Corrupt politics of power

Politics of power, says Gopal Krishna Gandhi — the illustrious grandson of Mahatma Gandhi — has altered the very dynamics of Indian politics, with vices like vengeance and vendetta taking precedence over everything else.
Gandhi laments that the spectacle of personal ambition has overtaken idealism while vendetta has replaced values among politicians. He goes on to add that the taste of power and pelf has erased the finer instincts of democracy and justice unfortunately. As Gandhi rightly pointed out, today’s political discourse has degenerated into verbal slanging matches where nothing is foul. Everything is fair in love and war and now politics, exclaimed the Mahatma’s grandson who also served as the governor of India’s West Bengal province.
Indeed, a moral rot has infected the soul of India’s much acclaimed political system as is reflected in the unethical attempt, by a section of the political class in connivance with dubious actors, to destabilize Bengal’s body politic and grab power at all costs as the state goes to poll to elect a new government.
In fact, under Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s leadership Bengal has transformed radically with the state’s socioeconomic indices surpassing the national figures. Bengal’s GSDP touched a record $132.86 billion in 2014-15, GDP hovered around 8 percent since 2013, per capita income grew faster than the national average, 200 percent jump in FDI inflow and 11.99 percent growth in industrial output recorded while the state achieved zero-man-day-loss. Moreover, Bengal made significant progress in revenue earning with the province doubling its tax collection in just three years’ time. Besides, Bengal has bettered India’s average growth rate in agriculture, industry and service sector under Premier Narendra Modi’s governance.
Most importantly, Bengal’s gross value added numbers (GVA), measuring each individual sector’s contribution to economy, of 10.48 is more than that of the national average of 7.5 attained during 2014-15, and in terms of asset creation the state achieved six times more than what Modi’s government could secure nationally. Above all, providing food security to impoverished subaltern people who fought starvation by feeding on ant eggs previously, introducing network of fair-price shops of seed, food-items and medicines, inaugurating subsidized health schemes including diagnostic facilities for the economically disadvantaged, strengthening medium, small and micro-industries through effective clusterization and finances, launching unique socioeconomic empowerment schemes for women and young girls recognized internationally, making Bengal power surplus by enhancing infrastructural capacity, encouraging skill development, establishing employment bank and boosting tourism infrastructure has been Mamata’s major administrative achievements.
Even, the World Bank has complimented Bengal’s village self-governments for their outstanding achievement in strengthening the rural economy. Very significantly, Mamata has assiduously worked for the socioeconomic improvement of backward tribal belts and hill areas, once breeding grounds of bloody-insurgency.
Many believe the devious plot of defaming Bengal’s first lady political executive has been hatched by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), whose overseas donors are behind this brazen attempt to create political doldrums by selectively validating the intuitive public assumption of politicians accepting electoral donations as a quid-pro-quo. And BJP receiving hefty donations from foreign-based halal meat companies adds credence to this suspicion even as such manipulations threaten the very fabric of democracy and governance in India.
In fact, clientelism, manifested in manifold forms of distribution of money and gifts, vote buying as well as returning favors to donors via contracts, licenses, permits et al, is encouraged by all political outfits, especially the biggies who have no dearth of sympathizers with deep pockets. And when more than 100 corporate CEOs joined BJP not an eyebrow was raised because everybody knew these professionals are getting themselves anchored in the ruling party to extract their pound of flesh.
After all, during the last general election the BJP was flooded with funds — the party being the highest recipient of donations among all national parties amounting to INR 4.5 billion approximately in 2014-15 — from corporates in India and abroad, as a senior BJP functionary conversant with political finance confessed. And nothing comes for free in this competitive world of ours. That precisely is the reason why, and ironically too, “election” has itself become the fountainhead of corruption. Even officials, once involved in managing the electoral process in a free and fair manner has no hesitation in acknowledging candidly that electoral finance is at the root of a vicious cycle of corruption that India is witnessing presently and not one but all political outfits are responsible for the rot in the system.
It is an open fact, though difficult to prove that a candidate, spending heftily on election, courtesy lavish private funding, will always remain in a hurry to recover the investment by hook or by crook. And therefore elected representatives including ministers are tempted to make money discreetly with bureaucratic assistance after assuming office. As senior functionaries of the Indian Election Commission often admit privately, the compulsion of post-election paybacks to donors creates an unholy politician-bureaucrat nexus, two most powerful instruments of governance, which is almost impossible to break. India, therefore, must strive to make political financing transparent, through nationalization, for preserving the sanctity of her hallowed democracy.