By M D Nalapat
Target of PM’s next ‘surgical strike’ should be the crooked among the bureaucracy.
The
most meaningful “Majority: Minority” dichotomy in India is between
those citizens who are honest and those others who are dishonest, i.e.
those who correctly pay the numerous taxes due and those who do not.
Despite the reality that continuous additions to the colonial governance
codes in India have arbitrarily criminalised swathes of activity that
are legal in practically all other democracies, it would be safe to say
that the “majority community” in India (i.e. those who are honest)
comprise 90% of the population, leaving 10% in the “minority”. Even
within that sometimes under-appreciated group, government servants,
about 75% are honest and less than a quarter crooked, judging by the
many this columnist has come across. Among officials, around 10% occupy
posts which have the potential to make a significant difference to the
situation facing the public.
It is on this 2.5% of the total of
government employees that Prime Minister Narendra Modi needs to most
concentrate on. Corrupt officials have an outsize influence on policy.
They have the ability to move up the promotion ladder much faster than
the honest, who need to spend most of their time trying to make both
ends meet till the next payday, rather than wooing their superiors and
political heavyweights in the manifold ways that the crooked have access
to. Indeed, the uninterrupted flood of repressive laws and regulations
that each government unleashes on the population demonstrates the
chokehold of the upper echelons of the 2.5% of officials who are
dishonest.
Almost all such regulations are broad and
vague enough to be subject to misuse, thereby becoming manna for the
dishonest rather than (as pious declarations accompanying such measures
invariably aver) balm for the honest. The historically outsize influence
of the dishonest in the actual working of the governance system ensures
that many honest citizens get penalised under such laws and
regulations, usually for technical violations, even while relatively few
of the big fish get caught. These latter have the means to reach out to
the dishonest minority within the governance system, thereby ensuring
their safety. For public consumption, there may be a prime time
hullaballoo raised by the very officials who are shielding them.
However, proof of official intent vests in practical outcomes. If
depredators either escape or get away with a mere wrist slap (such as a
small fine), it is reasonable to assume that much more than conversation
was exchanged between officials and the wrongdoer. When the political
executive is being served a menu of policy options, and the judiciary
the chance to review them, these two pillars of the governance system
need to factor in the reality of corruption within the system in
weighing and discounting recommendations made by officials which may
focus not on the public interest but on their own and that of other
corrupt individuals.
The Reserve Bank of India has believed
since the time of Governor Yaga Reddy that the 1.26 billion people of
India should be made to adopt the cashless ways of Sweden, despite the
difference in conditions between the life of the median Swede and the
median citizen of this country. It is clear from 8 November that RBI
Governor Urjit Patel looks askance at those citizens with zero untaxed
income who have nevertheless withdrawn substantial amounts of cash from
their accounts to use towards patronising the (much-derided by Central
bankers ) “informal” economy. The most trumpeted e-gateway in India for
making payments is controlled by Jack Ma, who when last sighted was not
an Indian citizen. Indeed, foreign rather than domestic interests have a
lock on most major internet and mobile telephony entities in India. And
“Indian” banks have been silently taken over by foreign entities. US
shareholders dominate the big credit card gateways used in India, with
Chinese shareholders in the same companies coming a close second and
those with Indian citizenship nowhere on the equity horizon. Unless PM
Modi manages to endow digital keys to over 600 million citizens within
his term, for a considerable time to come it is more socially
advantageous to put (taxed) rupees in the hands of the poor and the
lower middle classes such as small shopkeepers and crafts-persons,
rather than entirely through plastic controlled by multinational
interests that are gaining in advantage over their domestic competitors
with every passing day because of the rupee falling while interest rates
and crippling regulations rise, with some rules making the word
“draconian” an extreme understatement. An individual may have kept apart
substantial cash (drawn from his or her bank account and shown in tax
returns ) not to pay the “black” component of a future real estate
purchase, but to make repairs to a temple entering the stage of
dilapidation. The grim 1970s-style warnings issued by officials to
taxpayers who prefer holding on to and paying with cash are making
honest taxpayers, rather than the big crooks, nervous about depositing
their clean “old” cash in banks despite the fact that such holdings will
become waste paper after 30 December. Prime Minister Modi must protect
the honest majority of citizens from crooked officials expert at using
technical or imagined violations into darts designed to squeeze payments
from honest taxpayers. Modi needs to ensure that the regulations being
unveiled day after day on television be designed so as to protect the
honest and get used on “bulk carriers” and not only small “fishing
boaters” of black cash. A sniper rifle should be used in enforcement
that aims at big fish rather than allow bureaucrats to wield
blunderbusses spraying multiple innocents even as they incentivise the
guilty to increase the bribe offer.
India’s honest overwhelmingly cast their
2014 votes for Narendra Modi. The target of his next high-octane
“surgical strike” should be the crooked among the higher rungs of the
bureaucracy. Those who have defiled the noble calling of government
through graft and misfeasance should be made to encounter justice rather
than peacefully catch a flight together with family to London or Miami
for—in more than a few cases—a very long stay. Only an accelerated drive
against high-level official corruption may motivate citizens into
enduring for months more the pain caused by the incompetence of much of
the bureaucracy tasked with implementing the epochal policy unveiled by
PM Modi on 8 November 2016.
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