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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Anna comes down to earth-TK Arun

Anna comes down to earth-TK Arun

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published Published on Aug 4, 2012   modified Modified on Aug 4, 2012
-The Times of India

A middleclass dream that politics can be redeemed by means other than politics has just ended, with Team Anna’s decision to launch a political party and join the fray. Many of his ardent supporters and well-wishers have registered deep disappointment. Anna is becoming part of the problem, they cry. The problem was with the hope that gods out of the machine can serve up deliverance on a platter, so long as those who wanted it cried for it fervently enough in front of their flat panel TVs.  

The notion that corruption could be tackled by creating one powerful ombudsman was ridiculous, all along. Corruption in India is systemic, not incidental. Corruption is what funds Indian democracy, whether we like it or not. There is no institutional means of financing the tens of thousands of crore rupees that our political parties spend to keep democracy going: paying full-time workers, travelling, sometimes by chartered planes, running offices across the country, organising events, printing publicity material, paying for advertising, paying off pesky blackmailers within their parties and without, apart from the huge spending on elections. In the absence of institutional funding, parties and politicians mobilise money through loot of the exchequer, sale of state patronage and plain extortion. Of course, since these are non-institutional forms of resource mobilisation, no paper trail is created and large parts of the money raised go to their own personal fortunes. Since all these forms of raising funds entail collusion of civil servants, they also turn corrupt for the most part and the whole system loses accountability. This is the only reason why governance is in a shambles in this country and India ranks low in global surveys on ease of doing business. The neta-babu nexus creates elaborate procedural hurdles, to cross each of which money has to change hands.

We need three kinds of reform to tackle corruption. Political funding must become institutionalised. This does not and should not mean state funding. It should mean mandating weekly and monthly public disclosure of political expenditure of all kinds by every party and politician at every level, starting from the village and simultaneous disclosure of the source of financing that expenditure. These should be open to contestation by rival political parties, the media and independent watchdogs. A body like the Election Commission should be in charge of moderating the contest. Such public disclosure of verifiable expenditure and income, available at an individual level of disaggregation, would go a long way to clean up both politics and corporate governance.

If politicians take money, someone has to be paying. And those who pay are, for the most part, thoe who run companies, who take the money out of their companies. Which means that the audited accounts that reputed audit firms piously sign off on are all less than robust. Cleaning up political funding would mean that companies and captain of industry disclose what they pay which politician and party, so that corporate reporting and governance also become credible.

The second reform required is to vastly expand the judiciary and reform procedure so that no case takes longer than a couple of years to be disposed of beyond final appeal. This is entirely achievable. India today has the resources to appoint judges, build court rooms, deploy first rate information technology in judicial processes and achieve fast disposal of cases. Today, even if the corrupt get caught, the judicial system ensures that no one would go to jail.

The third leg of reform is administrative. The fifth pay commission had recommended that all transfers and postings be made according to laid down policy and procedure, and that any deviation from the norm should be approved by a high-level committee at the state or central level, for reasons that are recorded. Assurance of tenure would give a whole lot more civil servants and police officers a whole lot more spine to remain loyal to the Constitution. This, in combination with police reform, to depoliticise the force, make it professional and make it well-paid and well-staffed, would make the system more accountable and effective.

Who can bring in these changes? Only politicians can, and through the political process. Public pressure and competition from new political parties can herald the change.

The Congress is, right now, licking its chops in delight, at the prospect of a new Anna party dividing the likely deluge of  anti-incumbency votes in 2014. Such is the disgust with the old order that, if the new party sets a new paradigm in transparent resource mobilisation and recruiting honest young activists and workers, it could wipe the smirk off the face of the existing political class.

The ills of democracy can be cured, ultimately, only by more robust democracy, not by superheroes. Anna’s problem is not that he doesn’t wear a cape and tights.

The Times of India, 3 August, 2012, http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cursor/entry/anna-comes-down-to-earth


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