As a former bureaucrat, who, for years was a part of India’s policy making
and overseeing implementation, I sensed, as did many others, serious governance
deficit in Indian public policy. Lack of transparency, age-old Indian tradition
of promoting family/clan/sub-national loyalty, culture of materialism that’s
gotten more pronounced with economic liberalization in a globalized world, and
the urge to get-rich-fast, have distorted priorities.
Ethics, in the broadest sense, is at the heart of these problems. Looking
at the psychology and compulsions of the early man, it would
seem that the raison d'être of the social compact has been
defeated; in the schematic social contract versus individualist aspirations
construct, individual aspirations have triumphed. Human aspirations and ingenuity have, from
time to time, trumped regulations/contracts/rules; regulations have failed to
smother this primordial human urge to self-aggrandize. Are there lessons to
learn here? I still can’t get over the shock
when, in my bureaucratic diapers in 1982, I saw a file how white ants had eaten
away road rollers! Same too where cyclones had been “manufactured” in the
trans-Himalayan belt to score off inventories. It seemed something was
egregiously and unacceptably wrong.
Corruption
though is not mere financial. As damaging as financial malfeasance is
intellectual dishonesty, manifested in policy-making kept under wraps in
official records. While financial misgivings are palpable, intellectual
dishonesty – covert and subterranean – hemorrhages soundlessly till fixed; it skews and wrinkles public morality. The damage is incalculable.
The clutch of scams and mega-scams that struck India circa 2008-12
extinguished citizen’s monk-like patience. Apart from the financial loss of taxpayers’ money, it showed how
corruption had squeezed money out of the system creating a skewed developmental
agenda.
Propriety
– financial and intellectual – is a key determinant of citizen’s quality of
life. It encompasses legislation, governance, healthcare, education, commerce,
business, justice system etc. Yet, the architecture of rule of law designed to
hold the order, often fails to squelch wrong human impulses. Human nature – possessive,
hedonistic, self-interested – trumped regulations. With the dishonest networked
across professions, the countervailing institutions have often failed, swaying
to interest groups’ agenda. The people’s movement against corruption in 2011
for creation of Lokpal turned out a false dawn. Was it because the four pillars
of democracy – executive, legislature, judiciary, media – supposed to checkmate
one another didn’t wish to disturb the applecart? How does such mindset affect governance?
Even 26
years post-liberalization, the Indian rural population still looks up to
government intervention for poverty alleviation. Governments hold the fund and
welfare entities for the poor. For a feudal society with traditional bespoke
mindset, state patronage remains the Holy Grail for majority aspirations. Nor
are most men in the four organs of governance immune to quid pro qua:
bought-out press and paid news; post-retirement sinecures for most who have
been in government employ; rewards and gratifications, are just a few examples.
Socio-financial iniquity has burgeoned; unrest – born off a growing educated
young middle class finding it hard to navigate opaque archaic government
procedures and a corrupt officialdom in day to day living – leveraging
technology and social media bristles asking moral questions: Does it not diminish human beings? Does it not impugn basic human dignity?
The malaise is all-pervasive. In a way it’s natural, for regardless of
profession, men are cut from the same societal cloth with symptoms of the same
ecosystem. Look at the role of legislature and judiciary: Haven’t they been
hubristic and for the highbrow as is often alleged, granting preferential
treatment to the “well-networked” and the “connected”? How’s the Supreme Court
played its part in dispensing justice? Have judges transcended the society’s
feudal mindset? A host of recent cases come to mind: highway liquor ban,
contempt of a former Supreme Court judge, national anthem case, judges seeking
post-retirement employ, the delayed hearing in the Aadhaar case (still
on-going) just to cite a few. Restraint,
rather self-restraint, is the authentic signifier of a mature institution.
Absence of restraint even in the face of palpable injustice or manifest
illegalities can only corrode public confidence. The judiciary will do well to
realize this. The rippling effect it creates in terms of revenue loss or
employment as in the highway liquor ban case is simply beyond their ken to
evaluate. The fact is it is not their remit; hubris of power to grant complete
justice isn’t in order.
