By Patricia Mukhim
To be in Delhi at a time when the UPA is bungling its way through Hazare’s anti-corruption campaign is very revealing. The way the Anna issue is being handled looks like a badly managed circus. While on my morning walk in the Lodi Gardens all I could hear were exchanges between morning walkers about what’s wrong with this country, with the UPA regime and the growing spectre of corruption at every level in this country. Indeed, the UPA has badly misjudged the strength of the anti-corruption movement and the momentum it has gathered across India. Two friends who walked right behind me and within hearing distance said what India needs today are strong checks and balances which are absent under the present system. They pointed to the 1.76 lakh crore 2G scam and swore that it was not a notional scam as counterpoised by present Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal. Money has changed hands they observed and some companies have paid money to get into the 2G game. That money they said should be recovered from those people who had been paid. Considering that the two discussants were well-heeled bureaucrats, knowledgeable about what they were avidly articulating there was no way you could say they spoke through their hats.
The two even suggested that a thorough probe by an independent agency is called for to see who benefited how much from the 2G scam. What irked them apparently is that those top notch firms which were named and shamed in the Telecom scam were let off too easily after a very light rap on the knuckles by someone wearing kid gloves. The firms are going about doing business as usual. And that precisely is the point about corruption. Things seem to settle down too quickly and everyone forgets the damage that corruption does to the moral psyche of people as more and more join the bandwagon because it seems so easy to get away with corruption. It’s heartening to read that Shillong too had its share of responsive citizens who were in solidarity with Anna Hazare and his supporters across the length and breadth of India.
A senior bureaucrat sent me a copy of a news item filed by IANS Goa where members of a civil society group in that State have asked ministers in the Congress-led coalition government to observe Thursday as a ‘bribe free day’ in support of Anna Hazare. The news says that people of Goa, tired of the many scandals tumbling out of the Goa cabinet’s closet and inspired by Hazare’s crusade against corruption, called the Village Groups of Goa (VGG), an umbrella group of several vigilante civil society organisations, said the ‘moral spin offs’ of Anna Hazare’s fight had reached the state. ‘If they cannot be non corrupt forever, we have asked every cabinet minister in Goa to at least observe one bribe free day to show their support for Anna Hazare,’ John Pereira, VGG convenor, said.
The VGG is telling every minister not to accept bribes or discuss any deals which involve kickbacks. Pereira said that the VGG members would visit the homes of Goa’s ministers and silently and peacefully hold placards ‘thanking them for not accepting bribe for at least one day. In the last few years Goa a small state has been rocked by repeated scams, involving corruption in a wide range of sectors such as mining, narcotics, fake currency, excise and midday meals. The Goa crusade made me think of Meghalaya. Is everything hunky dory here? Have all the skeletons tumbled out of steel and wooden almirahs because we have become adept at computers? Or are we all too complacent about finding out anything more because it involves rubbing too many people up the wrong way and we run the risk of making too many enemies?
The other day I learnt from a very well placed source that we in Shillong actually receive highly polluted water through our pipes. Guess where that water comes from? There is only one major source – the Greater Shillong Water Supply project (GSWSP). And who runs that entire system? Not the PHE minister. Not the current one and certainly not those who have held the departments in the past. This system has been run and is still being controlled and run by an electrical engineer who has turned the GSWSP into a fiefdom. I had written about this time and again but those articles have always fallen on deaf ears. The stakes in this game are too high. Those who know say that the system of purifying/filtration of water in Mawphlang do not run. The filtration/purification process requires electricity. But insiders inform that all of the plugs are out of their sockets. The machines are there only as showpieces.
In 2008 when President Pratibha came to Meghalaya she inaugurated Phase -III of the GSWSP. At that time 50 jeep loads of sediment for purifying water in the existing two phases were carted from Shillong to Mawphlang. This exercise was carried out on an emergency footing lest the President somehow wanted to drink water from the scene of action and landed up with serious stomach ailment. Now folks this filtration process is supposed to happen everyday, day in and day out so that we do not consume water with bacterial and faecal content. But this process entails expenditure. And mind you, every year there is a budget allocation for this process by the PHED. But if we look at the water that comes through our water pipes, it is not only sullied but outright polluted. The only reason we are still alive today is because we boil our water. If not, we would have become easy victims of dysentery, diarrhoea and cholera. And why? Because our ministers in charge of PHE have allowed this electrical engineer to run the show even at the cost of the health of all Meghalayans! Why do they indulge this man who has remained in the same post for decades? Because he pays off every PHE minister! And even the chief ministers!
Now here is corruption on a large scale and in a very vital sector! But this engineer apparently is so powerful because he funds the elections of at least five MLAs from that area. Anyone who crosses swords with him is likely to lose his job. That’s how powerful the man is! And no one, not even successive chief ministers of Meghalaya, including Mr DD Lapang has the guts to put this man in his place. I am doubtful if Dr Mukul Sangma who speaks eloquently about taking this State to glorious heights would take the first step of assuring us our health by making the PHED go through all the motions of assuring clean, potable, germ free water to its citizens. And also remove this notorious man from his post! If not, we can, like the citizens of Goa sit in a dharna in from of the CM’s residence. It would be pointless to do so at the doorstep of the present PHE minister. He neither has the acumen nor the spine to tread a different path and to divorce the electrical engineer who has run the GSWSP for donkey’s years like a bad, sleazy corporate manager.
There is, in fact, a lot of dirt to be cleaned up in our State. Funnily, some of those entrenched areas of corruption have been allowed to carry on and we have even forgotten to ask the right questions about them. But even if there were to be a movement against corruption in Meghalaya would people come out in large numbers to challenge the government? How angry are the people of Meghalaya about corruption? Maybe, a section of educated youth is and they are expressing their anger through Facebook and Twitter like their peers in the rest of India. This techno-savvy generation, connected through social media and are voicing out their frustration. But it has to go beyond Facebook postings. Those who truly want to fight corruption must get their feet dirty and gird their loins because it is our duty to bring everyone on board in this fight against sleaze and malfeasance because it affects each one of us.
It is normal to get gung-ho about something while watching events unfolding on our television screens about what’s happening in the rest of India. But can we sustain this anger? Indeed what we see on TV is the reaction of people who have reached the tipping point as far as tolerating corruption is concerned. Gopal Gandhi former West Bengal Governor and grandson of Mahatma Gandhi speaking as a panellist on NDTV on Thursday evening said, those who are protesting on the streets today across India are expressing their emotions against the tyranny of wealth and the sin of beimaani (wrongdoing). Anna Hazare has only allowed people to express this emotion which has been frustrating them for decades.
Let us begin a movement for getting clean water which is our right and for which crores have been invested over the years. Those crores have found their way into private pockets. Let us stop this leak right away! That’s the least we can do to show solidarity with the anti-corruption movement.