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Journalism of Courage
JUNE 30: He quotes the last shloka of the Bhagawad Gita, where there is a vision of Krishna, and the action of Arjuna, wealth, justice and success will reign’, but N Vittal, Central Vigilance Commissioner (CVC) who combines the qualities of both, has a RAMA approach to fighting his own Kurukshetra – corruption. And it was with a mix of myth, mythology and plain, hard truths that the most honest man in the country’ unveiled how he intends to bell the corruption cat’.
“At first there will be Resistance against the ideas to weed out corruption, then there will be Annoyance, then those who resisted will Mellow down and there will be Acceptance,” Vittal explained away the RAMA acronym. The resistance was like the one he was facing, he said, to his suggestion that a “corruption-free service should be the fundamental right of every citizen” and should be included in the Constitution, now under review by a committee.
And then there is the Victor Hugo approach: nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come. Vittal said it was only now that people were waking up to the malaise of corruption following his efforts to “bring it out of the closet”. “And I am happy to say that bodies like the CII (Confederation of Indian Industries) and the ASSOCHAM (Associated Chambers of Commerce) have agreed to my suggestion to have an anti-bribery convention,” he said.
Vittal, a lecturer before he joined the IAS, was speaking at a function organised by the Indian Chemical Manufacturers Association, delivering the Rajmitra B D Amin Memorial lecture. Likening Amin to that of a person with the vision of Krishna and the action of Arjuna, Vittal stated that the need of the hour was a combined effort against corruption which has been revealed to be not only anti-national and anti-poor but also anti-development.
“Last year’s UNDP report had said that if India could reduce its corruption level to those of Scandinavian countries, its GDP would rise by 1.5 per cent and its financial investments would increase by 12 per cent,” he told the gathering. Pointing out to the all-pervasive nature of corruption, he reminded the audience that it was because Rs 20 lakh was paid as bribe that huge amounts of RDX could land in the country, leading to the 1993 bomb blasts in the city leaving 300 people dead. And it was through hawala dealings that Kashmiri militants were being paid to keep up their jehad’.
The nexus of corruption as Vittal discovered was the Neta, babu, lala, jhola and dada’, where the babu is the bureaucrat, lala the businessman, jhola the NGO (“yes, even NGOs are siphoning off money”, he said) and the criminal.
The way out of this cesspool, he said was three fold: simplify rules. “Do you know that 2/3rd of the IT Act deals with exemptions? I suggested that it all be deleted. There should be no exemptions, only a flat tax slab. “In this country, every law is becoming a source of evil itself. If I were to remove prohibition in Gujarat today, Gandhiji would not object, but the bootleggers would”.
Improve transparency; empower people. “The Freedom of Information Act is being drafted, but by the way it is being done, I am told the bureaucracy is doing its best to ensure that information is hidden from the public,” he said. Considering that only 6 per cent of cases tried in the judicial system end in conviction, he said one solution should be that black money obtained from any person’s place should be deposited in a consolidated fund for the country. “Let us not improve the judiciary. Let these people then aproach the courts to get their money back,” he said.
And of course punishment. There should be a benami black money scheme, where anyone who knows somebody having black money should give the information to the CVC, his name will be kept secret and raids will be conducted by the charge of the black brigades’ against these persons. “It will help if the CVC is given names, which will then direct the CBI and IT to conduct raids, because that way these agencies cannot then tell us that nothing materialised in the raids,” he said.
