Opinion The one-dimensional fast

Corruption has been a powerful focus for movements in the past,and battling it is a global idea. In our neighbourhood,“corruption” has been used by army generals in Pakistan,Bangladesh and even Myanmar to do away with elected governments. Latin America was assaulted by corporates from the US,for centuries,arguing that the “corruption” of the local elites in mismanaging the boundless possibilities of resources justified annexations and invasions,generating the fascinating term “banana republic.”

Fixing the generically “corrupt” is a win-win at the moment. It is heretical to question it. Yet,there is a deep tussle over the central idea that is at the heart of what “corruption” is.

In the late 19th and early 20th century,there were ideas of freedom from corruption and the tyranny of the state,as economists like Friedrich von Hayek and even David Ricardo understood the phrase. Adam Smithian ideas rested on the freedom of entrepreneurship,under a benign law-and-order minimalism. The Depression of the 1930s and the economics and politics of the World Wars brutally reconfigured these ideas. Keynesian notions were on the necessity of broadening the ambit of the state; and,over the years,freedom from the tyranny and “corruption” of private profit,as opposed to social good,was in currency. The anti-milawat and anti-mehangaai agitations in India,for example,in the late sixties,found a focus at the doors of traders,as seen in several of the popular movies of the time that villainised the shopkeeper.

However,as the world changed once again,with the collapse of the Soviet Union and its empire,caused by “corrupt” and bureaucratic insensitivities and the negation of personal freedoms there,free enterprise was once again a winner. But now,the mood in Europe and elsewhere,particularly its annoyance at corruption and malfeasance,is also demanding freedom from unregulated,self-serving business interests. After Lehman and Madoff,the West is introspecting not only on the role of corporations but also that of NGOs,and the need for accountability and transparency in the causes they front and the shows they put up. Scrutiny is not simply limited to the state.

In India,after two decades of economic reforms,there is a flourishing private sector. But this agitation is not quite clear about what and whose corruption it is so doggedly opposed to? CII,FICCI,big industries and several corporations,in a fabulous PR move,were the first to get off the block and ride the Anna annoyance wave. It has been a smart move to pre-empt the identification of other sources of corruption.

As far as the government’s response goes,the confusion has,of course,been one of individuals and of competing ambitions. But there,too,is embedded a fundamental clash of ideas: the lack of an ability to articulate where they stand on what,and whose corruption.

The prime minister has been carefully articulating his world-view (at the Planning Commission and then at an IIM),seriously hoping that this “agitation” is by a generation spawned by his economic reforms,an urban population that feels blighted and thwarted by the state and,ergo,anxious for a bigger retreat of the state from most areas and thus freeing up private capital. The second view,held loosely by the “party,” is pretty much at variance with any view that it is the state which is “corrupt” and must retreat.

The Congress has,since 2004,argued for a redefinition of the role of the state in India,and seen it as a crucial vehicle for the uplift of those below the breadline. Their understanding of rural poverty programmes; their social vision; even their understanding of the Maoist problem stem from a concept that there is too little of a “good and effective” state. The Two Indias idea — one India desperately needing redress and programmes,food security,employment guarantees,a right to information and freedom even from private contractors,with a dutiful state being refashioned to allow aspirations to take flight — is the bedrock of this idea and its politics. The fact that these two ideas were interwoven (either cleverly or by chance) before the 2009 elections,and that they clicked,should have provided the regime an impetus to push ahead and aggressively question whether the narrow focus on a particular sort of corruption of this movement was at all fair.

How to articulate a broader concept of corruption,breaking it down for the 21st century? Even if corruption is the clear and present danger we confront,don’t we have to worry about the corruption of all — the state,private entities,NGOs,journalists,bureaucrats,doctors and lawyers? That would have at least allowed a richer and more textured debate — and,importantly,revealed the exclusive self-righteousness of those shouting “sab chor hain”.

But guilt,and an inability to reconcile itself to what it sees as worthy of defending at the risk of unpopularity,has got the better of the ruling party and the government; and the absence of a contest of ideas has plunged the public discourse to a new low — bereft of a clear understanding of freedoms,of contexts and of processes that moments like these should hopefully give us.

Damned as we are,we have to make do with pious sermons from the platform and a cry for war on one side,and,on the other,an executive that does not have the moral courage to force a debate on the ideas floated by the quick anti-corruption coalition,which is using the idea of “corruption” as a cloak,as once George W. Bush used “democracy”.

seema.chishti@expressindia.com