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Is India drifting to `kleptocracy'?
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Politicians and bureaucrats have lorded over this country for over five decades keeping up and in fact adding to the oppressive and draconian laws that were imposed upon us by the colonial masters.
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DESCRIBING AN instance of heartless `rehabilitation' of a village ravaged by last year's disastrous Gujarat earthquake, Harsh Sethi writes in The Hindu on January 26, 2002: "As we celebrate another Republic Day it might be worthwhile to spare a thought for the many questions `Aftershocks' raises. Above all, for the many ways in which our power elite robs our weakest citizens of the little they have. A fitting epitaph for our democratic Republic". Tragic indeed, but true. Whatever people may say the root cause for this sad epitaph for our Republic is the half-century of drift in governance with a bureaucracy that is terminally ill. Instead of being a bulwark of freedom, prosperity and good governance this massive leviathan has become an albatross around the neck of the people. There are no signs of improvement and if any, there is only deterioration. Even the feeble attempts at economic and infrastructure reforms in the past ten years have completely bypassed bureaucracy. As a result the country is slowly moving away from democracy towards a system of `kleptocracy' with politicians, for whom democracy is nothing more than a tool to capture power and the licence to loot, at the centre of the orbit. Around them in the orbit are the civil servants, the police and even judges each feathering their own nest.
`Kleptocracy' can be broadly described as a system of non-governance characterised by rampant greed and corruption. Politicians and bureaucrats have lorded over this country for over five decades keeping up and in fact adding to the oppressive and draconian laws that were imposed upon us by the colonial masters. Though India essentially has a democratic political system, the ordinary citizen has to comply with a plethora of laws, rules and regulations and please a battery of officials even to gain access to basic services and amenities. The processes and procedures are so burdensome that the time and resources required to comply with them are simply beyond the means of the average citizen. In addition, the administrative system inherited from the Britishers only perpetrates sycophancy bordering on slavery.
A vast majority of the people, particularly the youth, feel that all the laws, rules and administrative systems established by the British rulers were to keep our country in slavery permanently. After we got independence, the laws enacted in the last 55 years are also of the same kind strengthening the same system leading to increase in slavery and decrease in freedom.
Power games
Law and the administrative system in the country have become unjust and oppressive because each department, agency, bureau, form and permit was created at the behest of interest groups seeking advantage through the political process. Leaders come and go with elections, but the basic function of the democratic system, as being practised, has not been to protect person and property, but to allocate privileges and benefits to those groups that are most effective at organising politically. Many regulations are rationalised on the pretext of serving the public good, but the end result has been a system of mercantilism that makes economic rights subservient to political interests and power games.
This corruption and ravaging of the democratic system is known as "state kleptocracy" that has severely distorted our democratic system, which had been functioning reasonably well till 1975 when it received a severe jolt during Emergency. That happened because a kleptocracy availing of the resources of the state had to develop the mentality of the conqueror and function as a petty autocrat. The greatest tragedy of state kleptocracy however is that it has rotted the moral fibre of the nation as a whole. The reason is that at the core of our political system was theft. The holders of political power, for the benefit of themselves and their cohorts, commandeered the resources of the state i.e. the resources produced by the work of `we the people', to a shocking extent. Now they have turned this into a fine art of deceit by frequently publishing `white papers' and indiscriminately raising tariff, taxes and levies under the absurd pretext of `empty treasury'.
Main perpetrators
Though politicians are the largest beneficiaries of state kleptocracy, bureaucrats are its main perpetrators either by complicity or through compliance. Ironically, despite enjoying unique constitutional safeguards unheard of elsewhere in the world, many of them are also the prime victims of the rot. In a kleptocracy merit is the first casualty and competent and conscientious civil servants have been at the receiving end for quite some time. Commencing from the mid Seventies, except for a few notable exceptions, "men of undisputed mediocrity" were placed in charge of the commanding heights of government and public undertakings through a skewed process of selection and placements. Instruments like frequent and arbitrary transfers, `compulsory wait' and humiliating assignments were freely used to subdue public servants who were found inconvenient. Some of them were even trapped in vigilance enquiries and criminal cases and hounded out. The cumulative effect of all these is to reduce a covenanted and once proud Civil Service into a `lackey entity' and a service for the mute. This in fact is the tragedy of governance in India because the Founding Fathers had pinned great faith on the `elite civil services' to steer the nation `on an even keel' in the midst of political and social convulsions and for that purpose conferred unprecedented constitutional protection on this pampered lot. This faith has been betrayed.
The `super-bureaucrats' who willingly formed part of the `loot-and-share system' have spearheaded this betrayal. Till recently these civil servants were considered a `sparkle in society' and respected because of high social perch and perks. The scenario has undergone a sea change now. It used to be said, "a good bureaucrat is one who, when in doubt, mumbles; when in difficulty, ponders; when in charge, delegates; and whose job is to cut the red tape length-wise". But today's Indian mandarin is no longer a bureaucrat and suffers from no such uncertainties and infirmities. Indeed he is turning to be an arrogant autocrat, cocksure and confident in his own actions and pluckily defiant about the devious ways of his modus vivendi. No vigilante outfits trail him, no visions of doomsday haunt him in his sleep, and no social ostracism of the traditional type shames him any more. His track record of winking at dubious orders and executing them for the benefit of those who matter makes him just the man to propel into the seat of `borrowed power and reflected glory'. All their desires now fulfilled, this clan of bureaucrats mock at the Indian Nation and its miserable millions, so munificent in giving them everything they had fantasised about, only to receive back contempt and non-governance.
Keeping them in good humour
Despite public revulsion and strong judicial pronouncements against corruption, political parties are ganging up to see that `corruption is not an issue' in public life and the bureaucracy is endorsing it. Parliamentarians are blocking the passage of the Lok Pal Bill to escape the definition of `public servants' while feasting themselves on high pay and perks. To keep bureaucrats in good humour they have been given massive increase in salaries and perquisites without any corresponding demands of efficiency and integrity. In order to gain the unstinted support of the police to sustain kleptocracy, draconian statutes like POTA are being contemplated and officials who flagrantly violated human rights are being protected. Nuclear blasts and military might are being paraded as symbols of a strong nation. Overwhelmed by corruption and non-performance, financial institutions are crumbling and falling by the wayside. Repeated pleadings of the Election Commission for electoral reforms are falling on deaf ears. Functioning of the Central Vigilance Commission is being throttled and Human Rights Commissions are being reduced to toothless tigers. `Terrorism' which is the fallout of all this rottenness is being touted as the `mantra' to garner votes!
Unless this degeneration is arrested and good, participatory governance restored the inevitable drift towards `kleptocracy-autocracy' that would drag one sixth of the human race towards political and economic ruin cannot be halted. In the event people must seriously consider dumping the present system of governance and opt for an alternative. Let bureaucrats who are maintained at a massive cost to the exchequer to guard India's democratic fabric beware before it is too late.
M.G. DEVASAHAYAM
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