Political Corruption and the Character of the Indian State

The Bofors case – involving 64 crores – brought down a government. Now, almost daily we are faced with revelations of corruption to the tune of lakhs of crores. Not only has the scale of corruption been upgraded, the nature of corruption today also reflects on the character of the Indian State in liberalised and globalised India. Big capital and imperialist forces always influenced the State in India, but in globalised times, national and multinational corporations as well as imperialist forces are increasingly playing a more and more direct role in deciding the priorities and policies of the State.

Ruling Class Politicians – Agents of Corporates?

The Radia tapes exposed how corporations through their agents are influencing the appointment of Ministers, laws passed in Parliament, and policies – all in their favour.

The embrace between corporate funds and politics has been growing ever fonder down the years. Some years back, the BJP’s Pramod Mahajan and SP’s Amar Singh were known to be big time fund mobilisers for their parties, boasting of being able to deliver hundreds of crores within minutes. Such corporate favours inevitably came with a price tag of return favours. The Radias of the corporate world excel in performing services (such as helping to secure the appointment of A Raja as Telecom Minister) only to call in favours later. Corporate cash would be used by politicians to dole out family favours while family connections would be used to whitewash the cash; corporate hush money would come in handy to buy favourable recommendations and reports and even influence judges. These phenomena were all glimpsed in the Amar Singh tapes; in the sordid Mahajan episode, and in their fullest version in the Radia tapes.

Above all, economic and internal policies (SEZ Act, Patents Act, Nuke Liability Act, draconian laws, Operation Green Hunt being some prominent instances, and even laws relating to education and health) are being scripted largely with corporate interests in mind.

What Wikileaks Proved

Perhaps one of the most notorious instances of political corruption has been the cash- for-votes scandal in Parliament during the trust vote in the context of the Nuke Deal. The Wikileaks revelations have confirmed the widespread allegations that the UPA Government bought MPs’ votes to ensure their victory in the trust vote and pave the way for the Indo-US Nuke Deal. But both Congress and BJP have chosen to underplay the real significance of the Wikileaks revelations. Why did Congress leaders chose to tell US diplomats of the plan to buy votes in Indian Parliament and even show them trunks full of cash means? Surely it was because they wanted to assure their US bosses that they were doing all they could to ensure that the UPA Government won the trust vote and sealed the Nuke Deal!

Pro-US Cabinet Reshuffle

The Wikileaks cables expose, above all, the extent to which the US influences India’s economic and foreign policy and even the selection of Cabinet Ministers. A US Embassy cable dated January 30, 2006 sent by Ambassador David C. Mulford to Washington observed that in January 2006, the Manmohan Singh Government appointed Murli Deora (described by the Ambassador as “pro-US”) as Petroleum Minister, removing Mani Shankar Aiyar, who is described as a “contentious and outspoken Iran pipeline advocate”. Mulford adds that “The UPA inducted a large number of serving MPs (among them Deora), including seven from the IUPF (Indo-US Parliamentary Forum) who have publicly associated themselves with our strategic partnership.” Mulford therefore concludes approvingly that the Cabinet reshuffle is “likely to be excellent for US goals in India (and Iran),” signifying the Manmohan Singh Government’s “determination to ensure that US/India relations continue to move ahead rapidly.”

US-Dictated Economic Policies

The leaked cables not only reveal the US’ intense scrutiny and monitoring of India’s economic policy, they also spill the beans about the fact that India’s Ministers openly owe favours to this or that corporations! In one cable, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asks about India’s Finance Minister, “To which industrial or business groups is (Pranab) Mukherjee beholden? Whom will he seek to help through his policies?” Do we need Finance Ministers who are ‘beholden’ to corporate groups rather than accountable to India’s common people?!

Hillary Clinton’s cable also shows that more than Ministers, the man trusted by the US to ensure pro-US economic policies is Planning Commission Vice Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, known to be an IMF appointee, as well as the PM Manmohan Singh. She asks, “Why was Mukherjee chosen for the Finance portfolio over Montek Singh Ahluwalia?”

