JOIN USIt is no surprise that the Congress plenary session near Delhi, held to mark 125 years of the party’s history, was almost entirely devoted to a discussion on corruption and prescriptions and platitudes on how to tackle it. The series of high-profile corruption cases that came into public view in the last few weeks has hurt the party and the government that it leads very badly. The steps taken to deal with the cases have not been convincing. Blaming opposition governments, which certainly do not have a better record, and opposition parties for a motivated campaign has not cut much ice. The Congress and the government are facing the worst crisis in many years and need a major clean-up operation to get out of the situation they are in.
Brave words and rhetoric may not be enough for that. Prime minister Manmohan Singh’s offer to appear before the public accounts committee to answer questions on the 2G scam does not explain why the party is not ready accept the demand for a joint parliamentary committee investigation. Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s five-point plan to fight corruption sounds good but the important question is whether the party and its governments will go beyond words to implement it. Each of the five points — fast-tracking of corruption cases, transparency in procurements and contracts, open and competitive ways of selling natural resources, shedding discretionary powers of chief ministers and ministers and state funding of elections — addresses a major source of corruption in the country. Will the party’s governments at the Centre and in the states immediately start acting on them? There is no need for fresh legislation to implement most of them. What is needed is a change of attitude, political will and administrative efficiency ensure that they get acted upon.
Fast-tracking of cases will not help in the absence of independent investigation and prosecution. That presupposes freeing investigative agencies from political control. And discretion is the major part of moral squalor associated with corruption. The idea of using power to dispense patronage — in the case of land, contracts, licences and every decision in which money is involved — is deeply entrenched in the country. As the party with the longest record of government, the culture of rent seeking is strongest in the Congress. Unless it breaks away from that culture, which may result in political pain in the short term, no preaching from the plenary pulpit will carry conviction.