Treat corruption with zero tolerance or quit complaining

Yashwant Sonawane’s unimaginably brutal and lawless killing may shock you no ends, but the real shocker is another truth not many can either deny or brush aside as cynicism. And that truth is: There will be many more such cases all over India, on different issues, at different times and despite all such heinous crimes, life will go on — uninterrupted, unhindered and, largely unmoved by corruption.

When India’s climb on the corruption ladder started just after Independence, the acts of graft for both givers and takers was a relatively small and gentle act — an act that had some kind of fig leaf over the illegality of it all. Money would exchange hands, mostly under the table, in a mithai ka dabba or wrapped in Diwali gifts. There were no murders then and definitely not the kind that happened behind the infamous Sagar dhaba in Manmad the other day. Of course, that did not really bring down the corruption quotient of India’s fast growing corrupt population and neither did it do any less in sucking the national wealth hollow.

Then came the suitcases, the much bigger deals, the hooded men, the conglomerates infiltrating Government agencies, fast-track international involvement and a much more varied network of politicians becoming politicians only to make money from development. The good old commitment to social service and national improvement fell from grace and public imagination of what was popularly called “arriving on the social scene.”

Fixers, middlemen, hawala racketeers and the newest of them — the suave lobbyist — made the corruption sector totally organised, well-represented, impeccably executed and finely oiled. From the fait accompli veneer that corruption at high places had enjoyed till then, there came in a hint of legitimacy and chic too.

Million dollar deals through glib-talking PR agents, on-the-payroll media, always obliging politicians and bureaucrats making a career in clearing files for money became a well-known, and most alarmingly, well-accepted fact which some would publicly defend as a necessary evil of a fledgling democracy like India.

In this context, you can call Sonawane’s killing just a post-graduation degree in corruption and a superspecialisation in lawlessness that mostly had the cushion of going scot-free.

Unfortunately for all of us, public memory is genetically modified to be short and spurty. Haven’t we already forgotten Satyendra Dubey? He was the whistle-blower of the corruption in contracts for NHAI project. Somebody, some corrupt body in the Government, leaked his name so as to have him removed from the system. Some public outrage later, people fight hard to remember what the first name of this great crusader was.

Same was the case with S Manjunath, an IOC marketing manager who was killed for sealing two petrol pumps in Lakhimpur Kheri for selling adulterated fuel in 2005. His bullet-riddled young body was found in the backseat of his car. Seven persons, including pump owner Pawan Kumar Mittal, were arrested and their bail appeals are now being heard at the Lucknow bench of the High Court. The case was talked of for some months before the media spotlight turned from him and the inherent corruption that had not merely eaten up into the insides of national pride but also gotten more corrupt, more brazen and more violent, not to mention having gained more impunity to punishment.

With such precedents before Sonawane’s case, one can only live in hopelessness if one still desires a clean-up. The Indian system is too seeped into a no-return zone to actually be pulled out of the malaise. As parents, we often rue how values have changed in the younger generation. how we are more westernised. how family values are dying. And how, all this and much more corruption of the mindset is inevitable with the changing times. That’s where we go wrong. If we, as guardians of our nation, can adjust to honesty being a lonely word, we are doomed to pay the price of corruption and then we have no locus standi to mourn the inevitable killing of the likes of Sonawane. Because we, in rearing up a younger society, are actually inculcating the softness and acceptability to crime, lawlessness and corruption.

It is a defective population we are nurturing and preparing for the future. And if we are doing so, why lament? Just vote them all back to power and sit back and enjoy — till that mafia — oil mafia, parking mafia, onion mafia, spices mafia, vegetable mafia, school mafia, college mafia, drug mafia and all those other ones too long to list — get to you through your near and dear ones — like they did to Sonawane.

Source: Sunday Pioneer, January 30, 2011