Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: When corruption does not make a political noise

The political pillars have collapsed even more. The BJP and RSS are now wide tents, having incorporated, in the quest for power, most of the non-BJP actors they castigated as corrupt. (File photo)

The stench of widespread corruption once again wafts over Indian public life. Whether it is repeated examination leaks, shoddy road construction, allegations surrounding contracts, the awarding of environmental clearances, the capture of regulatory agencies, theft from temples, expropriation of private companies, or abuse of public office for real estate deals, a familiar litany of complaints is gathering unprecedented momentum. At issue is not whether any specific claim is true. After all, many of the charges against UPA-II were never proved in a court of law. What matters is the pervasive sense of institutional corruption. The most telling sign is that even some supporters of the government acknowledge the problem.

Yet there is a striking paradox. Precisely at the moment when corruption has once again become the dominant idiom of public life, the prospects for a credible anti-corruption movement have become more remote. The Cockroach Janta Party, still protesting at Jantar Mantar, is animated by the admirable conviction that Indians need not simply roll over in the face of arbitrary power. But converting widespread moral unease into an effective political movement is far harder today than at any point. This widening gap between the visibility of corruption and the weakness of anti-corruption politics is not accidental. It points to deeper transformations in Indian politics.

Corruption, of course, never disappeared. But it receded from political consciousness. Its character appeared to change. Corruption seemed less retail than wholesale. It was less about the routine extraction that citizens encountered in everyday dealings with the state, and more about discretion over high-level regulation, contracts, natural resources at the highest levels. The consequences of this corruption are not as easily felt. Second, improvements in state capacity and service delivery blunted everyday grievances.

Across party lines, welfare schemes became more effectively administered, many citizen-facing services were digitised, and the daily experience of many schemes improved. Third, the BJP-RSS combine successfully cast itself as the insurgent force confronting a corrupt Congress ancient régime. It appropriated the language of moral renewal. Finally, there was the political capital of Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself. His carefully cultivated image of personal integrity, the purity of his neeyat rather than his actual performance, created a widespread belief that, whatever the failings of others, the Prime Minister remained incorruptible and firmly in command. That moral authority, more than any institutional reform, helped mute corruption talk.

All four pillars have now collapsed. The ubiquity of exam scams, the pervasive and increasing shoddiness of public services in urban India, even the return of bad roads, disappointment about a range of services, and open talk of corruption in universities have made the retail-wholesale distinction less relevant. Citizens are feeling it more. At the same time, anxieties about high-level corruption have acquired a different character.

During the UPA years, one could plausibly argue that even serious corruption at the top need not permanently damage the economy so long as markets remained broadly competitive and no single group could systematically capture the state. Today, the concern is more profound. The fear is not simply that political power is being used to extract rents, but that it is being used to create and protect quasi-monopolies, selectively rewarding favoured firms while disadvantaging rivals. Corruption no longer merely “greases the wheels”. It is this possibility, the fusion of concentrated political power with concentrated economic power, that makes concerns about corruption resonate even within sections of the private sector that had once regarded it as a manageable cost of doing business. Simply put, it is not that the cost of your business is high; your business is not even safe.

The political pillars have collapsed even more. The BJP and RSS are now wide tents, having incorporated, in the quest for power, most of the non-BJP actors they castigated as corrupt. The RSS is discovering that corruption is not just a matter of homilies about character; people with a background in the RSS can succumb to the temptations of unchecked power like anyone else. The allegations of temple theft in Ayodhya, an organisational structure architected entirely by the BJP-RSS, takes the fig leaf off Ram Rajya, literally. The BJP is now the ancien régime with all the signs of rot too overwhelming to hide. Amongst some BJP supporters, there is still a residual belief in the Prime Minister’s virtue. He is personally above the fray. There is even a theory doing the rounds: This rise in corruption talk is the Prime Minister’s own masterstroke, an attempt to delegitimise particular ministers and officials in his own party so he can act against them.

The problem with this theory is that there is no evidence that the Prime Minister will act against significant political players. At best, you will get small fry being sacrificed. The first strategy buys the Prime Minister’s innocence, but by making him look weak. The issue is not the PM’s virtue. Manmohan Singh was a saint by comparison, and he did not even control his party. But his abdication mattered. The strongest government in decades appears strangely powerless before the one problem it once claimed it was uniquely capable of addressing: Corruption. When the extraordinary power that the Prime Minister has encounters extraordinary silence and inaction on the issue of corruption, it tells a story. A very damning story.

The exposure of the government will not easily translate into a social movement. After the disillusionment with the AAP, the scepticism about movements is higher. It is also hard to find a focal point for a movement; the Opposition cannot claim the moral high ground. At the moment, there is no major elite defection to amplify the concerns of ordinary people. From Bofors to 2G, elite and media amplification was a necessary condition for creating an effective movement. This the BJP still manages to control and suppress effectively. But those expecting the PM to do a clean-up will be disappointed. The silence and abdication are likely to be followed by more repression, not a real cleaning of the stables.

The writer is contributing editor, The Indian Express