Culture of percentage
Pioneer, Sept.5, 2006
Rahul Ramagundam

Bihar has proved that corruption leads to fragmentation of society and
is the number one social evil, says Rahul Ramagundam
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Most of the poorest regions in the country have porous administration;
they are corrupt. Corruption, contrary to the generally held belief,
is not about the lack of character but about conditioning.
Conditioning is product of many factors: Social, historical,
political, circumstantial but is seldom biological. It is not that
Indians are some kind of perverse make of human species to have become
one of the most corrupt nation in global surveys.

What, therefore, explains our pervasive intimacy with 'underhand
dealings' or 'over the board practices'? To answer the question, one,
despite sounding trite, must revisit the history of 200 years of
colonial rule that India had undergone before its independence in
1947.

The colonial governing apparatus was a product of a system that gave
primacy to some people who could help to keep the colonial structure
intact. Some people were favoured and, in turn, their support was
bought. In establishing the British empire, corruption played an
important role. The Permanent Settlement, system of collecting land
revenue is the best example that created a body of loyal landed gentry
that was most handy when biggest threat to British stability emerged
in 1857.

History is replete with the instances and the Home Government in
Britain had to take measures against the plunder and privations of its
officials. We have famous corruption trials of Robert Clive, the
architect of the British empire in Bengal, and Warren Hastings, the
Governor General of Bengal. Remember, Mir Jafar was corrupted by the
East India Company to betray his own nawab by keeping the army under
him stationary during the crucial battle of Plassey.

It was this need of the colonial administration that has become the
bane of the post-independent India. Corruption now has made a reverse
swing. Earlier it was the colonial administration that corrupted
people to buy their support. Now it is the people who corrupt
administration to buy the Government largesse.

Take for instance the local self-governance in India. In certain
panchayats, there are only few houses built under, say, Indira Awas
Yojna for the poor. But there cannot be any priority list culled out
from a population living in thatched, porous-mud houses. How do we
select a group of beneficiaries? It is this dire need, innumerable
suitors, and little available largesse that makes people desperate and
to break the rank and bribe the authority.

Out of Rs 25,000 received under the housing scheme, one is ready to
forgo five to seven thousand to the itinerary of signing authorities.
There is some truth in authority's blame on ' janata' for their
corruption. This corruption leaves a trail of incomplete houses and in
the beneficiaries' exclusion from subsequent lists, but who cares when
immediacy is central to existence.

India's rural multitude is tolerant to the instances of official
corruption. They take its existence for granted and do not question
their mukhiyas (village headman) who is almost unapologetic about
corruption and sharing the booty with official machinery. As Bihar
panchayats enters into their second five-year tenure, there is no
weeding out of the corruption at the grass root level, which was the
agenda in the last election. It was the potential for graft in a
stagnant economy, caste-ridden society and sectional polity that the
panchayat provides to an incredibly large base of elected
representatives, which has attracted a number of candidates in the
electoral fray.

In rural areas, 'percentage' is openly talked about and accepted. It
is a matter of right. It is so pervasive that even Maoists are
pitching in. If Government representatives could have a right over the
25 per cent, why not they is their argument. So Maoists demand 30 per
cent cut on every infrastructural work; and also from corrupt
officials and elected representatives, who give a 'cut' from their own
'cuts'.

Corruption is no longer a phenomenon performed underhand. It is
discussed, not in a manner of bazaar gossip but as elements of
detached knowledge. It is fixed and flaunted among the knowledgeable
sources. Every year there is private Bill placed in Parliament to
increase pay and perks of MPs, the elected mukhiyas of panchayats get
nothing and are yet expected to give their time and energy to the
society. Such a policy opens up prepositions for 'percentage'. Culture
of 'cuts' creeps in the body-polity as well as in the people's psyche.
Though people's representatives, mukhiyas once elected prefer to
become contractors and derive cuts in their own sanctioned projects.

This norm of mukhiya turning into contractors has spawned numerous
aspirants for the post in Bihar or elsewhere. The violence in
panchayat elections is less because of ideological conflict but more
because of potential of corruption that panchayat provides. Such
corruption is commonly accepted and rarely there is a popular
resistance. Instances of mukhiya getting ejected from his positions
are not due to his corruption but because of competing corruption.
Many of them openly boast of their connections with Maoists.

In Patluka village under Barachatti block, Gaya, where people came
together in a show of solidarity for a common cause, their
consciousness scarcely got violated against corruption in panchayat or
at the block officials' complicity in it. In this village people who
had built a check-dam to bring water to their village from a distant
impounded source, meekly acquiesced to official corruption. When
Patluka panchayat's mukhiya offered to support the popular initiative
by sanctioning a budget of one lakh for the construction of concrete
walls of the channel, he kept a cut of 30 per cent. It is a pathetic
show of people's solidarity or a show of popularly accepted norm?

Indian administrators never helped people to understand about the
largesse they distribute and governance they dispense is a matter of
people's right. It was always presented as a charity that the
residents of Ivory Tower choose to selectively part with. It was how a
colonial administration carried itself. Now, it has got widely
ingrained in the psyche of people. It is this that is the most
pernicious fallout of the British colonialism and not the drain of
wealth that impoverished people to the levels of starvation. It is
this that has made it possible for a few people to wallow in
unimagined luxury while rests are destined to live a life of misery.