Friday, March 29, 2024
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Politicians must give accounts – Not a list of achievements

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By Angela Rangad

“One of the most common misconceptions about corruption is about reducing the act of corruption to merely ‘money’ and ‘corrupt’ individual. And therefore the solution to corruption is reduced to getting the corrupt individual out and getting morally upright and educated (quality of degree doesn’t matter) individuals in. But for far too long in spite of many sanctimonious pronouncements these individual- based anti-corruption solutions have failed.”

Meghalaya has become a state with super diminished expectations. And during elections more so. From West to East, North to South, suddenly, media and/or PR accounts of parties are full of celebratory stories about MLAs giving accounts of their expenditure. And like/love/reacts on these supposedly ‘heart-warming’ stories of transparency grow exponentially.
So what are these accounts? Going by infographics released by an MLA or a daily (re)inauguration of works with photos that some long-term MLA in Shillong are touting as their accounts, one realises that these are no accounts at all. They are merely the list of works carried out from People’s money. They all are like some many crores spent on roads, some many lakhs on pressure cooker, blanket, bad quality crockery, laptops and mementos distributed. They all read and sound like the slogans on big expensive hoardings that the government put up all around the state. So many kilometres of road every day, so many women part of SHG programmes, so much money transferred to so many people etc.
But are these accounts or just expenditure counting? Let us use a cliched example. When we send our child with 100 rupees to shop for things, let us say a packet of sugar, tea and milk and she comes back with sugar, tea and milk, what kind of accounts do we ask of her? Did you get some change? What was the price of sugar, tea and milk? Did she get some change? Does she have a receipt? And if we see her teeth browned by chocolates we want to find out whether she is inflating the prices to get some extra money for her impulse purchase. We do this because we want our child to learn some life lessons in economics and be ethical in spending money. But why is it that this same principle we apply to our child, we forget to apply to our MLA and government expenditure?
Now for instance, an MLA tells us that he has distributed 350 laptops to meritorious students in five years – accounts can’t just say 350 students benefited with laptops and so much money sanctioned and spent on it. For any respectable accounts we would need answers to the following five questions
Who are these 350 students?
What is the brand and model names of these laptops?
How much money was spent in procuring these laptops and detailed breakdown of that expenditure?
How much per laptop?
Who supplied these laptops, where were these laptops procured from and how was the supplier chosen?
These are the kinds of questions CAG audit asks anyway. Answer to the first two questions are important because they will allow us to check whether the beneficiaries received the laptops or they are merely ghost names. Like during CoVID-19 pandemic cash support programme of the government, the list that Government gave out to our RTI queries had more than a lakh of names of beneficiaries who were supposed to have received their 2100/5000 rupees but when we checked on them, many had not received their money or had only received their money partially.
Answers to question no. 3 and 4, would let us know whether our money was spent properly. If X brand laptop, model no. Y costs Rs. 22,000 on amazon or flipkart and the bill shows that it was procured for Rs. 28000, we would know that Rs. 5000 extra is either a useless expenditure or is skimming off the money by the supplier/MLA.
And finally, answer to the last question would answer the question about nepotism and conflicts of interest. We need to know whether the supplier is your wife/nephew/child or company or organisation in which you have a personal interest?
So what should
accountable &
transparent account
look like?
One of the most common misconceptions about corruption is about reducing the act of corruption to merely ‘money’ and ‘corrupt’ individual. And therefore the solution to corruption is reduced to getting the corrupt individual out and getting morally upright and educated (quality of degree doesn’t matter) individuals in. But for far too long in spite of many sanctimonious pronouncements these individual- based anti-corruption solutions have failed.
We need to remember that corruption is first of all stealing of people’s democratic rights as citizens by an individual or institution. It is about abuse of power. Money flowing up to the person holding power over us is merely a product of that abuse. Second, corruption is an issue only under a democracy. In the olden times where sovereign and oligarchs held divine or ritual power over masses, corruption was only when someone stole from the king or oligarchs. It is only under democracy where power is supposedly held by the common people who have rights and supposed to be equal before law that the question of corruption becomes pertinent. Because of democracy, our representatives or bureaucracy are public servants, they are merely spending our money or exercising power on our behalf because sovereign(king) under democracy are the citizens. Any action by the public servants that steals that power from the citizens is therefore corruption.
So to stop that corruption what should be done. First, it is important that people know that the government money being spent on their welfare is their money. It is no grace from the politician. It is not for some MLA to recommend or implement or spend. And if it is our money then we need to be given accounts for the expenditure. Accounts have to at a very minimum show
How was the decision for expenditure taken?
All the bills and vouchers for the expenditure?
Who is implementing the scheme? Is there any conflict of interest?
Has the scheme been implemented? How long did it take?
What was the quality of the works and who were the beneficiaries?
In Meghalaya these days MLAs and politicians rather than giving accounts are more interested in installing expensive (and probably illegal) stones carrying their name as implementers and recommender rather than giving out accounts of the expenditure. Sadly even the government is not implementing the section 4 of the RTI Act 2005, under which there has to be proactive disclosure in public domain for much of this expenditure. It is as if Transparency and Accountability is no longer an issue in Meghalaya.
But we know that for far too long governance and economy in Meghalaya is pockmarked with instances of small time to big ticket corruption and abuse of power leaching people’s resources in a few criminal hands. The only way to stop this is to have mandatory legal framework of proactive disclosures and possibility of citizens to ensure that the criminal politico-bureaucratic class that gets exposed by this regime of Transparency and Accountability pay for their misdeeds.
And we can begin this by providing REAL ACCOUNTS not just a list of works done.

“We need to remember that corruption is first of all stealing of people’s democratic rights as citizens by an individual or institution. It is about abuse of power. Money flowing up to the person holding power over us is merely a product of that abuse. Second, corruption is an issue only under a democracy. In the olden times where sovereign and oligarchs held divine or ritual power over masses, corruption was only when someone stole from the king or oligarchs.”
(Angela Rangad is a member of Kam Meghalaya & contesting for MLA in the upcoming elections.)

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