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The zero tolerance imperative by Arvind Singhal

Four disturbing trends that need tackling are food adulteration, drug counterfeiting, environmental degradation and corruption

The strong and sustained growth of the Indian economy over the last 17-18 years has delivered many very creditable outcomes for its people at large. While a lot more needs to be done on a sustained basis for many more decades if the growth has to be truly inclusive for all Indians, this should not take the credit away from what has been achieved in the last two decades.

However, with a much larger economy, there are some very fundamentally disturbing trends that not only have to be acknowledged and studied in much greater and much more holistic detail, but also have to be tackled with absolutely zero tolerance, much the same way the country needs to have a zero tolerance policy on terrorism or mass murders or any act of war against the nation.

Of all these trends, the four most disturbing include adulteration of food products, counterfeiting and other malpractices relating to healthcare services and products, environmental degradation, and corruption at the highest levels involving national resources that will be irreplaceable for the present or future generations, or else entail a very steep cost to the present and future generations.

When the size of India’s economy was really small, and therefore expenditure levels — be it public spending or private — much smaller too, it attracted petty crooks and criminals, and sometimes, ground-level support at the lowest levels of the administrative machinery and political patronage. Hence, most of these misdemeanors did not really cause grave damage to people or the country at large, and even this damage was largely limited to some small revenue leakage for the government and the society itself. As the size of expenditure and consumption has increased, so has the incentive to abuse the systemic weaknesses. The significantly higher quantum of financial gains leads to emergence of “organised” criminal activity, and also organised “supply and distribution” chains in much the same way as in any large legitimate industry such as automobiles and telecom. Worse, with potential gains to the perpetrators and operators of such criminal activity running into hundreds and thousands and even tens of thousands of crores every year, their ability to offer massive payouts as well as wield massive threats increases manifold, leading to emergence of an extremely potent nexus between such organised criminal syndicates and the very top echelons of administrative and regulatory machinery, and the political class. The only thing that can come in their way could be a free, bold, and investigative press, but with such humungous stakes, even that has the potential to be compromised.

A random scan of news stories in the national media during the last few months will show an increasing frequency and increasing scale of criminal activity, be it relating to adulteration of food products (about Rs 6,000 crores is the estimated market size for adulterated sweets, amounting to about 30 per cent of the total market; about Rs 14,000 crores, which is about 10 per cent of the total market, is the size of the adulterated milk business, and about Rs 20,000 crores out of Rs 100,000 crores is the size of the adulterated edible oil business — to just list the three largest categories. There is massive adulteration in other categories such as spices, pulses, jaggery [and other food products too] or healthcare [Delhi alone may has as many as 40,000 quacks practising along with about 40,000 registered and qualified ones; the spurious drug market size is already over Rs 6,000 crores or about 20 per cent of the total, and the spurious / contaminated blood market about Rs 250 crores or about 20 per cent of the total market]). As far as environmental degradation is concerned, one only has to scan stories on what is happening in Rajasthan, Goa, Karnataka and elsewhere, where large-scale, unchecked mining is creating ill-gotten gains running into hundreds of crores for the involved parties and enabling some of them to acquire the highest levels of political influence. And finally, lack of transparency in allocation / divestment and pricing of national assets such as spectrum, hydrocarbons, land, power, and infrastructural projects has on one the hand created new dollar billionaires and centi-millionaires almost overnight, and on the other, potentially subjected the Indian masses to perpetually paying higher prices for lowered quality of products and services.

Since each of these criminal activities has the potential to cause mass-deaths of Indian citizens and mass-disruptions to the nation’s integrity, there should be a zero tolerance policy on such acts. Mere fiscal penalties or an occasional criminal conviction is not going to be an effective deterrent.