M D Nalapat
Banks
that will not lend to companies even at very high rates of interest,
because bank officers are wary of being questioned by the police about
such loans. Multiple tax raids across the country on those not having
VVIP protection, most of which end up getting compounded after the
payment of bribes to the officers concerned. A mushrooming of
regulations in each field of economic activity, so that the avenues for
corruption get increased. Extreme incompetence on the part of
governmental agencies, often deliberate. Targeted speculation in food
grains and vegetables, that send retail prices shooting up while denying
the farmer any benefit from such increases. A handful of big business
interests who have free access to VVIPs and who can get appointed their
agents to ministerships and to senior administrative appointments. This
is the India of 2011,a country that must be bringing tears to the eyes
of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who is facing sabotage within his own
team, designed to make him unviable as in his present job.
Weeks ago, the mountain of speculaion about a thoroughgoing reshuffle of the Union Cabinet produced a mouse. The corrupt were rewarded rather than dropped. To take the example of Vilasrao Deshmukh, during whose tenure as Chief Minister of Maharashtra more than 30,000 farmers committed suicide. Despite the severe strictures passed on him by the Supreme Court, which pointed out that he favoured moneylenders rather than farmers, the Prime Minister was forced by the leadership of the Congress Party to give Deshmukh the portfolio that controls the administration of rural India, presumably so that he can make a dent in the population explosion by presiding over mass suicides of farmers, this time on an all-India scale. Of course, it is no secret that Deshmukh has been one of the most generous contributors to the financial kitty of the Congress Party. Friends in Mumbai often talked about huge suitcases filled with “ mangoes” that would be sent every few days from Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur to Delhi by chartered flights, so as to keep Deshmukh’s chair safe despite his having made Maharashtra one of the worst-administered states in the Indian Union.