Pro-US Shift in Foreign Policy

Other cables testify to the fact that the UPA Government lies to the Indian public on the real nature of its relationship with Israel and Iran. One cable makes the assessment that India’s seemingly warm engagement with Iran meant for “public consumption,” mostly to please the “domestic Muslim and Non-Aligned Movement audience.” Another cable quotes then National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan as saying that India would like to vote against Iran when the matter came up in the IAEA a second time, was worried about the reaction in its “domestic political constituency.”

The US cables also record that US representatives warned India that failure to vote against Iran at the IAEA would jeopardise the Nuke Deal. Events show that the Manmohan Singh Government ably served their US masters by voting as directed by the US. Clearly the leaked cables offer fresh and explosive evidence – not just of bribery but of the much more serious charge of undermining India’s own interests and subverting democracy to meet the demands of the US. This is the most serious dimension of political corruption in our country, and resisting such corruption calls for resisting the growing pro-imperialist character of the Indian state.

BJP – Loyal to Corporate and US Bosses

The main opposition party, the BJP, is not interested in highlighting or challenging the corporate and imperialist influence on state policy. After all, all ruling class parties including the BJP are tainted by the Midas touch of corporate gold, and are wary of doing anything that would seriously jeopardise corporate interests. The Radia tapes showed numerous instances where top BJP leaders too had obediently served corporate interests.

The Wikileaks cables have exposed the duplicity of the BJP, proving that in matters of subservience to the US, the BJP and the Congress are birds of a feather. A senior BJP leader is quoted assuring the US representative that the BJP’s political resolutions criticising the United Progressive Alliance’s ‘subservience’ to the US should not be taken too seriously since it is “only political rhetoric meant to score easy points against the UPA.” Another cable refers to L K Advani’s playing down of the BJP’s stated opposition to the Nuke Deal, and promising ‘continuity’ in Indo-US relations and the Nuke Deal too, if the BJP were to come to power. Yet another cable has senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley complaining against Modi’s being denied a US visa, saying he could not understand how the United States could take such an action against the party that began the transformation of U.S.-India relations! In the same cable, Jaitley is quoted as mooting FDI in retail and even in legal services. Noting that Jaitley was ‘gracious’ throughout the interview in spite of his protests against denial of visa to Modi, the US Embassy representative comments, tongue in cheek that Jaitley “clearly values his personal and commercial connections to the US (several US corporates are legal clients).”

Just as BJP is committed to cultivating ties with US imperialism in spite of its public posture of nationalism, it is fully committed to neoliberal policies and corporate appeasement in spite of public posture against corruption.

If BJP’s posture of swadeshi and their claims of opposing the UPA’s ‘pro-American’ policies stand exposed as a misleading mask by the Wikileaks cables, their ‘Hindutva’ politics too stands exposed as ‘opportunistic’ (a word Jaitley himself is quoted as using in the conversation with the US representative). Jaitley told the US representative that “In India’s northeast, for instance, Hindutva plays well because of public anxiety about illegal migration of Muslims from Bangladesh. With the recent improvement of Indo-Pak relations, Hindu nationalism is now less resonant in New Delhi, but that could change with another cross-border terrorist attack, for instance on the Indian Parliament.” These bald words reveal how for the BJP, even terror attacks like the one on Parliament are welcome because they provide fertile ground for Hindutva politics!

A Banana Republic?

Stung by the tapes implicating his own lobbyist Niira Radia in the country’s worst ever corruption scandal, Ratan Tata has chosen to act the injured martyr. In an interview with Indian Express editor Shekhar Gupta aired on the Walk the Talk show of a media house (also stung by the Radia tapes), Tata said just the other day Obama had hailed India for having arrived on the world stage, but the developments since then suggested that India was in danger of becoming ‘crony capitalist’ and a ‘banana republic’. When Tata spoke of crony capitalism, was he referring to the revelation that corporate lobbyists had Ministers, leaders of both ruling and opposition parties, judges and media persons in her pocket? When he spoke of a ‘banana republic’ was he referring to the worrying situation where extremely rich corporations, with the collusion of governments and imperialist powers, seem able to violate laws with impunity, undermine democracy and loot the country’s precious resources (as happened in the original ‘banana republics’ of Latin America)? It seems not – what Tata is talking about, instead, is the fact that a corporate lobbyist’s ‘privacy’ was violated and her phones tapped; and the tapes then leaked to the media (he implies the leak happened to tarnish Tata and benefit some rival corporation).

