MONEY-GRABBING SCANDALS AMONG CIVIL SERVANTS IN INDIA
HAVE INSPIRED CONTESTS AND INVESTIGATIONS (TIME International Magazine
September 23, 1996 Volume 148, No. 13)
ANTHONY SPAETH
These are nervous days for corrupt Indian officials:
cops and prosecutors are working overtime on the largest accretion of
high-smelling scandals India has ever known. Public disgust is written on
the nation's walls--and some other unexpected spots. At a recent gathering
in New Delhi, more than 100 women competed to draw the most eye-catching
designs on their palms in mehndi, or henna, a traditional art. The winning
design was an intricate floral, but second and third places went to
contestants who used skin as a medium of protest against bribes and
rake-offs. Most of the entrants were similarly inspired, drawing officials
sitting on sacks of money and caricatures of politicians accused of
corruption, including former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao. The most
fervent allowed the designs to go off the palm and all the way up to their
elbows.
Which is not surprising in a land chin deep in official
venality. "We're talking about a pervasive phenomenon," says
Samuel Paul, director of the Public Affairs Center, a polling organization
in Bangalore that releases regular "report cards" on government
performance. Politicians catch most of the heat because they accumulate
the plumpest moneybags. In just one of the scandals dominating the
newspapers, investigators raided the residence of former
Telecommunications Minister Sukh Ram in August and found piles of bank
notes. In a single raid in New Delhi, they toted away $700,000, and more
was discovered in another house belonging to the former minister in his
hometown.
But on the whole, more cash is accumulated by India's
vast army of salaried government employees, numbering nearly 20 million,
who siphon away development project funds, hold up approvals for bribes,
or demand payment for such privileges as getting a telephone or even, in
some cities, sleeping on the pavement. They are rarely caught and never
have to worry about being booted out in an election.
But now some heat is being fanned their way. A handful
of high-profile civil servants have published books that expose rampant
official wrongdoing, especially at the senior levels. "The system has
become rotten," says K.J. Alphons, whose book Making a Difference
details how he has made an ongoing career of fighting corruption in
various jobs. "Public money is being stolen, but even honest,
hardworking officers just keep quiet. This is the curse of the
country." And the shrill sound of whistle blowing is coming from
other levels too. In Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, members
of the Indian Administrative Service are trying to "out" their
dirtiest colleagues: these bureaucrats plan to cast secret ballots to name
the state's most underhanded officials. The three who garner the greatest
number of votes will be exposed, and an independent panel will probe
allegations against each one who earns more than 100 votes. Officials in
the neighboring state of Bihar are planning a similar exercise. "It
is time we called a spade a spade," says Uttar Pradesh's Home
Secretary, G. Patnaik.
Efforts to reverse the situation will require not spades
but bulldozers. After independence in 1947, Indians were confident that
homegrown bureaucrats would be more dedicated and honorable than the
retreating British, and a job in either the ias or the Foreign Service was
a mark of towering prestige. But low salaries, poor discipline and the
power to make or break business deals--which had to be officially
approved--turned many bureaucrats to careers of soliciting bribes. Others
remained personally honest but kept mum about the misdeeds around them.
Election commissioner T.N. Seshan, in a book called The Degeneration of
India, identifies the Emergency Rule of the late Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi in the mid-1970s as the turning point. Civil servants carried out
illegal orders, helped Mrs. Gandhi jail her opponents and, Seshan writes,
"almost gleefully" helped gag the press. "The bureaucracy,
for the most part, utterly caved in," he concludes. "Over the
years, the practice of corruption has become so endemic that it has
acquired a veneer of almost complete legality." Fellow author J.N.
Dixit, until recently the top bureaucrat in India's Foreign Ministry,
complains in a new book that India's best and brightest do not apply for
the Foreign Service anymore because the pickings are better in domestic
posts. Madhav Godbole, secretary of New Delhi's Ministry of Home Affairs
in the early 1990s, concludes that there is too much political
interference in the civil service. "This is now a mutually
reinforcing system with each aiding and abetting the other in getting the
maximum out of the spoils system," he writes in Unfinished Innings.
But a handful of honchos looking back in anger and
disgust will not solve many problems, and few other initiatives are
trickling down from the top. Probably the only real hope is for local
action. Earlier this year in Rajasthan state, villagers suspecting that
government funds for development work such as water supply or health care
were being pocketed, demanded to see records proving the money had been
disbursed. The bureaucracy resisted but finally gave in when the villagers
continued public protests. If India is getting fed up with corruption, the
people will have to send the message however they can--even if it is
painted on the hands of their young women.
--Reported by Meenakshi Ganguly/New Delhi |
