India After Gandhi (117 page)

In the spring of 2002 exchanges between Indian and Pakistani troops became more frequent. As spring turned to summer, and the troop build-up intensified, the concerns of 1998 returned – would the subcontinent be witness to the first ever nuclear exchange? A respected Nepali monthly thought that the region was ‘poised on the cusp of war once again’. A leading American analyst believed that ‘the crisis between India and Pakistan is the most dangerous confrontation since Soviet ships steamed towards the US naval blockade of Cuba in 1962’.
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In the end, war was averted, although perhaps it had never even been planned. Within India attention shifted to the coming assembly
elections in Kashmir. The state had, as a Delhi newspaper bluntly put it, a ‘long history of rigged elections’, the polls of 1977 being the exception to the rule.
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In the past the Election Commission had, in Kashmir at any rate, ‘always appeared to be in the company of, and therefore in collaboration with, security forces and partisan state government functionaries’. Now it worked overtime to redeem its reputation. The chief election commissioner ordered a complete revision of the voters’ list, which was unchanged since 1988. An extensive survey of all houses led to a new, comprehensive roll, covering 350,000 pages in the elegant but hard-to-print Urdu script. Copies of the electoral rolls were then distributed to all political parties and displayed in schools, hospitals and government offices across the state. A further precaution was the import of 8,000 electronic voting machines, to prevent booth-capturing and rigging.
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The assembly elections were held in September 2002. The militants killed a prominent moderate just before the polls, and urged the public to boycott them. Despite these threats, some 48 per cent of Kashmiris turned out to vote, somewhat less than was usual in other parts of India, but far in excess of what had been anticipated. International observers were at hand to confirm that the polls were fair. The ruling National Conference was voted out of power; the winners were an alliance comprising the Congress and the People’s Democratic Party. The 2002 Jammu and Kashmir election, wrote two longtime students of the state’s politics, could ‘be seen as a reversal of [the] 1987 assembly elections which by eroding the democratic space had become [the] catalyst for separatist politics . . . This election has brought about a change in the regime through the popular verdict and to that extent it has become instrumental in providing a linkage between the people and the government.’
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The new chief minister, Mufti Mohammed Saeed, expressed these sentiments more crisply when he remarked that ‘this is the first time since 1953 that India has acquired legitimacy in the eyes of the [Kashmiri] people’.
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In the summer of 2003 tourists from other parts of India flocked to Kashmir for the first time in more than a decade. Fifty thousand pleasure-seekers came in the months of May and June, filling hotels across the Valley and houseboats on Srinagar’s Dal Lake. Indian Airlines announced an extra daily flight from Delhi to Srinagar. Provoked by these developments, terrorists launched a series of strikes, throwing grenades in shopping centres, kidnapping civilians, suicide-bombing the chief minister’s
house.
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But even more tourists came the next year, and more airlines announced flights to Srinagar.

In January 2005 civic polls were held in Jammu and Kashmir for the first time in almost three decades. A handsome 60 per cent of voters cast their ballots in these local elections, despite intimidating threats by terrorists and the assassination of several candidates. Those who voted said they wanted the new councillors to provide new roads, clean water and better sanitation. A shopkeeper in the town of Sopore – a stronghold of pro-Pakistani militants – was quoted as saying, ‘We can’t wait for civic amenities till
azaadi
[independence]’.
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According to official figures, the number of ‘violent incidents’ in Jammu and Kashmir decreased from 3,505 in 2,002 to less than 2,000 in 2005.
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The state could by no means be said to be at peace. But, for the first time in many years, the claim of the Indian government over this territory did not seem altogether hollow. In talks with Pakistan, New Delhi could urge a series of ‘confidence-building measures’, such as a bus service linking the two halves of Kashmir. The first bus was scheduled to leave from Srinagar for Muzaffarabad on 7 April 2005. On the afternoon of the 6th, terrorists stormed the tourist complex where the passengers were staying. They were repulsed, and the next day two buses left as planned. A reporter who travelled on one of the vehicles wrote of how, when it crossed the newly built Aman Setu (Peace Bridge) and entered Pakistani territory, ‘divided families were reunited, tears and rose petals flecked their faces. The significance of this extraordinary moment lay perhaps in the ordinariness of the backdrop: two buses with 49 passengers had crossed over – and blurred a line that has divided Kashmir for over five decades in blood and prejudice.’
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There were, however, some who would rather that the prejudice persisted and the blood continue to be spilt. On 11 July 2006 there were two terrorist attacks on tourists in Kashmir. Eight Bengali visitors were killed. On the same day deadly bombs went off simultaneously in seven different commuter trains in Mumbai (as Bombay had become known). The toll here was far higher – with more than 200 innocent civilians killed, and more than 1,000 injured. It was one of the worst terrorist incidents in history. While the perpetrators remain to be identified, their aims needed no clarification – these were to pit Hindu against Muslim, Kashmir against the rest of India, and India against Pakistan.

The great German sociologist Max Weber once remarked that ‘there are two ways of making politics one’s vocation: Either one lives “for” politics or one lives “off” it’.
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The first generation of Indian leaders lived mostly for politics. They were attracted by the authority they wielded, but also often motivated by a spirit of service and sacrifice. The current generation of Indian politicians, however, are more likely to enter politics to live off it. They are attracted by the power and prestige it offers, and also by the opportunities for financial reward. Control over the state machinery, they know, can bestow glittering prizes upon those in charge.

