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Why is India failing in the war against corruption? | Opinion
India dreams of becoming a superpower but can it do so without good governance and the presence of all-pervasive corruption?
On November 25, certain sections of the media wrongly reported that Maharashtra’s Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) had closed cases relating to senior Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Ajit Pawar’s alleged involvement in what is popularly known as the Rs 70,000 crore irrigation scam.
The news was widely and wildly circulated on social media too because the 60-year-old unpredictable nephew of the NCP president, Sharad Pawar, had overnight switched sides to join hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Even as people debated on what they thought was a quid pro quo struck by Ajit Pawar to extend support to the Devendra Fadnavis government of three days, ACB promptly issued a clarification.
“None of the cases that were closed today is related to Maharashtra deputy chief minister, Ajit Pawar,” news agency ANI quoted ACB’s director-general, G Parambir Singh, as saying on November 25 itself.
The bureau’s officials clarified that the cases that were closed were “conditional” and could be reopened in the event of additional information or court order.
The episode brought this case back into the public glare. Adding to the shrill, high decibel sentiment in the public was the video replay of Fadnavis’ promise to the people on September 18, 2014, that Ajit Pawar would soon be in jail and “chakki peesing and peesing and peesing (will be grinding grains in a prison hand-mill).” Fadnavis was using an immensely popular dialogue from equally iconic Bollywood film Sholay.
It is a matter of shame that investigations into this particular case have remained inconclusive after seven years.
Corruption continues to pervade virtually every sphere of life in India and the alleged Maharashtra irrigation scam figures high in the list of corruption cases making slow progress. It is perhaps an example of how our key institutions, such as the police and the judiciary, have failed to bring this case to a close.
The South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP) said on its website that it was one of the civil society groups, besides government committees, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), whistleblowers and others who drew attention to the “unjustified cost overruns, forged tenders, tweaking the norms of tendering process and incomplete projects laden with inferior quality work...” in irrigation projects in Maharashtra.
While CAG highlighted several irregularities in the Gosikhurd project in 2007, it was the then chief engineer in the water resources department, Vijay Pandhare, who on February 25, 2012, wrote to the then chief minister Prithviraj Chavan and governor K Sankaranarayanan, alleging corruption and irregularities in irrigation projects.
Pandhare demanded a probe into the budgets of all the five irrigation boards in the state. Matters escalated from there, leading to the resignation and reinstatement of Ajit Pawar, a probe by ACB and a public interest litigation in the Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court.
India dreams of becoming a superpower but can it do so with such pervasive corruption? Corruption eats into the innards of a country. It is a debilitating social cancer which spares no one. The biggest consequences of corruption are the generation of vast amounts of black money, the flight of capital, bad governance and abysmal backwardness in areas where corruption remains high and undetected.
Promises made by politicians and political parties to root out corruption in the country have not been kept.
India needs strong, independent institutions across the board which will not buckle under pressure from politicians.
It is only when key institutions such as the Lok Pal, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Enforcement Directorate (ED), Anti-Corruption Bureaux (ACBs), Comptroller and Auditor Generals (CAGs) and police departments live up to their promise and are empowered against manipulation by politicians and other vested interests that the country will begin to see better governance and greater respect for the law.
