By a remarkable coincidence, all the headline news developments so far this month had a single leitmotif - pursuit of truth and transparency - and is something that has rarely happened. The theme, normally in the realm of moral science, emerged from events ranging from the American presidential campaign to garden variety daily political grind, from serious geo-strategic game playing to health of leaders, and from cricket-crazy India to the literary world of Europe.
In the United States, the ship SS Trump negotiating the difficult straits of campaigning was caught between the Scylla of past income tax evasion stratagems and the whirlpool of the Charybdis of cringe-worthy lewdness of the candidate with regard to women. These chinks in Donald Trump's polyester armour were long-suspected, but he had tried to brazen them out with his characteristic bravado. The truth, slow to emerge through unimpeachable evidence, has compelled many of his erstwhile supporters to abandon him. In the process, the ambitions of one who would be king are impacted, possibly fatally.
At home, Indian descendants of von Clausewitz debated nightly the realpolitik and effectiveness of surgical strikes across the Line of Control in Kashmir. Yet others played, sometimes in gutter language, the game of truth-and-consequences for national pride, as if the two were mutually exclusive concerns, as a means of providing a fitting reply to the Pakistani propaganda offensive.
Perfectly legitimate concerns of who was in charge of Tamil Nadu while J Jayalalithaa was in the hospital battling unspecified ailments (medical bulletins on her condition did nothing to clear the mystery, actually adding to it) met with our oft-demonstrated trait of traipsing gingerly around the question of physical fitness of our rulers. Hadn't we thought the continuation of comatose ministers in Cabinet (Dinesh Singh, Murasoli Maran, Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi to name some) as perfectly normal? Aspirants to elective office in the West are expected to be as open about their health as their finances and earn censure if they are slightest bit errant as Hillary Clinton discovered recently.
The Supreme Court sternly admonished the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to comply with R M Lodha's recommendations (many of which went beyond the original brief of cleaning up the mess of conflict of interests and speculation in the Indian Premier League two seasons ago). The BCCI had valid objections, but was on a weak wicket because of its record of duplicity. The outing of the real identity of Elena Ferrante, the author of celebrated Italian novels, caused a firestorm of controversy about protecting her privacy among Europe's intelligentsia, even as it added little to the aesthetics.
What this diversity of events shows is that truth is the sole basis of civilised discourse in all societies. It is subject to no statute of limitation. That is as it should be. The economic marketplace needs freedom of entry and exit as well as complete access to information to be competitive. The socio-political exchange needs freedom of expression and questioning spirit and access to truth at all times to be democratic. Competitive markets and open democracy are perfect compliments to each other. Free enterprise and a spirit of inquiry and healthy scepticism walk the talk together.
Dissimulation is not just unethical; it is also self-defeating. Covering up one lie requires recourse to many more. Eventually, the tissue must start unravelling, and when it does, the entire edifice of untruths implodes. This was amply demonstrated in the Watergate scandal of the 1970s and numerous others since. We have not heard the last of the subprime crisis of 2008, when the artful dodges of a few profoundly affected the whole world, from which it has not yet fully recovered. Vijay Mallya's Kingfisher and Big Steel's expansion have exposed the ricketiness of Indian banking, straining the national economy.
We have heard pleas for restricting truth on various grounds, most notably that vaguest of all called national security. Even Mr Trump presumed to lecture Ms Clinton on the need for confidentiality of her emails. The Henderson-Brookes Report on the debacle of 1962 has been kept under wraps for over 50 years by successive governments, even though most people by now have a pretty clear idea of what it contains. Nature abhors vacuum and societies abhor secrecy. If truth is restricted, rumours will swirl, which is far more dangerous.
That astute judge of words (among other things), Mahatma Gandhi, called his autobiography My Experiments with Truth. In the same spirit, Nelson Mandela displayed extraordinary courage when he appointed a Truth and Reconciliation Commission soon after becoming the first freely elected president of the rainbow nation of South Africa. Its demonstrably free functioning contributed in no mean way to bridging the gap of age-old hostility between the majority Africans and the powerful White minority. His eschewing bitterness won him a host of admirers from his one-time captors and tormentors. Truth has wonderful healing properties.
William Shakespeare wrote in The Merchant of Venice, "Truth will come to light; murder cannot be hid long; a man's son may, but at the length truth will out." The question before us as we observe this Vijaya Dashmi, which celebrates the triumph of truth, is: Are we prepared to wait and accept truth in its totality as it emerges?
The writer is an economist who comments on current developments
Disclaimer: These are personal views of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper
