Corruption is not the monopoly of any single ethnic community: Jawed Naqvi. — File Photo

Last week, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh urged a meeting of India’s federal police (CBI) to go after the ‘big fish’ in a campaign to weed out deep-rooted corruption. This exercise has been going on since 1947 when more than Nehru his son-in-law Feroze Gandhi waged a momentarily successful battle against deviant tycoons and their political patrons.

The finance minister last week promised to crack the numbered accounts in Switzerland where business tycoons, bureaucrats, politicians, movie stars, among others, are thought to illegally keep billions of dollars. The only problem in this is that the finance minister is too closely identified with businessmen whose reputation in the realm of probity is not worthy of emulation.

In Pakistan, the courts and government bosses were criticised over the hoarding of sugar among other vital commodities ahead of Ramazan. Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif told sugar mills to bring their stocks to market within 24 hours or their stocks would be seized. It’s difficult to keep track of, much less name, the men and women who have been caught or let off while indulging in large-scale graft in Pakistan.

Corruption evidently is not the monopoly of any single ethnic or religious community. Therefore, when communally motivated Pakistanis or Bangladeshis use the phrase ‘wily Baniya’ for either Mahatma Gandhi or other Hindu leaders in India they should go back to the address by Mohammed Ali Jinnah to Pakistan’s constituent assembly on August 11, 1947. The Quaid spent a good part of his speech to address the scourge of corruption and bribery, ostensibly among Muslims. Jaswant Singh has quoted the text in his adulatory book on Pakistan’s founder leader.

‘One of the biggest curses from which India is suffering - I do not say that other countries are free from it, but, I think our condition is much worse - is bribery and corruption. That really is a poison,’ said Jinnah. ‘We must put that down with an iron hand and I hope that you will take adequate measures as soon as it is possible for this assembly to do so.

‘Black-marketing is another curse. Well, I know that blackmarketeers are frequently caught and punished. Judicial sentences are passed or sometimes fines only are imposed. Now you have to tackle this monster, which today is a colossal crime against society, in our distressed conditions, when we constantly face shortage of food and other essential commodities of life.

A citizen who does black-marketing commits, I think, a greater crime than the biggest and most grievous of crimes. These blackmarketeers are really knowing, intelligent and ordinarily responsible people, and when they indulge in black-marketing, I think they ought to be very severely punished, because the entire system of control and regulation of foodstuffs and essential commodities, and cause wholesale starvation and want and even death.’

In India, a major initiative to tackle corruption in high places came this month from the Supreme Court, whereby its judges made it mandatory for themselves to post their financial assets on an official website. High court judges are expected to follow the example. This of course is a very small beginning towards eliminating what really amounts to centuries of criminality towards fellow Indians.

The decision of the Supreme Court judges does not, however, obviate the need for a law to make such public declarations compulsory. The Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reform (CJAR) has argued that the law must provide for an annual public declaration of assets and liabilities as well as income tax returns of all public servants, not just the judges.

It is only when people can compare the assets of public servants with their legal sources of income, that one can catch public servants who have acquired assets disproportionate to their legal income. According to CJAR, the argument that income tax returns or asset disclosures of public servants is an unwarranted invasion of privacy of public servants is specious, since in a democracy, the people who are the real sovereign are entitled to know whether their public servants are paying their taxes and whether they have acquired assets which are disproportionate to their legal income.

Apart from this, there is a serious problem with the method of appointing judges to the higher judiciary. There is not only no transparency in the process, there is also no system or method followed for preparing shortlists or for choosing among eligible candidates. This comment on potential nepotism by the CJAR though specific to the Indian system, has in its crosshairs an issue that Jinnah found important enough to flag at the outset of Pakistan’s tryst with sovereignty.’

The next thing (after corruption and bribery) that strikes me is this: Here again it is a legacy which has been passed on to us. Along with many other things, good and bad, has arrived this great evil, the evil of nepotism and jobbery. I want to make it quite clear that I shall never tolerate any kind of jobbery, nepotism or any influence directly or indirectly brought to bear upon me. Whenever I will find that such a practice is in vogue or is continuing anywhere, low or high, I shall certainly not countenance it,’ Jinnah told the constituent assembly.

The Quaid’s assault on corruption was probably rooted in his experience of Bengal where the British government and the Indian comprador classes wreaked havoc by creating a man-made famine in 1943. Various estimates of the total number of famine deaths that year have been made that range up to 5 million. A detailed American analysis of this tragedy estimated 3.5 to 3.8 million as the excess mortality due to starvation and attendant disease in 1943-1946.

The magnitude of this event and its continuing consequences can be gauged from the increase in population of West Bengal plus East Bengal (Bangladesh) of only 3 million in the period 1941 to 1951 as compared to a population growth of 11 million in the period 1931 to 1941. Hoarding and black-marketing of grain resulted in unprecedented increase in price. Bengalis having to purchase food (e.g. landless labourers) suffered immensely - thus it is estimated that about 30 per cent of one particular labourer class died in the famine.

Corruption of course is not a feature exclusive to South Asia. Transparency International in its report for 2008 ranked the United States at 20, three notches more corrupt than the UK at 17. However, by comparison India (86) fares a shade worse than China (73). On the other hand, Sri Lanka (95), Pakistan (136), Bangladesh (147) can boast of being less corrupt than American-administered Iraq (178) or Afghanistan (176).

India’s problem with corruption has not been helped by its new economic policies, prescribed by Dr Singh, which have spurred a race to become rich quickly, more often than not by unethical means. From stockbroker Harshad Mehta to Ramalinga Raju of Satyam, the premier IT giant, the path is littered with icons created and deserted by the pink dailies. Gandhi who mixed freely with the business community, especially from his native state of Gujarat and neighbouring Rajasthan, called them the trustees of India.

It was not without a hint of irony that he was assassinated in Birla House, once owned by his friend and confidant, a tycoon. In the early days during Nehru’s rule a book was published in the form of a detailed account of massive tax evasion carried out by this friend of Gandhi. The Birlas are said to have bought all the copies and the copyright of the investigative book Mystery of the Birla House, written by Debjyoti Burman. One copy escaped and is kept in the rare books section of the Nehru Memorial Library. The book needs to be read and emulated by journalists and writers in all South Asian countries, including India.

jawednaqvi@gmail.com