Why is the Bengal scam more worrying?

The School Services Commission scam in West Bengal, wherein crores of rupees have been uncovered by the Enforcement Directorate from the homes of “close confidantes” of Partha Chatterjee, a powerful TMC minister and chieftain, has led to a lot of chi chi, e baba, bhaba jaaye (what a shame, Oh my God! Could anyone imagine such a thing can happen) conversations in Bengal on WhatsApp groups and, more so, in the privacy of living rooms without the fear of screenshots doing the rounds and getting into the hands of powers that be.

Part of the interest in this case to a population jaded by political shenanigans stems from the sheer scale of money involved in a state used to seeing politicians taking bribes of a few lakhs caught on cameras in sting operations.

Now, instead of a few measly notes, there are bundles of currency stacked high, like a scene straight out of Narcos or Breaking Bad. Part of the interest is also because a ‘confidante’, an actress and ex-model, is involved. With a flood of memes, oneliners and fodder for humour -- after all common people deserve to laugh, the whole incident obscures a few larger, more worrying questions.

The official TMC line is “it’s a conspiracy” of ‘you know who’ and/or Partha Chatterjee is a bad apple. There’s of course, what about Nirav Modi? Leaving aside the whataboutery and the “it’s all planted” canned response to everything, the thing to consider is whether it indeed was just one person. Highly unlikely.

First of all, the apartments in which money was being stored, were essentially vaults. Which begs the question: For whom and for what? The amount of money in currency notes is too huge for it to have been carried in Partha Babu’s Punjabi pocket (Bengalis call kurtas Punjabis), the movement of money on this scale is an industrial exercise.

Remember that the source of the money is allegedly bribes paid by candidates aspiring to be recruited into government positions, mostly teachers, and obviously the money wasn’t given directly to the confidantes of Partha Chatterjee. So how did the money reach here, over how many days, and through whom?

Make no mistake, what we are seeing is a node on a distributed network. It’s like breaking into a router and missing the fact that it is only a small part of the internet. And how has this network operated without the state law enforcement agencies doing anything? That the state police can trace money being transported is evident from the fact that, at around the same time, the state police has caught three Jharkhand Congress MLAs carrying some Rs 50 lakhs in a car on Bengal roads but apparently did not know anything about more than 50 crores in cash being stashed in several upscale apartments? Why did it take the central authorities to raid the premises?

Now here’s the thing. Let’s be realists. Corruption is inevitable in a democracy, I mean if people are willing to kill, bribe, conspire, and trigger riots to get elected, surely they must be getting something out of it other than the purple pleasure of serving the country.

But there are two kinds of corruption. One is the cut money from development. Whether it be allocation of bandwidth, or a cut from real estate projects, the interests of the politicians are aligned with general economic development. This is why politicians are for more malls, tall buildings and generally for infrastructure, because they skim off the top. If better roads and newer bridges mean richer politicians, so be it; they are incentivised to do good for their people or at least not get in the way of the good.

Yes, the cost of corruption is passed along to society and consumers. But it is still better than the other, the School Services Commission scam kind. Why so? In the absence of development and private sector jobs, people are willing to sell their ancestral property and take loans to bribe their way to the only steady income option available: Government jobs. So how much they pay is a function of their desperation. Here, unlike the first kind, the more the government misgoverns, the higher the bribes and more the bundles of cash landing up in the apartments of confidantes.

It also stands to reason that once the people actually get the jobs that were procured on the wings of illicit payments, they will themselves take bribes to recover their investment, leading to tidal waves of corruption lasting for decades.

The jokes and memes will pass, but this will not.

(The author is a US-based cybersecurity expert and a writer)