‘TO be fair to yourself, be fair to others,’ say all moral codes. Yet, what sets the rules for the world is the dictum, ‘All is fair in love and war.’ Conquerors and plunderers rarely follow any norms. Rulers have long been habituated to having their way, blatantly abusing their absolute power in pursuit of their desired ends. Wars are fought to be won, and enterprises are launched to succeed. The winner then defines the law, the code, the system, unwilling to submit to any scrutiny or question.

The ambitious try to nudge close to the seat of power so as to rise above the law meant for all, the obedient subjects. It was common practice that once the landlords had collected and deposited a specified tax in the royal treasury, the balance over and above that was theirs. It was the peasants, cobblers, weavers and the like who had to bear the burden of wealth accumulation that was never made public. Such a hierarchical manipulation of behaviour that did not permit the questioning of authority manifested in a culture of silent acceptance, accompanied by a glorification of that silence. Over time it became the custom, the rule, the accepted way.

At one level, whether it be the domain of the family, society or governance, authority was held up as sacred. On the other hand, the system also constrained the ruler from questioning the landlord – who may be corrupt from the viewpoint that he extracted more than he deposited – both because he depended on him and because the similarity in their mode of operation created a salient complicity (till shifts in the centre of power and strategic wisdom necessitate drastic action). In Tendulkar’s play, Ghasiram Kotwal, Nana Phadnavis allowed Ghasiram to have his own way (more or less playing his lordship in absentia) till he became a liability and then obliterated him.

This is not to argue that corruption is natural, but rather that it is oppressive and its existence is not accidental. It exists because the system of governance provides scope for its perpetuation. True, not every system of governance is equally corrupt. The checks and balances vary and so does the health of societies and countries.

Generally, corruption implies taking more than what is one’s legitimate due. In brief, that which is permitted, not concealed nor inappropriate to one’s source of income. And how much would that be? Kabir has as exemplary couplet that says, ‘Sai itna dijiye, jaane kutumb samaye, mein bhi bhooka na rahun, saadhu na bhookha jaye.’ The rationale being that each one must get enough such that no one goes hungry in the family and there is a bit to spare for someone at the door. If each gets his due, there would be enough for all. But words can become enigmatic, specially when read by a corrupt mind.

 

Does kutumb mean family or a clan, and does ‘enough’ refer to ‘for now’ or ‘for eight generations to come’? The saint poet Basavanna preached that one should count each day at a time and no more. For him kutumb refers to all human beings and the entire universe; both could be nurtured for now and the future. It is simple, rational and obvious, yet made to appear impossible. When a system of governance assumes that treating everyone equally is impossible, it becomes opaque, hard and divisive. It becomes a system that has lost the ability to dream.

A simple visit to any office tells all. Disarrayed, unkempt files; dusty racks and half-empty chairs; desks stained with spilt tea and ink; unsmiling faces muttering monosyllables; the ring tone of authority which only the staff can heed. It serves to cordon off the outsider, the public. Even as much may indeed have changed in the past decades, the administration has yet to overcome the colonial fear of people. No wonder the common people, ignored and shunned by the system, look upon it as oppressive and prefer not to have any truck with it.

It is indeed ironical that the one factor enabling a systematic flow of corruption is the procedure of maintaining a record of transactions by use of the written word. Though the intention behind a written record is probably to ensure integrity, the implications in practice can turn out to be very different. In a society where marriage is still settled by word of mouth and knowledge is transmitted orally, the written word has yet to acquire the sanctity that it ought to command. Its dissonance with the actual is evident. As is the disassociation with conscience. The mistrust and apprehension that the written word creates amongst the poor flows directly from their experience. We all know that the moneylender maintained accounts to suit himself; no copy was available to the peasant who borrowed money. The mathematics of the transaction too was never explained. Ink by itself has no shape or ethics; its allegiance is to the hand that holds the pen. And generations have been pawned by its singular stroke.

 

The issue is not about literacy, but power. Much in the same way that we sign away our lives at the doorstep of a hospital, we quietly accept all that which may go against us because we have no choice. The mystification of the written word creates a language that becomes a law in itself; the outcomes invariably favouring the institution that devised it. Lal Singh, a friend from MKSS Bhim pointed out, ‘Those who get educated are lost to the village, they never look back.’ Not only that, they become adept at paperwork that bears no resemblance to the ground reality.

Reports of the completion of non-existent projects and an imaginary account of money spent on the work are neatly maintained. Paper, however, does not often document the real. The records appear more an exercise to appease and deceive an abstract system – that envisaged targets have been met, roads have been built, teachers have been paid for running the school, and houses have been provided to the poor. This is fiction at its best. The people know nothing has moved, that the money has vanished in the maze of figures and vouchers. But the written word legitimized by authority seeks no testimony of the people.

