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From
Tehelka Magazine, Vol 9, Issue 43, Dated 27 Oct 2012 |
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| CURRENT AFFAIRS |
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COVER STORY |
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Moment of the Muckraker
Is the noise against crony capitalism and politician-corporate collusion an unnecessary din, or something that will serve us better in the long run?
Ashok Malik, Contributing Editor
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Rocking the boat Arvind Kejriwal and Anjali Damania at the exposé on Nitin Gadkari
Photo: Shailendra Pandey |
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AT THE beginning of the 20th century, the muckraker tradition announced its arrival in the United States. Activists, writers, journalists, woolly-headed but well-meaning socialists, utopians: the muckrakers were in some senses a response to the excesses of the Gilded Age, a period that ended in the 1890s and gave America both enormous economic growth as well as unprecedented corruption in public institutions and public life.
The muckrakers attacked the prevailing cronyism and consensus of the establishment. Their influence survived for about a quarter century, till the Depression and the New Deal of the early 1930s. They produced pamphlets and made a habit of political overstatement, attacking the rich and the famous, the great and the good, the high and the mighty. The political leadership of the age, in both parties, despised them and accused them of hype and exaggeration.
Among the best known of the muckrakers was Upton Sinclair, writer, journalist, pamphleteer and novelist. His semi-fact, semi-fiction novel of 1906, The Jungle, laid bare the dirt and mess of the meat-packing industry. It caused great public revulsion. From supporting labour unions to espousing socialist principles in a time when America even had a Communist Party, Sinclair made himself well-known.
Several politicians attacked him as mad and dangerous and guilty of hyperbole. Sinclair was too self-absorbed to care. He stood for office several times. Thankfully he was never elected, for Upton Sinclair in government, implementing bizarre socio-economic doctrines, would have been a disaster. Nevertheless, who is to say he, and the other muckrakers, didn’t play a beneficial role?
Together, they provided a check on the extremes of a corrupt and completely unwholesome rendition of capitalism and of industrial democracy. The Jungle was responsible for cleaning up the meat-packing industry and, indeed, giving America excellent food safety laws. If a citizen of or visitor to Smallsville, America, can today walk into a tiny, hole-in-the-wall eatery and expect potable water and food that has not gone stale, in a sense, he owes a debt to Sinclair and the muckrakers.
It is easy and tempting to think of Arvind Kejriwal and the copycat breed he has spawned — YP Singh, the retired IPS officer, among them — as India’s muckrakers. They may leave no lasting literature and no novels that will resonate 100 years later. They may win very few votes and zero seats in coming elections. It is very difficult to see Kejriwal and India Against Corruption being taken seriously by the electorate and entering the legislature. They will get a marginal vote, just like Sinclair did, and no more.
Yet, in throwing up the poison and forcing India to confront conflicts of interest it doesn’t even see as conflicts of interest, are they not, in some crazy and manic way, serving a purpose?
Between Kejriwal and Singh, four politicians/political families have been targeted in recent days — Robert Vadra and, by association, the Nehru-Gandhis; Salman Khurshid; Nitin Gadkari; and the Pawars. The charges against them come under two related but separate heads. Vadra and the Pawars are accused of making windfall gains in land and real estate transfers, and of collusion with partners in the property development business.
Strictly speaking, much of what Vadra is accused of is not illegal but certainly irregular. When the Haryana government peremptorily transfers a civil servant who dares to investigate the matter, however, it blurs the distinction between private citizen and son-in-law of the State. With the Pawars, there are two MPs and one minister in the family. The implication of corruption is deeper. Expectedly, the reaction has been intense.
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Despite the discomfort over the questions, one must be glad someone is asking them |
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In the case of Khurshid and Gadkari, the charges have been dismissed as chicken feed. Relatively speaking, they are. Khurshid runs an NGO that helps physically challenged people. There are hundreds of such NGOs in India; many of them do good work but the odd discrepancy does creep in. It is likely that there have been problems with the execution of projects by the Zakir Hussain Trust — named after India’s third president and Khurshid’s grandfather — as well. In sum, these would probably amount to a tiny fraction of the Rs 71 lakh outlay of the project under discussion.
Gadkari has used wasteland to grow sugarcane saplings for farmers who are members of a cooperative he has promoted. He says he has saved money for them, as imported saplings are much more expensive. On his part, he has sought to uplift poor farmers, not make commercial gain. As such, he and Khurshid have reason to be indignant. They were trying to help poor people, not make windfall gains like Vadra and the Pawars.
However, do consider one thing: both Khurshid and Gadkari are politicians and are seeking to win elections in the very regions in which their NGOs and cooperatives are working. A politician helps ordinary people in a district. His NGO receives money from the government and the taxpayer to pay for this help he renders. He takes the assistance of workers of a Trust he runs. No doubt, these workers will in a few months be part of an electoral campaign for a specific party.
IN ANOTHER case, a politician sets out to help farmers. He gets access to 100 acres of land — wasteland no doubt, perhaps not being used by anybody and impossible to return to farmers who sold it to the government 20 years earlier — just like that, within days of writing to a friendly minister. He then begins to help farmers, a noble cause no doubt — but in a few years he will be asking those farmers to vote for him.
It is nobody’s argument that businessmen should not enter politics, but it is for them to hermetically seal off their politics from their business. In this respect, Gadkari has to accept that his incestuous relationships with BJP MP Ajay Sancheti (implicated in the irrigation and coal scandals) and Ajit Pawar have severely compromised his public standing. The irrigation scandal involves the Congress, the NCP and the BJP in a grand alliance that would never be possible in conventional politics — but is integral to commercial politics.
Whispers of other instances are also heard. There is the Mumbai real-estate syndicate that links the disgraced Kripashankar Singh of the Congress as well as the upper echelons of the Shiv Sena. There is the land swindle in Hyderabad that centres on YS Jaganmohan Reddy — rebel son of the Congress — but also has a plot or two carved out for a senior BJP leader.
Technically or otherwise, a conflict of interest is written into all the episodes cited above. Would they be condoned in an evolved and transparent democratic system? One has heard of State-funded elections, but what of State-funded politics? Do we even recognise this as somehow improper? Are government funds and wasteland just lying around available to just any dogooder out there? Likewise, are the extremely profitable property deals in Haryana and Maharashtra available to anybody without a suitable family surname?
The answers are obvious; the solutions are not. Nevertheless, one must be glad somebody is asking the questions. In the long run, this can only have a salutary impact on India.
Indian politics finds itself at an astonishing crossroads. The only choice is an absence of choice. As a decade of high growth and cocky ambitions, of rapacious resource hand-outs and robber-baron capitalism ends, the mood is sombre and angry. Between the docile, enervating and eventually self-defeating slogan of “Ma Maati Manush” and the grasping ferocity of “Zan Zar Zameen”, surely India deserves something better and more enlightened.
That something better and more enlightened may not be Arvind Kejriwal and IAC — but if he has triggered a process of fear and loathing, maybe, just maybe, that’s what we needed.
Ashok Malik is Contributing Editor, Tehelka.
ashok@tehelka.com
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Lavasa has put the spotlight back on Sharad Pawar and his daughter Supriya Sule. But there are three other equally scandalous realty projects involving the Sules where the family used its influence to illegally grab government land. By Ashish KhetanRead More > |
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