The system as scapegoat

Instances are cited of all those who got away. This category includes those who were acquitted in the case in which Rao has been convicted — the businessmen who allegedly financed the pay-off operations and accompanied Buta Singh from Bangalore to Delhi lugging the cash, and leaders of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha who accepted the bribe. It includes all those who have been acquitted in scams and scandals down the years for "insufficient evidence" and other technicalities. And all the known offenders who were never even brought to court.

Why, it is asked, should Rao alone be in the dock. (Poor Buta Singh does not even count for the purpose of this question, he would only blunt its rhetorical thrust). Why should Narasimha Rao take the rap for a collective crime? Isn’t he being made the fall guy, the convenient peg to hang a shared wrongdoing on? Doesn’t the present political isolation of the man who gave the nation’s economy a whole new turn with a singular `shoutinglessness’ make him easy prey?

Actually, these are pretty obvious questions. Why, then, do they disturb? They disturb because they point to something more than the complexity of corruption as an issue. These questions point to a widespread cynicism about corruption and, worse, the acceptance of it. They disturb, most of all, because they hold out systemic corruption as an alibi for the corrupt.

It is true that corruption is pervasive today and the entire system is infected. It is also true that the fight against corruption is a transparently half-hearted and dishonest one and that reasons of the political kind lie behind the fact that only a few get caught while most get away. But the problem arises when these arguments are trotted out to make a case for breastbeating in general and doing nothing in particular.

Rao is incidental here. What is coming to the fore in the wake of the JMM verdict is our deep-rooted ambivalence towards corruption. If we listen to ourselves closely enough, we will hear the underlying refrain — the exoneration of Narasimha Rao after his conviction by the court. The system is the fall guy here for the sins of its individual parts.

The point is that we can never start with a clean slate. There isn’t, there never can be, a perfect fight against corruption. The fact is that whether we acknowledge it or not, the JMM verdict is primarily about political morality and only then about the rest of the stuff. Special Judge Ajit Bharihoke’s judgment is, first and foremost, about corruption and justice. The chinks in the rule of law which have allowed others and even PV himself to escape retribution for more serious crimes, are only a sobering comment on the text; they are not the text itself.

On second thoughts, Narasimha Rao is not so incidental to the matter after all. He was the prime minister of India who held the highest office of the land for five long years. He has been convicted of buying votes at the rate of 50 lakh an MP to win a no-confidence motion in Parliament. With Rao firmly in the dock and awaiting sentence, could there be a more potent, a more decisive moment to break with the past, and to firm up the ground for a larger, more sincere fight against corruption?