Commentary / Mani Shankar Aiyar

Ours is not an honest society. It, therefore,
does not have an honest polity

The very successes of our system are contributing to the growing malaise of corruption. In a stagnant society, such as we had known for centuries, upward mobile aspirations were limited to a coterie of the feudal few. Now the possibility of the progress has manifested itself to the democratic many. A little bit of jostling, a little palm-greasing, a little social climbing can propel you faster and higher.

Competitive bribe-giving leads to competitive bribe-taking till you do not know which came first -- the demand for the bribe or the bribe proferred. This is the moral and ethical price we, as a society, are paying for a pattern of growth in which the middle class has expanded since Independence by a factor of ten -- from 20 to 200 million-- whereas population has increased by a factor of less than three. The gates to the greasy pole have been opened -- and there are no restrictions on those who can muscle their way in -- or up.

At the same time, this is not a game of only ladders; it is a game of snakes and ladders. There is both a danger of slipping down the snake, as well as the thrill of pushing your competitor down the snake's slippery side. In the belief that there is not space enough for everyone, there is a scramble to get to the banqueting table first before the feast finishes. Cultivating discretion then becomes the name of the game.

Most of those who -- rightly -- decry the role of nepotism and corruption in our public life find life's imperatives catching up with them. How many can honestly say they have never sought or received a favour? Ours is not an honest society. It, therefore, does not have an honest polity. Cyclically, because we have a dishonest polity, we also have a corrupt society.

Moral precept is one answer to the problem. So is judicial activism. Certainly, the sequestering of the meretriciously corrupt politician is crucial to the restoration of a semblance of probity in public life. But to believe that these in themselves constitute a definitive -- or even significant -- solution to the problem is to fall into the trap of a gullible kind of Seshanism.

It is not in human nature so much as in systemic revolution that the answer lies. Out polity is more liable than most democracies to corroding corruption because our political class is small compared to the electorate -- and too distanced from the electorate to influence or be influenced by the voter-in-the-street. This is what accounts for so many MPs of doubtful credentials -- Taslimuddin, Pappu Yadav, Anand Mohan Singh -- entering Parliament because they have secured the endorsement of people. They indubitably have. Are they the run-of-the-mill 'criminals' the media make them out to be -- or are they where they are because there is a dash of Robin Hood to them?

The more democracy, where authority is answerable in the neighbourhood to the problems of the neighbourhood, might mitigate the problem. For where it is not through newspaper headlines but through the ordinary conversation of ordinary folk that corruption is uncovered, there is a better chance of corruption being rejected.

If, despite corruption in high places, the ordinary citizen in, say, the USA does not feel as encumbered with venality as we do, that is perhaps because frontier democracy has given the Americans institutions of elected and, therefore, responsible and responsive local government, where an honest elected dogcatcher compensates for the stench on Capitol Hill.

A more representative democracy might make us a more honest democracy. And a more honest democracy might give us a more honest society, a society in which a good reputation is not only valued in itself but is also an electoral asset.