By Srinivasan K. Rangachary
Zen scholars given to abstruse philosophical musings ponder over such questions as “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” The answer is many-layered, but at its core is a message about the interconnectedness of all things. Manmohan Singh, who is the nearest thing to a pacifist Zen philosopher, who has spent all of recent years contemplating his navel while everyone around him has been looting the country to kingdom come, has now given voice to his musings on combating corruption. In spirit, his thoughts echo the same Zen philosophy on the interconnectedness of all things. “Experience has shown,” Singh said at a conference of police officers on Wednesday, “that in a vast majority of cases, it is difficult to tackle consensual bribery as the bribe-giver gets away by taking advantage of the Prevention of Corruption Act.”
Experience has also shown, Singh added, that “big-ticket corruption is mostly related to operations by large commercial entities. It is, therefore, also proposed to include corporate failure to prevent bribery as a new offence on the supply side.” Intuitively, Manmohan Singh’s thoughts may appear to make eminent sense. After all, it takes two hands to clap. The ecosystem of corruption isn’t complete without a giver as well as a taker, and god knows that Indian corporates, much like corporates elsewhere in the world, haven’t exactly established themselves as paragons of virtue. In fact, as was pointed out, one of the glaring failings of the proposed Lokpal Bill — which will set up an anti-corruption agency — is that it fails to acknowledge the reality of corruption in the corporate sector. And given the cosy relationship between corporates and the neta-babu as evidenced in virtually every recent monumental scandal under the UPA’s watch that has come to light — from the 2G scam to CoalGate — talking of corruption without addressing the “supply side” of the equation amounts only to the “sound of one hand clapping”. Yet, for all the nobility of intentions that underlies it, Manmohan Singh’s proposal is no more than pious baloney. Making the “bribe-giver” equally culpable as the “bribe-taker” only ensures that the underlying relationship between them is reinforced even further, effectively rendering them partners in crime, with an equal interest in ensuring that the illegality doesn’t come to light. There are, of course, instances when corporates voluntarily grease the tracks with Ministers and bureaucrats in order to score over the competition. And as the Niira Radia tapes revealed, even corporates whose iconic leaders sound high-minded in their public articulations have effectively “outsourced” their dirty business to intermediaries who masquerade as publicists and “lobbyists”.
But the challenge under Manmohan Singh’s proposal will be in establishing that the act of bribery was a “consensual act” between bribe-giver and bribe-taker. No bribe-giver, even one who pays a bribe only under duress, will admit to having paid a bribe at all if s/he knows that his bribe-giving will be considered as much a crime as bribe-taking. When corporates and the neta-babu class (who are two sides of the bribery transactions – the supply side and the demand side) have an equal stake in ensuring that the illegality is hushed up, the chances of corruption being swept under the carpet are even greater. And, worse, Manmohan Singh’s proposal doesn’t even scratch the surface of addressing questionable practices by corporates such as DLF’s controversial relationship with Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra. No case of corruption has, of course, been established. Yet, everything about the transactions – where DLF extended an unsecured, interest-free loan to Vadra, a low-orbit businessman whose only trump card was his proximity to power, and offered him ‘sweetheart deals’ on real estate, on the strength of which Vadra grew his business fortunes more than 100-fold in just three years, and very likely benefited from favourable land allocations from the Harayana government — reeks of “corruption” in the broadest sense of the term, which requires investigation. Yet, Ministers in Manmohan Singh’s own government have gone on record to issue certificates of clean chit to Vadra and to DLF and to spike the demand for an impartial investigation. This manifestly shows that unless there is political will to address corruption, nothing ever matters. Then there is the problem of how to deal with what Prof Kaushik Basu called ‘harassment bribes’. Most often, the reality of the ecosystem of corruption is that bribery happens under duress: the bribe-giver, say a corporate requiring an industrial licence, may be given a royal runaround by netas until he pays up.
Indicatively, Ratan Tata recalled two years ago the Tatas’ experience of trying to launch an airline in partnership with Singapore Airlines. Tata said: “We went through three governments, three prime ministers and each time there was a particular individual who thwarted our efforts to form another airline.” At about that time, he said, he met another industrialist who told him: “You people are very stupid… You know the minister wants Rs. 15 crores… Why don’t you pay it?’ To which Tata said he had responded: “You can’t understand it. I just want to go to bed at night, knowing that I haven’t got the airline by paying for it.” Tata said he would have “been feeling tremendously shameful had we got the airline and we had paid for it.” Tata may have walked away from the prospect of securing an airline by paying bribes, but another industrialist in his place may have paid the price. Addressing instances of bribery in such cases requires rather more radical proposals, of the sorts that Prof. Basu outlined, where the bribe-giver is given immunity from punitive action and the act of giving a bribe in such cases is declared a legitimate activity. Basu’s reasoning was that if the law were to be amended in this fashion, “after the act of bribery is committed, the interests of the bribe-giver and the bribe-taker will be at divergence. The bribe-giver will be willing to cooperate in getting the bribe-taker caught. And knowing that this will happen, the bribe-taker will be deterred from taking a bribe.”
For all its seeming high-mindedness, Manmohan Singh’s proposal is merely a reflection of his government’s colossal failure — and unwillingness — to invoke even the current laws to crack down on corruption that happened under his watch. Indicatively, in both the 2G scam and the CoalGate, Manmohan Singh himself knew that much mischief was afoot in the allocation of spectrum licences and coal blocks. Yet, he looked the other way and allowed the plunder to go on. Manmohan Singh’s proposal today is weak reparation for those colossal failings. In the end, as his government’s failure to yield to an impartial investigation in the DLF-Vadra case shows, neither he nor his government is earnest about combating the corporate greasing of official tracks to secure undue favours. INAV
If Manmohan Singh is really serious about getting to the roots of corporate corruption, he can begin by ordering an investigation into DLF-Vadragate today. INAV