Political corruption was not unknown in the 1950s, as the cases of the Mundhra scandal and the Kairon administration in the Punjab demonstrate. But it was restricted. Most members of Nehru’s Cabinet, and even Shastri’s, did not abuse their position for monetary gain. Some Congress bosses did, however, gather money for the party from the business sector. In the 1970s politicians began demanding a commission when contracting arms deals with foreign suppliers. The money – or most of it – went into the party’s coffers to be used in the next elections. By the 1980s, however, political corruption had shifted from the institutional to the personal level – thus an increasing number of ministers at the centre and in the states were making money from government contracts, from postings of officials and by sundry other means.

The evidence of political corruption is, by its very nature, anecdotal rather than documentary. Those who take or give commissions rarely leave a paper trail. However, in the 1990s the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) laid charges against a number of prominent politicians for having assets ‘disproportionate’ to their position. The leaders so charged included the chief ministers of Bihar and Tamil Nadu, Lalu Prasad Yadav and J. Jayalalithaa. Each was accused of amassing hundreds of millions of rupees from the allocation of government contracts. In another case, the CBI raided the house of Sukh Ram, the Union minister for communications, and found Rs36 million in cash. It was alleged that this represented the commission on licences awarded to private telecom companies.

In all these cases the charges were not converted into convictions, sometimes because of lack of evidence, at other times because of the
timidity of the judiciary. There is also a sense of honour among thieves. In the run-up to an election the Opposition makes a hue and cry about corruption in the ruling administration, but if it is elected it does not pursue cases against the previous regime, trusting that it will be similarly rewarded when it loses power.
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Indeed, politicians from different parties and different states often exchange favours. In one documented case, a Haryana chief minister sanctioned the sale of a plot of public land to the son of a Punjab chief minister – while the market value of the land was Rs500 million, the price actually paid was Rs25 million.
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In the words of the political scientist Peter deSouza, corruption is Indian democracy’s ‘inconvenient fact’. Governments in power in New Delhi take kickbacks on purchases from abroad, on defence deals especially. The cut taken on foreign contracts is in the region of 20 per cent. In most states the majority of ministers are on the take, skimming money off licences to companies, postings of top officers, land deals and much else. The Planning Commission estimates that 70–90 per cent of rural development funds are siphoned off by a web extending up from the
panchayat
head to the local MP, with officials too claiming their share. One reason that city roads are in such poor shape is that the much of the money allocated to them is spent elsewhere. Of every 100 rupees allocated to road building by the Bangalore City Corporation, for example, 40 go into the pockets of politicians and officials with another 20 being the contractor’s profit margin. Only 40 rupees are spent on the job, which is done either badly or not at all.
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Because being in power is so profitable, there is now an increasing trade in politicians. To makeup the numbers and obtain a majority, legislators are bought and sold for a (usually high) price. In the era of minority and coalition governments the trade is especially brisk. Legislators routinely cross the floor and change parties. This has become so common that, in times of political instability, it is not unknown for the MLAs of a particular party to be taken
en masse
for a ‘holiday’ in Goa, lest they defect to the other side. Here these men – sometimes up to fifty of them – are kept in a hotel, drinking and playing cards, while armed guards watch out for furtive phone calls or unknown visitors. The holiday extends until the crisis has passed, which could take several weeks.

Because politics is such good business, it has also become a dirty business. In 1985 the weekly
Sunday
ran a cover story on ‘The Underworld of Indian Politics’, which spoke of how, in the states of Uttar
Pradesh and Bihar especially, candidates with criminal records were contesting elections, sometimes winning them, and sometimes being made ministers as well. Among the crimes these men were charged with were ‘murder, abduction, rape, molestation, gangsterism’.
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Over the next decade a greater number of criminals entered politics, so many in fact that a citizens group filed a public interest litigation (PIL) in the Supreme Court demanding that parties release details of their candidates. In May 2002 the Court made it mandatory for those contesting state or national elections to make public their assets and their criminal record (if any).

The Association for Democratic Reforms, the group that had filed the original PIL, then setup Election Watch Committees in the states, these comprising local lawyers, teachers and students. The affidavits filed by candidates in five state elections held in 2002–3 were collated and analysed. In the major political parties – such as the BJP, the Congress, Uttar Pradesh’s Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bihar’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) – between 15 and 20 per cent of candidates had criminal records. A detailed study of Rajasthan’s 2003 Vidhan Sabha election showed that roughly half the candidates were very rich by Indian standards – they had a declared wealth of more than Rs3 million each. And as many as 124 candidates had criminal records. Forty per cent of these had been charged with crimes that qualified as ‘serious’ – which included armed robbery, attempt to murder, defiling a place of worship and arson.
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Equally revealing was an analysis made of the affidavits of the 541 MPs elected in the 2004 parliamentary polls. The Congress had the wealthiest candidates – their MPs each had, on average, assets of Rs31 million. Most MPs had assets in excess of Rs10 million; those who ranked lowest on this scale were the communists. On the question of criminal charges, the lead was taken by parties powerful in UP and Bihar: 34.8 per cent of RJD MPs had been formally accused of breaking the law, 27.8 per cent of Bahujan Samaj Party MPs, and nearly 20 per cent of SP MPs. The Congress and the BJP came out slightly ‘cleaner’, having had 17 per cent and 20 per cent of their MPs charged with crimes, respectively. However, the situation was reversed when it came to money owed to public financial institutions. Of all such debts, Congress MPs accounted for 45 per cent, and the BJP members for 23 per cent. Again, it was communist MPs who came out best – they reported virtually no debts at all.
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From these figures we may conclude that, while in power at the centre, the Congress and the BJP have systematically milked the system, the Congress to a greater extent since it has been in power longer. Meanwhile, to get to power in the states, and to retain it, parties such as the SP, the BSP and the RJD had come to rely very heavily on criminals.
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