Certified by itself it reclines in its own shelf, confident and expectant of the white ants chewing away its secrets, so that it would be hidden forever and forgotten. But sometimes an alternative version emerges, and asks questions. In the asking, it narrates its own story.

 

Not too long ago there lived a woman in a small dusty village of Rajasthan. She was poor and though not young, was happy to work at a construction site during the famine. Every morning she went to work. In the evening as she would light a fire to cook a meal for herself and her husband, she would dip her finger in the thick black soot of the chullah and with that kajal make a dot on the kitchen wall. Each day that she went to work, she added a dot to her kitchen calendar.

At the work site there was a man with a muster roll who, a pen in hand, marked the attendance of workers. This he never showed to anyone. On payment day, he handed out the money on the basis of what he claimed to be recorded on his paper. The number of days for which the woman was asked to accept payment were far lower than the days she had worked. She remembered clearly and her own record of tiny black dots had kept count of many more working days. But that could not be taken into cognizance. The wall was her personal space and the register official – hence correct and final. A closed file.

The credibility of her word was pitted against paper; a hired worker against overseer; the soot dots against ink marks. The system decided to disbelieve her, but she stood by her wall and refused to accept the payment. She was poor and needy and knew hunger. But she also knew what was just and rightfully hers. The people around also knew it. But they also knew the power and finality of paper, wrapped in the red tape of office files. Inaccessible to the common person, there was no way of knowing what it said about them.

Their work, wages, quality of life, development and course of destiny. The metaphor, ‘Jab baaz hi khet ko khaye’ is not without basis. Hopelessness sets in. Years later, when records were accessed, revealed and cross-checked during a junsunvai, the woman’s truth was acknowledged and accepted. But, by then she was no more in the world – her empty house a witness to the soot marks still intact above the cold unlit fireplace.

 

Ultimately, a jansunvai or social audit takes the process to its original meaning, having been derived from ‘audio’ – that is to hear, listening to know. It is the collective voice, the community as witness who must testify. This is the strongest testimony in the audit. It also bridges the gap between official record and the experienced world. By initiating a process of accountability to the people, corruption too is checked because anything that comes in the public sphere needs to bear the test of a wider social scrutiny. It means acknowledging the presence of the eye that is watching and with it begins the process of transparency.

As people begin to participate in the process of governance, they start developing faith and trust in the process, the system. The Campaign for the Right to Information is a running thread that weaves together thousands of such stories – stories of courage and resilience created by the sheer will and determination of the poor and the illiterate. Access to the mysterious office file has opened up a Pandora’s box – the sordid saga of misappropriation that has devastated so much, each false entry representing millions of lives. It explores the callousness that has set in.

Of course, this is not popular, because it checks power and corruption which by its very nature is the privilege of the powerful. Every act of corruption, whether it is embezzlement of funds, indolence and idleness at the workplace or indifference to the meaningfulness of the work at hand, encodes the audacity of the powerful to do that which should not be done because the ‘system’ is confident that it will not be seen, noticed or questioned. It’s a kind of a replay of the lordship syndrome. It flows from the top and filters to the bottom with a hierarchical distribution of power and privilege.

Groups of officers and departments have a secret understanding and methodology for acquiring benefits that are not legitimate. This is an oral pact, passed on and strengthened by practice. Whether it is the use of the office vehicle for personal use, the availing of leave without notice or demanding of a bribe, which is often termed as a seva shulk, or a fee for non-harassment (delays, unnecessary queries, misplaced files, etc). The circle of connivance is all-pervasive. In Premchand’s Gaban, the protagonist is at the end left alone and isolated, haunted by the horror of his act of embezzlement. Not so any more. The collective operation relieves the burden on the conscience and makes corruption a norm.

 

Infusing integrity in the system does not automatically translate into honest practice. This may be because there is a gap between word and deed, claim and practice. Nor are all policies pro-people. The individual disregard of the poor and indifference to their well-being draws strength from the system’s own disregard and indifference as reflected by its decisions and developmental priorities. When people cease to matter at that abstract level, they cannot assume importance in any exercise of implementation. The unstated but practiced becomes the custom. Every corrupt practice erodes public wealth and thus works against the people. It is overlooked, not necessarily because of connivance but because the matter is considered insignificant. In its essence, it reflects the evasion of responsibility.

 

The result is rampant corruption. That is why, additional income over and above the salary is cited as part of a prospective groom’s qualification. A suspended and then reinstated employee in Bhuvan Shome still expects to earn by bribes in his new posting. There is no dearth of examples that show this to be a part of regular experience. And of course, there are justifications – price rise, donations for admission of children in schools, tuition, bribe for a son’s job, dowry for the girl’s marriage, a house in the city, the list is endless. Many such practices could well be dispensed with. Continuing to tolerate them not only helps channelize the easily available and unaccounted money, it helps corruption entrench itself. Schools accept donations only in cash, tuition substitutes classroom teaching and so on. A lot of it is used for the purchase of real estate and its flow prevents prices from falling. It is a well known fact that in almost every transaction of a house, three-fourths of the payment is unaccounted money.

