Written by Sagarika.Ghose,Times of India
The fight against corruption must be driven by institutions, not by an individual
I don’t want to become Prime Minister, I want to be a chowkidar, said then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi on the campaign trail during the 2014 elections. Social media is unforgiving and four years later – after the Nirav Modi banking scam blew up – a video of the PM’s chowkidar speech was repeatedly recycled.
As the NiMo banking scam unfolds, reality has hit hard. To lay the blame at the prime minister’s door for a multicrore scam in one branch of a public sector bank would be unfair. The scam reveals, though, that however tough the chowkidar at the top, there’s deep rot in an unaccountable public sector banking system. For example, all 20 PSU banks including PNB do not have a workman or an officer director. This mandatory watchdog post has been vacant, in many cases, for almost six months.
So the question arises: Who is the better chowkidar, a single individual or a range of independent functioning accountable watchdog institutions that raise red flags in time?
The personal commitment of a dominant political executive to act against corruption is welcome. Yet a single chowkidar sitting alone in Lok Kalyan Marg in Delhi cannot oversee goings on from Jhabua to Trichy, or PNB Mumbai’s Brady House Branch for that matter.
Instead, it is anti-corruption institutions at every level which must be strengthened and empowered. Today public cynicism about corruption is overwhelming. Even a Davos group photo or PM’s references to “hamaare Mehulbhai” can lead to perceptions of cronyism, unless strong institutions act swiftly to catch the big fish.
The government claims it has introduced tough new amendments in the Benami Property Act and brought in an Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code to enable actions against swindlers. But who will implement these tough laws if administrators and institutions are rendered irrelevant? The government has not instituted a single Lokpal in the last four years and as many as four posts in the Information Commission are lying vacant.
The CBI, described as a ‘caged parrot’ during the UPA, has still not been set free. That the Centre determinedly pushed through a controversial appointment of a Gujarat IPS officer as special director despite complaints of serious irregularities is evidence of a political system that is unwilling to create a truly independent federal police.
Election funding, arguably the most visible source of political corruption, remains unchecked. The introduction of electoral bonds (now challenged in court) has failed to address the core issue of promoting transparency in funding: under the new law, details of individuals and corporates funding political parties will not be disclosed in public.
The government claims that demonetisation must be seen as evidence of its drive against corruption. But 16 months later, the evidence is mixed: Despite initially aiding the IT department to hound hoarders almost all the money, including black money, is back in banks with the Rs 2,000 note replacing lower denominations. Banks have received back Rs 15.28 trillion or 99% of the invalidated currency. Truth is, a quasi-evangelical moral puritanism and a knee jerk criminalising of business isn’t the answer to the problem of instilling enough confidence that the honest will be protected and the corrupt will be punished.
Public sector banks are an abiding symbol of political cronyism and the netababu nexus. That the Punjab National Bank was even given awards by the Central Vigilance Commission is a classic example of a ‘chalta hai’ attitude that militates against rigorous regulatory monitoring.
A commitment against corruption must see honest whistleblowers as vital allies. Yet information activists complain that the Right to Information Act is being systematically weakened. Several RTIs to the prime minister’s office go unanswered. Questions have been raised about the appointment of the CVC and the government has refused to answer RTIs asking for names of loan defaulters. In 2016, after alleged “encounter deaths” of eight SIMI activists in Bhopal, minister Kiren Rijiju said, “We should stop this habit of raising doubts and asking questions, this is not a good culture.”
But isn’t democracy about asking questions? Perhaps if more questions had been raised by an alert banking system in 2015, the NiMo scam could have been stopped. Maybe, in November 2016 when the PM announced that demonetisation was a step towards cleaning up society, questions should have been raised over the accountability of banks. It is precisely in 2017, during the postdemonetisation period, that Nirav Modi obtained a fresh series of LoUs – showing that for bankers at PNB, it was still business as usual for VIPs.
The finance minister recently said that while politicians are accountable, it’s the regulators who are not, suggesting that banking regulator RBI has not been vigilant enough. But the fact is, it’s the government’s responsibility to create autonomous and independent institutions that have the self-confidence to ask questions, even from well-connected VIPs.
The Indian people’s interests are best served when the government takes urgent steps to ensure that institutions – CVC, CBI, judiciary, RTI, CIC, bank watchdogs – are not attacked or weakened or marginalised or bypassed but made vigorous, independent and staffed by persons of courage and integrity. It’s these institutions that are India’s real chowkidars, not a single individual.
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