Probity in public life

THE PHRASE ``probity in public life'' would have sounded impertinent when I joined the Indian Police Service, for in the words of Charles Dickens ``it was the best of times''. Today, we have descended to such a low level of ethics that associating probity in public life is pure oxymoron. Panditji had just reminded us of our tryst with destiny and we had high hopes that India would break loose from its immediate past and set a new high in public life. For us young men from the universities, it was ``blessed to be alive, to be young was very heaven''. In 50 years we have succeeded in damaging the institutions that were so carefully crafted and painfully built and serious doubts are now raised whether the perils closing in on us can be effectively warded off. We have proved Gibbon right when in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire he wrote, ``corruption is the infallible symptom of liberty''.

Not that corruption is a recent affliction in India. When the English traders wanting to make a quick buck were also our rulers, corruption ruled the roost. The brighter side of the coin, alas absent now, was that the Directors of the East India Company Board recognised the looming danger and tried to stop the rot before it assumed larger dimensions. It is interesting to note that Robert Clive was sent to India a second time not to add fresh territories to the Empire but with a clear mandate to clean up the Writer's Building in Calcutta with a military hand. The crafty hero of Plassey soon discovered that winning a battle was child's play but dealing with the corrupt writers under him was a much tougher proposition. He hit upon an easy plan - transfer the entire lot to Fort St. George in Madras and replace them with the Madrasis with whom he had worked and whom he knew.

That was a national disaster - the Bengali was not corrected, the Madrasis soon learnt the art of corruption. Graft spread all over India. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bengalis and Madrasis were not the native Indians but white writers from England. The fact to remember is that the powers that be took conscious steps to cleanse the administration of the perilous stuff of corruption. Thus was born the Indian Civil Service and the Indian Police Service with a high standard of integrity. Today we do transfer officials from one end to the other. This instrument is used to punish upright officers who do not bend low enough. With every change of government, the axe falls on the Chief Secretary and the Police Chief!

Till the Sixties, things were all right though here and there cracks started surfacing. The disconcerting fact was that political corruption raised its head more than corruption among government servants. It was to counter that, Lal Bahadur Shastri constituted a committee under K. Santhanam to examine the problem of corruption in public services and suggest remedial measures. The committee was naive enough to imagine that political corruption was only slowly infiltrating into public life and the general rumours and reports were exaggerated. In fact, they were unconscious of a cultural transformation invading the nation in which people were slowly losing faith in public institutions. Rajaji had coined a phrase for that - permit licence raj. What was more perilous was the bureaucracy changing into a hybrid traditional civil servant and the modern Indian politician. Not all civil servants or ministers were blameworthy but very few senior civil servants protested or made a public stand asserting cleanliness in the government service. Their resistance was muted and they expressed their views in hush and whispers or ``they sighed like a lover but obeyed like a son''. Worse still, even the judiciary is not free from taint. One is reminded of what Walt Whitman, the revolutionry American poet, wrote of conditions in the United States nearly 150 years ago: ``the official services of the state, national and municipal, in all their branches and departments, except the judiciary, are saturated in corruption, bribery, falsehood, maladministration; and the judiciary is tainted.''

A delightful story

The Santhnam Committee's report and the follow-up action with a Central Vigilance Commission at the apex and a strengthened Central Bureau of Investigation to investigate cases turned out to be more an eyewash. Serious political will was lacking. One is reminded of a delightful story told by Professor Galbraith. While in Cambridge, he was having breakfast with a Professor of Sociology from Soviet Russia. They were discussing a report in the New York Times about the conviction of a Senator for embezzlement of some public funds. Galbraith asked the Russian Professor whether they had similar cases of misbehaviour by public servants, especially with the state having almost complete control over all public activities. The Soviet Professor loudly protested and said that corruption was opposed to Marxist- Leninist creed. When Galbraith still pressed and wanted to know if any study was made, the Russian replied that there was a study by the Russian Institute of Social Sciences and they discovered that in a city a few miles away from Moscow, almost every leading public official was corrupt. Galbraith asked what action the government took. The reply was that the state authorities took a very serious view and the Social Sciences branch of the Institute was promptly abolished. We have achieved the same results without clumsily liquidating the CBI or the CVC. We have merely rendered them totally impotent - our ahimsa revolution in public administration.

More than divine

Greed and gold have been our deities. In this new religion, there is a nexus between criminals and politicians with bureaucracy playing more than second fiddle. These are not irresponsible observations of critics of the government but findings of the high-power Vohra Committee. Gold, Columbus declared centuries ago, is a wonderful thing. He who possesses it can achieve anything, why he can even buy a place in Paradise. And as for greed, our friends in public offices are more than divine. The gods are satisfied with `leaves, fruit, flowers and water' as offerings to please them. But the ministers and their minions do not touch anything other than dollars and the solid yellow metal. Gandhiji's land cannot afford this luxury.

