The Hindu Business Line : Corruption is alive and ticking

OVER coffee at a street-side kiosk, a friend wonders if a motel offering rooms in railway wagons may well be a success. Another thinks a holiday resort should be a better idea with rolling stock that rolled off the rails! As you would've guessed, the context is the recent swooping down on government officials and the colourful details one has been treated to with on the media about those against whom cases have been filed. Such as, how an officer mixed healthy wagons along with the condemned wagons and sold them to scrap merchants, in what should have in all probability looked like any other auction.

I am still not able to comprehend why one should have stopped with selling only a dozen goods wagons, assuming there was a buyer for whatever was sold. In case you like to pursue the rail link, check the site www.irfca.org, of the Indian Railways Fan Club, rich with useful info, though not about the corrupt deals.

Corruption is very much in the news, alive and ticking. For instance, a report `33 minutes ago' on www.ocala.com is about the indictment in the US of Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. "In Texas, it's a felony for politicians to accept corporate contributions. That didn't stop Tom DeLay, says the indictment. According to the Travis County grand jury, DeLay got around the law." How? He formed his own political action committee in Washington, collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in big business bucks, then wrote cheques to the Republican National Committee, which in turn sent campaign cheques to Republican legislative candidates in Texas identified by DeLay, informs the report about the modus operandi, which boiled down to money laundering. Though it is for the jury to decide, "it sure looks and smells like money laundering," adds Ocala.

A Kuala Lumpur datelined despatch on www.bernama.com.my cites People's Progressive Party (PPP) president Datuk M. Kayveas as saying that local governments should not be run like `Secret Societies'. "Lack of accountability, thick bureaucracy and deep-rooted corruption" are mentioned as blocks to efficiency.

`Lay Buddhists Join Labour Union,' reads an unusual headline, on The Korea Times (http://times.hankooki.com). "Around 30 Bodhisattvas who work as security guards, parking agents and cooks at Samkwang Temple in the southern port city of Pusan have been in conflict with the temple management," informs the report, and speaks of `corruption scandals popping out from the Buddhist community'.

That brings to mind Gaya, hallowed for the Enlightened's experience. But that was where Satyendra Kumar Dubey, an IIT-trained engineer, stepped out of a train, "on the night of November 27, 2003," and boarded a cycle-rickshaw, as Raj Kamal Jha narrates in the Global Corruption Report 2005 (www.globalcorruptionreport.org) . Dubey never reached home; he was killed for having complained to the PMO about corruption in road construction. Also read, `The economic costs of corruption in infrastructure,' by Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler. "The sector consistently ranks as the most corrupt," they note.

"Corruption is like a ball of snow, once it's set rolling it must increase," said Charles Caleb Colton. Only, as it rolls on, it wipes off what all is available for public good. Corruption is worse than prostitution, says Karl Kraus.

"The latter might endanger the morals of an individual, the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country," he reasons.

"If a country is to be corruption-free and become a nation of beautiful minds, I strongly feel there are three key societal members who can make a difference," is what President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam said, before concluding his address to the nation on the eve of Independence Day, two years ago. The three, according to the First Citizen, are: `the father, the mother and the teacher'.

That presumes the three are not corrupt in the first place. But what can be ironical is that many corrupt people amass wealth for their progeny, perhaps justifying to themselves they are performing their duty for the benefit of the next generation. Nothing new, as the ancient Valmiki story would show. According to popular account, on www.hindunet.org, he used to be a highway robber, for the benefit of his wife and children.

The denouement came when he asked his wife and children if they were willing also to share the consequences of his actions with him; they refused to do so. "This has been proven otherwise by a contemporary study carried out by the late Dr Julia Leslie," informs Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org).

What's rebutted is not that the family wasn't willing to share the punishment but that the epic composer was a brigand once.

Keeping that debate aside, one may seek inputs from the families of the captured corrupt to know how far they were against illegalities indulged in by their heads, even as there was the silent acquiescing by benefiting from the fruits of mischief.

E&OE@TheHindu.co.in

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