Corruption: the great equaliser in Indian politics

If the UPA does not assuage public anger against graft, there will likely be a heavy political price to pay in 2014 polls

The skeletons of corruption have not stopped tumbling out of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government’s closet. With every passing year, the charge that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has lost his midas touch -- the force with which he led the UPA government in the first term, scoring one success after another -- has gained a lot of intensity.
 

The question arises why the Prime Minister — who is known as the architect of the economic reforms in India  — lost control over the wheels. Political pundits say the answer is simple: lack of political management. Each new day seems to bring fresh charges against one or another minister with the Prime Minister barely escaping the heat. If the UPA does not recognise the public anger against corruption, respect the ideals and values of democracy, and take concrete steps that inspire confidence, there will quite likely be a heavy political price to pay in the next general elections.

 

Given the dismal state that the Manmohan Singh-led government is in, it will be surprising if Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi manages to help his party win back the trust of the nation before the general elections that are slated to be held in 2014.

 

Corruption is usually seen as a moral failure, a fall from grace, on the part of some individuals whose numbers, it is lamented, have grown rapidly of late. Rampant corruption takes place despite the many investigative agencies — the police, the Central vigilance commission, the comptroller and auditor general, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the enforcement directorate, apart from the judiciary and the media. In 2009, 128 of the 543 members of parliament faced criminal charges, including 84 cases of murder, 17 cases of robbery, and 28 cases of theft and extortion. About a fifth of the representatives of the two major parties have been under investigation for criminal activity.

 

Railway minister Pawan Bansal is the latest on a long list of political heavyweights who suffered embarrassment, and often setbacks to their careers, over charges of misdeeds against family members. Last week, the CBI arrested Bansal’s nephew Vijay Singla in Chandigarh on the charge of receiving a bribe from a Railway Board member, apparently to change his posting. Although no direct link has been established so far between the railway minister and the alleged bribery, the development comes as a blow to a government grappling with numerous corruption allegations.

Business Standard takes a hard look at alleged
sins of kin those who wield power

1)  Morarji Desai suffered most at the hands of his own party’s leaders and cabinet ministers when, after he became Prime Minister in 1977, allegations of financial irregularities surfaced against his son Kanti Desai. Madhu Limaye, a noted socialist is alleged to have written a letter to Desai. The letter however, got leaked to the press. In the letter, Limaye had asked for Kanti’s ouster from the PM's residence because he had allegedly collected Rs 80 lakh for party funds and misused his position as PM's son.

 

It was not only Morarji Desai but home minister Charan Singh also whose relatives were alleged to have received favours. On April 11, 1978, Rajya Sabha had adopted a motion for probe into graft charges, of allegations against the families of Prime Minister Morarji Desai and home minister Charan Singh.

 

2)  The photographs of Jagjivan Ram’s son Suresh Ram’s sexual encounter with Sushma Chaudhury, a Delhi University student, which were published in Surya magazine, then edited by Maneka Gandhi. Ram was defence minister in 1978 when lurid pictures of Suresh were published.

 

3)  As his mother Indira Gandhi’s political guide -- though he held no office nor had he been elected to power -- Sanjay Gandhi helped enforce the Emergency (June 25, 1975 to January 18, 1977) and is blamed for the many excesses of her government during that dark period in Indian history.

 

4)  When P V Narasimha Rao was Prime Minister (1991-96), his son Prabhakar Rao was accused of involvement in a “urea scam” though the CBI’s chargesheet filed in May 1996 did not name him. It named nine accused, including M. Sambasiva Rao and B. Sanjeeva Rao (associates and relatives of Rao) and Prakash Chandra Yadav, son of Ram Lakhan Singh Yadav, the fertilisers minister in Rao’s government.

5)  In 2012, anti-corruption campaigners Arvind Kejriwal and Prashant Bhushan alleged that realty major DLF had sweetened land and financial deals for Congress chief and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra in exchange for favours from the Congress governments in Haryana, Delhi and Rajasthan. Vadra, DLF and the Haryana government denied the charges, but the allegations had kicked up a political row across India.

 

6)  On October 31, 2012, India Against Corruption activists cited purported conversations between controversial corporate lobbyist Niira Radia and Atal Bihari Vajpayee's foster son-in-law Ranjan Bhattacharya to say that Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani had boasted that the Congress was under his control. The conversation makes it clear that Ambani had powerful influence over the Congress and the BJP, they claimed.

 

"In the Niira Radia tapes, Ranjan Bhattacharya is heard telling Niira that Mukesh Ambani told him 'Congress to ab apni dukaan hai. BJP signed a sweet deal with RIL in 2000. Congress faithfully implemented it."

 

7)  On February 5, 2008, Union tourism minister Subodh Kant Sahay wrote a letter to the Prime Minister office (PMO) requesting allotment of coal blocks for his brother Sunil Kant Sahay’s company SKS Ispat and Power Limited. The very next day, the PMO directed the Union coal secretary to do the needful and the coal blocks were allotted to him the same day.

 

8) According to CBI, former Maharashta chief minister Ashok Chavan played a major role in the Adarsh scam and misused his official position to grant undue favours to the housing society. In return Chavan's mother-in-law Bhagvati Sharma, sister-in-law Seema Sharma and father-in-law's brother Madanlal Sharma were allotted flats in the society. The Adarsh scam had fuelled a political storm in Maharashtra leading to the resignation of Chavan as the Chief Minister.

 

9)  Former Union chemical and fertilisers minister M K Alagiri's son Durai Dayanidhi went into hiding soon after the police and revenue officials began cracking down on granite companies in August 2012 acting on a report by former Madurai collector U Sagayam alleging an Rs 16,000 crore loss to the government exchequer due to illegal granite quarrying.

 

10)  On March 8, 2013, the CBI quizzed the industrialist-brother of former union minister Santosh Bagrodia's brother Satish Bagrodia who is the chairman of IDS Infotech, one of the suspect companies in the alleged bribery scandal in Rs 3,600-crore VVIP Chopper deal.

 

11)  On June 01, 2007 a special CBI court in Ranchi sentenced 58 persons, including Railways Minister Lalu Prasad’s two nephews  -- Nagendra Yadav and Virendra Yadav --, to jail terms ranging from two and a half years to six years for fraudulently withdrawing Rs 48 crore from the Chaibasa treasury in the 1990s. The 950-crore fodder scam was unearthed in the mid 1990s during undivided Bihar.

 

12)  On July 31, 2009 former Union minister and former governor Buta Singh's son, Sarobjit Singh , was arrested by the CBI for allegedly demanding a bribe of Rs 1 crore from a Nashik-based contractor to close an atrocity case against him pending before the National Commission for Scheduled Castes, which was headed by his father.