Indira Gandhi came out with an astonishing statement that corruption was no longer an issue in India for the simple reason that it was a universal phenomenon. Nobody had the guts to tell her that small pox was universal at one time, AIDS is threatening to render the entire planet unsafe to live, but that does not mean that all the public health departments should be closed down. The point is that if we view corruption as an evil, it has got to be put down with a firm hand. The truth is we don't have anyone who has clean hands to deal with it.

Our public servants who should set an example are the worst offenders. The canker has spread even to judicial institutions. The CBI, which is the premier body to handle these cases, is itself totally controlled by and subordinate to the Ministry. Despite the Supreme Court repeating what Lord Denning declared in England, that the police officer is answerable to the law and no Minister shall tell him which case to investigate and whom to arrest, the situation in this country has not changed. Probity in public life does not appear to be a serious concern of anyone in India.

History teaches us that no country has been destroyed by external aggression but many countries have been ruined by internal decadence. If this lesson is borne in mind, we can retrieve the situation even now. We don't seem to enjoy the rule of law in this country. That will be possible only if there is absolute transparency in government administration. Glasnost is India's key to survival. We have been fooled by governments both at the Centre and in the States that they are committed to open government. Some Bills have come up here and there. But public administration is not open to public scrutiny. Tolstoy wrote ``slavery has been abolished in Rome, it has been abolished in America which provoked even a civil war, and it has been abolished in Russia - the word has been abolished but the fact remains.'' This is so with transparency and the rule of law. One cannot compromise with lack of integrity in public administrations or even corporate administrations except at our peril.

Peculiar alchemy

It is not difficult to achieve a reasonably honest society if there is greater education and some amount of pressure from the electorate. The American system, with all its faults, has its bureaucracy and judiciary working openly and free of party prejudices. The judges and many public officials are appointed in the United States from among those belonging to the party in power. President Truman once observed that the best way to turn a good friend into an enemy was to appoint him to a public office especially the Supreme Court. Eisenhower confessed that one of his damn fool mistakes was appointing Earl Warren as Chief Justice of the United States. Nixon lost his case in a court presided by his own nominee, Warren Burger. In England, traditionally, the civil services and the judiciary refuse to toe the party line. There is some peculiar alchemy in them, which we have missed.

In India, unless we develop this spirit, and our officers in all the departments of the state show a measure of independence and cease to be boneless wonders, the future is bleak. During the Falkland war, when an Exocet missile sank an Argentinian ship carrying civilians, the Defence Minister twisted the story in Parliament as a military action. But once the war was over, a Deputy Secretary in the Ministry revealed the truth in a letter to the MP who had asked some questions in Parliament on this subject. The officer was prosecuted for breach of the Official Secrets Act. The delightful sequence was that in England, they couldn't find a jury to convict this upright culprit who considered that his accountability was to the people and not to the Minister. The lessons are clear since we share many features of British Parliamentary practice and civil services.

Cleanliness in public services was something for which Rajaji fought all through his life. It was Gandhiji's principal article of faith. Men of great stature like Nanda, Radhakrishnan, Morarji, Charan Singh and Kamaraj, to mention some of our leaders, were illustrations of impeccable integrity. Similarly, we had in the services, persons like H.V.R. Iyengar, L. P. Singh, Rustomji, Parthasarathy Iyengar, Arul and Kohli just to mention a few. They were the role models for others. Today, you can search all over the land and may yet not find one of their like. Unfortunately, our Secretaries and Chief Secretaries and some senior police officers are found, not in government offices, but in penitentiaries. When Prime Ministers and whole Cabinets are convicted for corruption, the picture is not a pleasing one. When judges are arraigned for grave delinquencies, administration of law and justice becomes a caricature.

An educated and vigilant public is the only answer and as I said earlier we should insist on openness in government if we want to ensure our survival. Globalisation should not be limited to trade and commerce. We should also share some of the administrative virtues of other democracies. Ombudsmen, independent police forces and neutral civil servants are vital needs. The upheavals in Southeast Asia and Latin American countries, Africa and Russia hold grim lessons in this regard. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan sounded the alarm bells when he warned that when ambition and power outstrip a country's abilities and sense of values, catastrophe is the surest end. Accountability is the essence of a democratic structure. In the final analysis, all of us are accountable to that ``little man with a little pencil making a little mark on a little piece of paper. All the rhetoric cannot diminish a bit of its importance.'' That was Churchill speaking in the House of Commons on sharing with the people the war strategy. It is time that instead of general apathy and a cynical sense, we bestirred ourselves to our responsibilities and asserted our importance in the affairs of state. Let us remind ourselves that the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings.

V. R. LAKSHMINARAYANAN Former DGP, Tamil Nadu

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