Can a letter stop the slumdog killionaires?
Last week 14 prominent and well-regarded Indian citizens came together to write an open letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressing alarm over corruption and worsening governance that has enervated India.
The letter, signed by some of the biggest participants in India’s economic success story ranging from industrialists to thinkers points to the “governance deficit” in “government, business and institutions”, and the “urgent need” to tackle the “malaise of corruption, which is corroding the fabric of our nation.”
The sheer number of corruption scandals that the media have reported in the past year – from the Commonwealth Games contracts scam to the deepening mobile 2G licensing scandal – involving hundreds of billions of rupees shows how corruption has gnawed away at the guts of the country’s rickety democratic institutions and is threatening to disrupt their very functioning.
India’s corrupt polity has been known to the world for long – almost explicitly condoned by former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, when she remarked that corruption was not just an Indian but a global phenomenon.
With that sort of attitude it is no surprise that the malaise has seeped so deep into nearly every institution and day-to-day activity, that it is considered part and parcel of doing business. Indeed, graft has been institutionalised in the Indian system.
Corruption is the sole reason why India’s ever present chasm of economic and developmental contrasts will continue to grow despite steady near double-digit growth for over a decade.
Corruption is the only reason why the slumdog millionaire visage of the country will endure far longer than the cloying images of luxurious seven star hotel lobbies, billion dollar skyscraper residences and shamelessly crass million dollar weddings.
And it is the only reason why a number of innovative technology companies that can help India’s poor rise above their lot faster than their highly inequitable economic growth ever can, are pulling out of India in sheer frustration. Unfortunately this is happening in the development space – the very area that raises human living standards.
It comes as no surprise that despite the much touted growth rate that is lifting hundreds of thousands of India’s dispossessed out of poverty, some 17,368 farmers killed themselves in 2009, 7% more than in 2008, according to the Times of India. The state of Maharashtra, which has Mumbai as its capital and is India’s richest state, topped with the most farmer suicides – as it has for ten years in a row.
In keeping with India’s unshakeable, deeply entrenched legacy of contrasts, the country’s agriculture minister, Sharad Pawar, is a farmer from this very state and is one of the country’s richest politicians. (Incidentally, he was one of the several high profile no shows at the recent, much touted wedding in Auckland). He has been under fire for the runaway prices of onions and vegetables, which is threatening the very existence of the national government forcing a cabinet reshuffle to get under way next week.
Last week, India’s environment ministry ordered the demolition of a 31-storied block of apartments in an upscale area of downtown Mumbai for violation of environmental rules. The controversial high-rise was originally meant to be a six-storey structure to house India’s war heroes and the kin of the war dead. But it was surreptitiously extended to 31 floors allegedly without mandatory permission.
More than the people it was meant for, powerful politicians, bureaucrats and their family and friends allegedly got allotments to the apartments at heavily subsidised prices that were meant for the soldiers’ families. The scandal grew big enough to claim the chief minister of the state whose family members had also been allegedly allotted space in the building.
The demolition of a building allegedly constructed by bending every rule in the book is at best a symbolic swing of the wrecking ball at India’s gargantuan edifice of corruption. But its roots run deep and long – too deep and too long. All the way to the Swiss banks and the tax havens around the world.
Impossible to root out without leaders and people of character and resolve – even if they are mere letter writers.
Last week 14 prominent and well-regarded Indian citizens came together to write an open letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressing alarm over corruption and worsening governance that has enervated India.
The letter, signed by some of the biggest participants in India’s economic success...
Last week 14 prominent and well-regarded Indian citizens came together to write an open letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressing alarm over corruption and worsening governance that has enervated India.
The letter, signed by some of the biggest participants in India’s economic success story ranging from industrialists to thinkers points to the “governance deficit” in “government, business and institutions”, and the “urgent need” to tackle the “malaise of corruption, which is corroding the fabric of our nation.”
The sheer number of corruption scandals that the media have reported in the past year – from the Commonwealth Games contracts scam to the deepening mobile 2G licensing scandal – involving hundreds of billions of rupees shows how corruption has gnawed away at the guts of the country’s rickety democratic institutions and is threatening to disrupt their very functioning.
India’s corrupt polity has been known to the world for long – almost explicitly condoned by former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, when she remarked that corruption was not just an Indian but a global phenomenon.
With that sort of attitude it is no surprise that the malaise has seeped so deep into nearly every institution and day-to-day activity, that it is considered part and parcel of doing business. Indeed, graft has been institutionalised in the Indian system.
Corruption is the sole reason why India’s ever present chasm of economic and developmental contrasts will continue to grow despite steady near double-digit growth for over a decade.
Corruption is the only reason why the slumdog millionaire visage of the country will endure far longer than the cloying images of luxurious seven star hotel lobbies, billion dollar skyscraper residences and shamelessly crass million dollar weddings.
And it is the only reason why a number of innovative technology companies that can help India’s poor rise above their lot faster than their highly inequitable economic growth ever can, are pulling out of India in sheer frustration. Unfortunately this is happening in the development space – the very area that raises human living standards.
It comes as no surprise that despite the much touted growth rate that is lifting hundreds of thousands of India’s dispossessed out of poverty, some 17,368 farmers killed themselves in 2009, 7% more than in 2008, according to the Times of India. The state of Maharashtra, which has Mumbai as its capital and is India’s richest state, topped with the most farmer suicides – as it has for ten years in a row.
In keeping with India’s unshakeable, deeply entrenched legacy of contrasts, the country’s agriculture minister, Sharad Pawar, is a farmer from this very state and is one of the country’s richest politicians. (Incidentally, he was one of the several high profile no shows at the recent, much touted wedding in Auckland). He has been under fire for the runaway prices of onions and vegetables, which is threatening the very existence of the national government forcing a cabinet reshuffle to get under way next week.
Last week, India’s environment ministry ordered the demolition of a 31-storied block of apartments in an upscale area of downtown Mumbai for violation of environmental rules. The controversial high-rise was originally meant to be a six-storey structure to house India’s war heroes and the kin of the war dead. But it was surreptitiously extended to 31 floors allegedly without mandatory permission.
More than the people it was meant for, powerful politicians, bureaucrats and their family and friends allegedly got allotments to the apartments at heavily subsidised prices that were meant for the soldiers’ families. The scandal grew big enough to claim the chief minister of the state whose family members had also been allegedly allotted space in the building.
The demolition of a building allegedly constructed by bending every rule in the book is at best a symbolic swing of the wrecking ball at India’s gargantuan edifice of corruption. But its roots run deep and long – too deep and too long. All the way to the Swiss banks and the tax havens around the world.
Impossible to root out without leaders and people of character and resolve – even if they are mere letter writers.
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