Else, the
very fabric of separate of power, one of the basic tenets of the Constitution,
will be cast aside. Coming from the protector of the Constitution, it amounts
to the fence eating the crop! “The judge’s role”, as one columnist
wrote, “in any version of constitutional democracy,
is to be a gatekeeper of constitutional boundaries, an ever-vigilant
defender of rights, not to author more restrictions on civil liberties... If
this is the role judges seek for themselves, then they must make themselves
accountable under judicial review. The immunity from judicial review under Article
13 is to preserve the interpretive authority of the court, given
the inevitability of disagreement emerging over its interpretations, not to
shield episodes of absurd judicial law-making.” Have they then been the
Caesar’s wife? How does the judiciary morally explain its dueling with the
executive on appointment of judges through an opaque “collegiate system” when
the Constitution consciously divvies responsibility between the two to avoid
monopoly of either and grant fairness to selection? How fair is it? Does it
pass muster of disinterested observers and provide oxygen to public faith?
In an
interesting piece in The New Yorker, Evan
Osnos refers to an article “on the intersection of health and politics” published in Brain, the British medical journal in February, 2009, titled Hubris Syndrome: An Acquired Personality Disorder? One of the
authors was David Owen, former British Foreign Secretary, also a
physician-neuroscientist where the authors propose creation of a psychiatric
disorder for leaders who exhibited “impetuosity, a refusal to listen to or take
advice and a particular form of incompetence when impulsivity, recklessness and
frequent inattention to detail predominate.” This seems to hold good across professions for
people in high perches.
The deterrence
to such potential recklessness lies in tightening governance’s value system.
Maybe, an arm’s-length system and an Ombudsman to oversee operations are
necessary. Yet, given extant obfuscation and opacity, will it be enough to
stymie unholy impulses? Will leveraging contemporary technology to bring
citizens face to face with governance help? Will such interface, an ex post ‘oversight’ governance, aid
stakeholders see for themselves – proactive
disclosure is already available under
Section 4 of the RTI Act 2005, never mind the Delhi High Court’s ruling
keeping the Attorney General out of the RTI’s purview – the processes and
rationale of decision-making? More, especially when the Supreme Court is implacably
opposed to render itself transparent on personal details of public interest, as
evidenced in smothering CIC’s order to part with information under the RTI Act,
2005. Is transparency, then, the answer? Will it help to offer on a platter
official document in public domain post-decisions for citizen ombudsman? Will
the fear of exposé –
disciplinary action and social disapproval for “wrongful acts” – deter unsavory
impulses? Possibly, yes; no one likes proceeded against; we live on
self-respect and dignity amid a 24/7 media. We’ve the technology and we’ve the
besetting issue of dishonesty that refuses to die. Sunlight, it seems, is the best and maybe the only disinfectant for public acts.
At the
cost of sounding presumptuous, I would say en
passant that when I took over as the Controller General of Defence Accounts
to helm the Department looking after the financial management of the entire
Government of India defense budget outlay of approx US$ 50 Billion, I invoked
transparency. All relevant official documents, all pesky issues of officers’
placement and spends from taxpayers’ money were uploaded. It was bloodless; but
it had a magical effect. Disaffection with placements was eliminated, with the
networkers exposed and running for cover; unnecessary, wasteful expenditure
were arrested, with everyone privy to ways of the corrupt and the nepotistic;
and with each checkmating the other. Alas, once I moved over to the Ministry of
Defence, transparency was given a royal heave-ho and opacity granted its pride
of honor!
Leveraging
technology to invoke openness and transparency is an option; a culture of
transparency seems the viable answer to curb corruption in public life. But it’s nuanced, multilayered.
It’ll need tempering through accountability, an effective
check and balance mechanism, an arm’s length system not open to tweaking by any
public functionary, not to forget public discussions to rework and re-engineer
the entire architecture of governance processes to introduce the moral
vocabulary sorely missing in public governance. It will take time but a
beginning must be made. Political will is the key.
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