Tata went on to warn that “if we under the guise of freedom of speech, or of any number of other so-called rights of democracy, abuse the luxury of democracy,” India would turn into a country where people “go to jail without adequate evidence, or their bodies are found in the trunks of cars”. It is interesting that Tata refers to the “freedom of speech,” democratic rights and democracy itself as a “luxury”! The peasants of Singur and tribals of Kalinganagar could give Tata a lesson or two about the kind of world where activists and political dissidents challenging powerful corporate interests like land grab “go to jail without evidence,” are found dead in fields, or are simply shot dead by police in cold blood. Protest against corporate land grab to protect livelihood and survival is a “luxury of democracy” that peasants and tribals, in Tata’s view, do not deserve – while super-rich corporates like Tata enjoy the ‘democratic right to privacy’ and can go to court to get evidence suppressed in the name of ‘protecting privacy.’

Actually the evidence of the Radia tapes and the Wikileaks cables suggest that India has already embarked on the road towards becoming a banana republic where corporations and imperialist forces subvert democracy and people’s rights are repressed to secure the ‘rights’ of corporations. Unless neoliberal policies are urgently overturned, India will indeed become a banana republic. The erstwhile ‘banana republics’ of Latin America are experiencing a new awakening – with popular movements and governments that are challenging imperialism in its very backyard. Will India learn from their example and mount a determined resistance to the neo-liberal and imperialist plunder of our resources and undermining of our freedom and democracy?

State Repression to Serve Corporate Plunder

All over the country, huge swathes of agricultural and forest land have been grabbed by corporations for mining, real estate and a variety of projects and industries, in collusion with governments. In every case, laws of the land have been violated wholesale, while government officials have turned a blind eye. But such corruption has been backed by the might of police lathis and bullets and draconian laws – and any-one exposing or questioning it has faced severe repression.

Naturally, tribals and peasants who face the loss of land, livelihood and means of survival have mounted a fierce resistance. At many places – Kalinganagar, Jagatsinghpur, Dadri, Singur, Nandigram, Sompeta, Srikakulam – they have been met with police firing, brutal lathicharges and organised political violence that have killed and injured many. The broad majority of popular struggles against land grab have not been of a Maoist variety, but have rather been people’s struggles. However, increasingly entire communities protesting land grab have been branded as ‘Maoists.’ Adivasis are literally being hunted out of the forests that are their home. In Chhattisgarh, private militia called the ‘Salwa Judum,’ in the name of opposing Maoists, forcibly displaced tens of thousands of tribals and have indulged in rape, arson and massacres.

‘Operation Green Hunt’ is a military operation launched by the central government, specifically the Home Ministry, ostensibly to combat Maoist violence. However, it has been apparent that Maoism is only the pretext: the real intention is to crush the people’s resistance, silence dissenting voices so in the service of corporate plunder. People like Binayak Sen, who critique the policy of corporate loot and state repression, have been branded as ‘seditious,’ equated with terrorists and jailed. Binayak Sen is only one among thousands of activists and ordinary people who have been jailed under draconian laws for the crime of questioning corporate grab of resources.

It should be noted that Union Home Minister P Chidambaram who launched Green Hunt himself used to be a director of mining MNC Vedanta, only stepping down a day before becoming Finance Minister in 2004.

Chidambaram’s Man Suggests “Corporate Territorial Armies”

Chidambaram’s agenda and thinking are also reflected in the ideas of Mahindra Special Services Group CEO Captain Raghu Raman who heads NATGRID, a pet project of Chidambaram’s Home Ministry to integrate intelligence databases. In a report, Raghu Raman makes the audacious suggestion that “it’s time for the corporates to step in” to the arena of security. In favour of this idea, he cites the precedence for private security contractors in the Israel, the US and other countries. He proposes that corporates be allowed to raise their own “private territorial armies.” He concludes that “If the commercial czars don’t begin protecting their empires now, they may find the lines of control cutting across those very empires.”

Corporations running their own “private territorial armies” is not too far-fetched an idea – after all, be it at Bastar, Rayagada, Singur or Jagatsinghpur, corporations with the help of ruling political parties did raise private armed groups to terrorise and intimidate protestors. Operation Green Hunt too is clearly an instance of India’s own police and paramilitary being deployed to protect the “empires” of corporate czars.