The triple witching hour

It’s the triple witching hour for the government. Market men will tell you, in their parlance, it is simply a Friday that comes once every quarter, when a series of stock options, index futures and stock futures expires in the last hour of trade. What it does and can do is cause unprecedented volatility and mayhem. And traders who are less than eagle-eyed will get their fingers and books burnt.

For the Manmohan Singh-led government, the timing of a series of high-profile and embarrassing corruption scams couldn’t have come at a faster, thicker pace, even if the hardly-there-opposition had orchestrated every move. First there was Kalmadi, then there was Mumbai’s Adarsh housing scam and now one helluva Titanic — the telecom spectrum allocation scam spearheaded by A Raja.

By all estimates, the telco scam lightened Pranab Mukherjee’s wallet by anything from Rs 66,000 crore to Rs 1.76 lakh crore, depending on which valuation you choose to go by. The Finance Minister, who has the task of taming the fiscal deficit and allocating spending on the never-ending social sector schemes of the government, couldn’t have slept over a greater missed opportunity to bring in the money that rightfully belongs to the exchequer.

But going back to the triple witching hour parallel, traders will tell you that if they are careful they can avoid losses because there are usually no unexpected variables to watch for.

And so too it could have been for this government. Except that there is an unexpected guest at the party. The party pooper here is a big, respected fellow, who seldom turns up at the usual gigs, but is a head-turner when he does. Let’s say, the star attraction who can make or break a gala.

We all know it as the Supreme Court. Even though the scam has been brewing for nearly three years, ducking directives and a so-called investigation that has been underway, it’s really the questions asked by the court that turned the heat on Raja, who the for most part has been unrelenting and unrepentant.

It’s the apex court that has come down on the government to ask why it chose to drag its feet on the allegations and complaints of corruption, and why the investigating authorities are taking as long as they are to uncover India’s biggest scam.

There’s also another uninvited guest at the party — Ratan Tata — who merely hinted to the world that Tata had trouble getting a much-desired airline business together because of a possible demand for bribe money. It is, though, a skimpy revelation, and may have come too late. Still, the result of this combination of noises is that it’s delivered a never-before opportunity of the stand-up-and be-counted kind.

For years, Indian businesses and people have lived with at least three forms of corruption — pay to get what they don’t really deserve, pay to get what they rightfully deserve, and no pay and no get, or opportunity lost. Indians have spent too much time currying favour with government authorities in trying to get things done, and in many ways empowered the government beyond its brief, making it a determiner rather than an enabler.

We as a people have failed to demand greater transparency and better governance that leaves very little room for the corrupt — be they business houses, individuals or government authorities.

Those guilty of perpetrating this scam should pay for the loss of public money and be barred from a similar interface, in business or governance.

There is no reason why the people of this country should live with less than they deserve. The spectrum money should be recovered and put to use for the inclusive growth that this government has at its heart.

If we as a nation fail, we will all be equal partners in building not just the world's largest democracy, but also an impossibly corrupt one.

(Anjana Menon is executive editor, NDTV Profit. The views expressed here are personal)