political parties are forgetting one simple fact. As entertaining as it is to watch parties accuse each other of hypocrisy,corruption standards and feigned horror,the need of the hour is for someone to rise above the MAM (mutually assured meanness) syndrome into an act of real statesmanship.

But if Parliament is undermining itself even more under the pretext of debating corruption,the same danger now extends to other institutions. First,the atmosphere of “presumptive” guilt is now threatening to pose risks in four ways. Let us begin at the basics. The issue of corruption is primarily about chasing illicit money trails. These should be pursued. But now we are reaching a point where every policy decision can be characterised as corrupt merely because we happen to disagree with it. It is important that those holding government accountable,whether it be courts,independent bodies or the media,do not infer corruption merely from the substance of policy decisions. Such an approach to decision-making will further weaken the capacity of the state to take decisions. We may agree or disagree,but we cannot operate under the illusion that exercising policy choice should not be the prerogative of government.

Second,the atmosphere of presumptive guilt is,in all likelihood,demoralising the good more than it is deterring the truly wicked. Corruption seriously undermines the legitimacy of a state. But its legitimacy and effectiveness are equally undermined if the honest and sincere are made to feel unduly vulnerable. In subtle ways,this is being felt in a range of activities from banks not lending to the morale of civil servants. The trivial ease with which reputations are being trashed now seriously exposes us to this risk.

Third,the scramble for punitive action should not blind us to due process. We should be wary of giving institutions like the CBI and income-tax department carte blanche powers to go on fishing expeditions. The manner in which the income-tax notice to the Gujarat government was framed certainly reminded us of that. It is true that process has often been used as an alibi for inaction. But we have to ensure that anti-corruption drives do not become a pretext for state agencies to enhance their powers in ways that lead to even more insidious corruption later. Like Parliament,they are being used as pretexts to embarrass more than they are being used as sources of truth.

Fourth,the essence of corruption is that public office is used instrumentally for personal gain. But in the name of fighting corruption,our institutions risk enacting the very same instrumentalism. Parliament does this when it constantly succumbs to the logic of pretexts and reduces itself to an opportunistic spectacle; other institutions do this when they lose patience with fine distinctions. Our biggest corruption may come from the fact that it is now more important to be seen to be doing things than actually achieving something. We have reduced ourselves to a spectacle.

The writer is president,Centre for Policy Research,Delhi express@expressindia.com