These practices are often referred to as the ‘law of the land’ as opposed to the ‘law of the state’. A parallel system of monetary exchange perpetuates its own dynamics. It feeds the markets and keeps them going, thereby developing an equation with and within the official system. It has a definite presence, often not recognized but allowed to exist nevertheless, even though this flow of money saps circulation at the other end. It is then that the ruthlessness of it all surfaces when compared with the situation of the poor from whose legitimate share this wealth is siphoned of to private wallets.

 

Every government employee has a monthly salary which far exceeds the Rs 10,000 that a rural household can at best hope to earn annually through the NREGA. Even so, officials do not hesitate to take a cut out of this as well, though this meagre earning of the poor has helped reduced migration, enabled children to go to school. This it is not the deprived taking what the system denies to them; that incidentally is called theft and we have laws that deal severely with such a crime. It is no surprise that in the past few years, the poor have disappeared from the media landscape. The artistic scenario also no longer contemplates on the conflict between good and evil, just and unjust. There is no discrimination, no exercise of judgement, no distinction between right and wrong. It’s all the same.

In popular cinema too, the earlier narratives of the good man trying to take on the corrupt and powerful have taken a back seat. Today, the ‘so called’ good and bad are the same. It’s a look alike game, each a mirror of the other. It’s a glorious dark world and it blurs reason. It is exciting and liberating, but there is also an underlying cynicism that accepts corruption as a way of life. Meanwhile, the advertising scene reflects the presence of surplus money with the eager consumer. The poor are an uncomfortable presence and they grow distant like shadows that are unreal.

Nevertheless, corruption continues to be a favourite topic of conversation – predictable, boring and inconclusive as a soap opera that seeks its own extension. Everyone laments that everyone has been corrupted. Hence, no one can be blamed and no one can do anything about it. Because, after all, it all begins with the man in the slum who sells his vote for a bottle of liquor. Of course, politicians tempt, but that is understandable. For they play the game to win. It is the common man who ought to resist. (Note, while the debate on corruption sweeps the country, the legislature doesn’t seem to be going through a remedial introspection of its own role in the making of the situation. The dominant logic is manoeuvred by those who have the intelligence and power to do so. The deficit of trust being its unheeded legacy.)

It is a ironical twist of discourse that places the onus of corruption on the same poverty stricken person who bears the burden of corruption. This is the self-delusion of the middle class that tries to absolve itself of all responsibility by pointing the finger elsewhere. The voter is not unlike the bride that grabs the ornamental girdle knowing that the rest of the life will be lustreless.

 

To expect that some sort of a purification at the level of the bottle would release a genie to clean up the mess of corruption is only an excuse to keep the vicious circle going, the status quo in place. After all, it’s someone else’s fault that we are afflicted by this malaise. So let’s not try, let’s not pretend to be otherwise, let’s accept and allow ourselves to be corrupt. Take whatever comes our way; it doesn’t matter in any case. And if someone does attempt to make a difference, then some among us will try to thwart the initiative and employ different tactics to do so.

A man filed an RTI application to find out why the panchayat was unnecessarily delaying some payments due to him. He was immediately offered twice the amount, if only he withdrew the application. He refused. As many senior panchayat members belonged to the same caste as his, a jati sabha insisted that he withdraw the application or else face social boycott. The threat was translated into action – the man was isolated. He never understood why they stood by the corrupt. It was not dishonourable to cheat; only to speak the truth.

 

When Valmiki was asked why he robbed, he said that it was for his near and dear ones. Asked if they would share the burden of sin that he has accumulating on their behalf, he was sure they would. But when questioned, the family refused any responsibility for his actions. He had to bear his burden alone. Even if families stand by the guilty and accused, surely there is a moment when one has to stand alone and face up to the stark truth of ones action. In today’s world, where the fear of having to answer to god no longer holds sway, we can only hope that the law has the ability to question and discipline; or maybe, rely on a disturbed conscience.

If nothing else, we have to eventually answer to the times. A single institution, howsoever powerful, can never hope to cope with the enormity of the task – it will be fossilized by its own inadequacy. When people begin to question, they help strengthen the process of democratization. Instituting accountability to the people represents a dynamic shift away from hierarchical power centres. People’s participation in the routine of governance is a step towards the realization of a stronger democracy. It is a tribute to the peoples’ movement that words like social audit, transparency and accountability have become part of everyday life and vocabulary. Language in its own way creates a vibration that resounds in culture. And that in turn multiplies the consequences and affects many more layers of existence. Hopefully, it will help the people of our country to define and claim their future.