How political corruption works in India

Like sin, it persists in many variations and gradations in India. Indeed, “it” — political corruption — is quite possibly at its zenith in contemporary India.

This is what political reformers say. They point to the general agreement that the so-called underground economy — “black money,” among other illicit funds — is at least as large as India’s $2 trillion GDP. They lament that accountability is only a notional concept in Indian politics. They rue that successive governments paid lip service to cleaning up the polity, but that once words left those lips they somehow transmogrified into heaps of liquidity in illegal foreign bank accounts.

As India awaited its new government Thursday — the election results will be known today around noon — corruption was high among the topics being discussed by the political cognoscenti. Of course, everyone speculated about which party or grouping would gain the most number of seats in the 543-member national parliament. The winning party or victorious combination would earn the right to form the new government.

With that right, the sceptics said, would naturally come the right to earn more than the official salaries of ministers and parliamentarians. Call it supplementary compensation, or call it thickening the paycheck. Whatever you call it, there’s a lot of money to be made by getting elected to parliament – and even more money if one is made a member of the cabinet.

Essentially, here’s how it works:

Suppose Jairam Nath wants to open a widget factory in a rural region. He approaches Minister Ramesh Kamal, whose portfolio includes rural development. The minister flatly turns down the applicant. Then the minister goes to a senior advisor of his party, who whispers a certain figure in his ear. That figure is circuitously conveyed to Nath, the businessman, who makes the appropriate financial deposits in certain bank accounts. When those deposits have cleared, official authorisation for his factory miraculously materialises.

To be sure, there are several variations of this shell game. But say this for political corruption: it is politically nonpartisan. Regardless of a party’s ideological hue, the colour of Indian politics is green, as in green American dollars.

The question of the color of money was raised Thursday by Raghuram Rajan, governor of the Reserve Bank of India in Shimla. When asked about the composition of the incoming government, Rajan — whose organisation is technically supposed to be free from political pressures — said that his more pressing concerns were five:

Inflation — including food prices — the pace of economic growth, the growing fiscal deficit, and the current account deficit.

Those listening to the acclaimed economist opined that they hoped incipient members of the incoming government were paying attention to Rajan.

Or were they? The prospect of minting money while in office somehow seems far more attractive in India’s political circles than dealing with mere issues of mere national economic significance.

— news@khaleejtimes.com

• India