Indian politics is totally corrupted and corrupt politics means corrupt politicians only. When those in power are busy looting who will order enquiry, who will prosecute whom? People have to understand this dirty game played by our political class shamelessly for decades and shun them. Otherwise, one thug will be replaced by another one and this game of musical chair will carry on with people watching silently in amusement. This is no democracy, writes former IAS officer V.S.Pandey
Corruption and democracy cannot go together. But the unfortunate part of our nation’s history is that our politicians claim that you need tons of money to reach people so they need money bags. Our political system has not learned yet to do politics minus corrupt practices. We all know that Democracy anywhere is only about accountability towards people because they are the power behind the ruler and those who wish to rule in democracy need to remember one thing for sure that they have been voted to power by people so he is always answerable to people, who is asking the question is not material, what is material is that those occupying positions have to come clean on every issue. In a democracy, there is no place to hide behind and whoever tries to evade questions and fails to answer them satisfactorily and honestly, does this at his own peril.
History has always thrown up only one result for such people and they end up in dustbins of history. Our country is replete with such examples but unfortunately the ruling class convincingly forgets this cardinal truth over and over again. Not long ago people in power tried to brush under the carpet the ill famous “Bofors” scandal. Similarly, the defence scandals of all the ruling dispensations were tried to be dismissed without arriving at truth, with disastrous results for those involved. Can we forget the 2G scam, coal scams etc which were similarly joked about by the ruling party then. What happened to those who were befooling people as if nothing had happened, they bite the dust and remain there for a decade now.
The ill famous Mauritius route for bringing black money into our stock markets is an old trick adopted by many, if not all, to reroute the ill-gotten wealth of corrupt politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen, industrialists etc. The author himself along with other public- spirited individuals, had in the year 2010 brought these facts to the notice of Supreme Court through a Public Interest Litigation in which it was pointed out that thousands of companies have been registered in one building in Mauritius just for the purposes of laundering the black money of the looters of this country. The Supreme Court on 4th July 2011 passed the order setting up of an all-powerful Special Investigation Team headed by Retired Supreme Court Judge to not only enquire this whole black money business being run by all and sundry but gave this SIT the authority to file fresh FIR’s itself , enquire into them and act as prosecutors also so that the menace of black money can be nailed and dusted. Alas that did not happen for reasons beyond the comprehension of those who are in know of things.
One does not have to go anywhere in search of data to understand what has been going on unabated to launder ill-gotten wealth of looters using the Mauritius route but to look at the Reserve Bank of India’s published data which is shocking to say the least as between the year 2000 to 2014 nearly 40 percent of our Foreign Direct Investment came from Mauritius, a country with a population of less than fifteen lacs.
Why such huge scandals are allowed to happen in our country with no body held to account barring a few exceptions? The answer is not difficult to find. When political parties and politicians start spending billions of rupees to win elections, their nearness to money bags galore was going to be the obvious outcome of this greatest sin in democracy. Hence, scandals after scandals became the norm to milk the public exchequer with industry and businesses playing their role for one political party or the other. That is why Bofors took place, all defence purchase cuts exist, fodder scams, Mining scams across states involving every government of every color and hue, Fertilizer scam, Cement mills sale scandal in UP, UP Sugar mill sale scam, Janta Sari scandal of TN and the Delhi excise scam , the list is so long that it will tire the readers, that’s why only few have been named, no other reason. One reason only – politics is totally corrupted and corrupt politics means corrupt politicians only. When those in power are busy looting who will order enquiry, who will prosecute whom? People have to understand this dirty game played by our political class shamelessly for decades and shun them. Otherwise one thug will be replaced by another one and this game of musical chair will carry on with people watching silently in amusement. This is no democracy.
(Vijay Shankar Pandey is former Secretary Government of India)
