Past forward: Pioneers in Corruption

Corruption is no doubt a major election issue. If the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance Government is staring down the barrel now, it is because of the spate of corruption charges against it. The UPA Government saw one skeleton tumbling out of its cupboard after another with breathless frequency during its second term, seriously eroding its credibility and contributing to the anti-incumbency sentiment.

Is fighting corruption so rampant an evil that other issues of concern to the common man like rising prices, inflation, health, safe drinking water, employment do not matter at all? Why all this hullabaloo about corruption? Indira Gandhi put it in perspective when she said corruption was a global phenomenon, not endemic to our country only. Implicit in her observation was perhaps a suggestion that what cannot be cured, should be endured. The bottom line appears to be ‘grin and bear’.

Times are changing; so are values. What was good or bad yesterday need not, as a rule, be so today. ‘The quality of mercy is not strained; it is twice blessed. It blessed him that gives and him that takes,’ says Shakespeare in The Merchant of Venice. Substitute ‘bribe’ for ‘mercy,’ it fits wonderfully. Poor Arthur Cotton, who had built the anicut across the Godavari at Dhowlaiswaram and the KC canal in Rayalaseema, is to this day remembered and even worshipped by the grateful millions for his service. Believe it or not, the British Government had initiated impeachment proceedings against him for financial irregularities of a negligible nature. Can we believe this? In the Nizam’s times, I have it from old-timers, that a cup of tea and pan were enough to get your job done in a sarkari daftar. The price of favour was as ridiculously low as that.

Corruption, bribery, scam, scandals were words alien to me until as a boy in early teens I heard my father and many others chant the name ‘Mundhra’ as if it were a mantra. An uncle showed me a big house in Adikmet and said it belonged to a chief engineer who took a lot of ‘lanchams’. That was my introduction to this global phenomenon.

Successive governments of free India have enriched the tradition of corruption by varying degrees, from the time of Jawaharlal Nehru to Manmohan Singh. Google search throws blinding light on scams: then and now. Some websites have even hosted ‘Halls of Infamy’ with the names and history of the tainted persons scrolled for the benefit of posterity.

The Mundhra scandal involved a mere Rs 1.24 crore, but led to the resignation of the Finance Miniter, TT Krishnamachari, and imprisonment of the central character, Haridas Mundhra, in an astonishingly fast enquiry process. The man who had blown the lid off the scandal was Feroze Gandhi, opposition MP and son-in-law of the Prime Minister, Nehru.

Bofors gun deal was another big scandal of yesterday involving pay-off of Rs 64 crore, again a pittance by present standards. The rip-off by The Hindu, known for its staid and sedate presentation of news, led to the defeat of the Rajiv Gandhi-led Congress party in the 1989 elections. To think that only five years before, Rajiv Gandhi had won a mandate that had far exceeded his illustrious grandfather’s. In contrast to the quick disposal of the Mundhra case, the last word is yet to be said of the la affaire Bofors nearly a quarter century later. The pay-offs amounted to Rs 64 crores, hardly meeting the minimum level of a thousand crores to be regarded as bribe.

The loss estimated by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India to the country on account of the 2G spectrum scam or of the coal blocks allotment scam is put at Rs 1,76,000 crore to Rs 1,86,000 crore. An interesting coincidence is that the scale of the scams is almost identical to the speed of light at 1,86,000 miles per second.

Nearer home, some high-brow politicians, corporate honchos and top bureaucrats had cooled (or are still cooling) their heels in prison for involvement in recent scams. SA Venkatraman, Secretary to the Ministry of Commerce and Industry in the Union government, was the first ICS bureaucrat to go to jail in 1951 in a cycle parts import scam. But the notorious Telugu who made world news for his fraudulent activities was Dr Jayanti Dharma Teja of the Jayanti Shipping Corporation in the early sixties. A globe-trotting businessman with a passion for all things beautiful in the world, Dharma Teja wormed his way into the heart of a gullible Jawaharlal Nehru and using that connection swindled the Government of India and Japanese shipping companies. He was tried and sent to jail. He secured asylum in Costa Rica, with which India has no extradition treaty. Wonder of wonders, the Costa Rican President was quoted as saying that Teja would enjoy status on par with him.

Teja had informally met a few journalists in Hyderabad in the mid-70s. I remember it was a place behind Ravindra Bharati. My seniors – I was the youngest of them all, told me to take down notes scrupulously while they enjoyed the drinks. However, the interaction did not yield any copy. Just blah blah.