When the Leader of the Nation speaks, people listen. More so when the speech is from the ramparts of the historic Red Fort and the occasion being the celebrations marking India’s Independence Day. Year after year, leaders climbed up the dais and spoke; so did Prime Minister Narendra Modi. What they left behind were, glaringly, broken promises. When Modi spoke from the pulpit this time, his emphasis again was on his “resolve” to root out corruption – a promise he had made when he addressed this event for the first time in 2014. His famous one-liner, ‘Na Khaoonga, Na Khane Doonga’ (will not eat dirty pie; nor will allow others to loot public money) resounded in public minds for some time and then passed into history.
This time, Modi sought people’s cooperation to take on the corrupt including the big-wigs. Question is, what has prevented him from doing this all through his eight years in power and what can he do in the less than two years that are left for him in the present term. Narendra Modi does not have an image of a corrupt politician. Unlike the dynasts, state after state, who are now amassing huge unaccounted wealth, Modi has crafted a personality of his own with no links to his family. His recorded wealth is in the range of over Rs 2 crore, and it’s unlikely he fancies being rich. His ministers are also not known to be corrupt though there indeed are grey areas. Overall, corruption at the central ministry level is not spectacular now. Yet, fact is the graph of corruption is going up. The bureaucracy is steeped in corruption, top to bottom, and so are regional politicians. Many see the Central Secretariat as the main beehive of corruption. Modi, despite his big talks, could hardly stem the rot. Perhaps he does not know how to go about it. The corrupt are smarter than the system itself. Modi has failed to check the gaps in the system through which the corrupt escape and make merry.
Modi also spoke out against the evils of nepotism and of the dynastic system in politics. Nepotism undercuts the principle of merit; but this is all-encompassing in this country and mostly found in sectors associated with government, be it in the academic world, the judiciary, the police and other spheres. Dynasties across states have cemented their evil grip in recent years though the Thackerays, the Mulayam clan, the Abdullahs and the Badals have taken the backseat. For the PM, action should speak louder than words. Cleaning up the Augean stable requires both grit and determination.
