Annie Zaidi: Confederacy of the corrupt

I’m assuming by the time you read this, Anna Hazare will have gone back to his one-meal-a-day routine. However, he has gallantly offered to fast again — on the off chance that Parliament tries to push through another version of the Lokpal Bill (even if the alternate version is actually better at striking the balance between democratic processes and combating corruption). His ‘Hanuman’ and other self-deified supporters have also gallantly offered Hazare up to another round of extreme hunger.

But whether or not the Bill is subjected to a proper debate, what is definitely not being challenged is the cruel assumption that the ‘people’s Parliament’ won a major victory against the (mere) parliament.

Perhaps, Team Anna believes that people who stand for elections are not human beings at all, and those who queue up to vote election after heartbreaking election are not people either. Real ‘People’ must be others — those who want the same things Anna wants, those who don’t argue points of law, those who have an unshakeable faith in the moral rectitude and democratic instincts of NGOs.

When this agitation for the Janlokpal Bill began, I was wondering if I qualify as ‘civil’ society. Now it seems I don’t even qualify as ‘people’.

Anyway, last week a writer-friend, Vivek Tandon, called me to discuss what should actually be done to combat corruption. He thinks we need a ‘Truth and Reconciliation’ commission — something along the lines of what they did in South Africa after they finally got rid of apartheid. In the corruption context, this would mean people being given a chance to confess their corrupt acts and redeem themselves.

They would return their ill-begotten money (whatever remained of it), perhaps pay fines, but would not be jailed for corruption-related crimes dating back to… Well, the state would fix a cut-off date, and no further acts of corruption would be tolerated.

I’m not yet sure about the workability of such a commission. After all, the government had a voluntary disclosure scheme for income, so citizens could peacefully pay taxes in future. But the big fish — industrialists and major corporations — are still not paying a fair share of tax. And I’m not very sanguine about them confessing for they refuse to see themselves as partners in corruption.

Still, I like the idea of Truth and Reconciliation. It assumes that corrupt people are human; that they want to return the morsels they have wrongfully stolen from the mouths of malnourished kids; that millions of bribe-takers lie awake at night, longing to confess but afraid of being sent to jail. Can’t fault the idea for a lack of optimism.

Corruption is often unforgiveable, especially in poor nations, but Tandon argues that corruption is an intrinsic part of the culture we grew up with. We are taught to use ‘contacts’ to ‘get work done’.

That’s how we get confirmed train tickets, or driving license we don’t deserve, or construction contracts, or environmental clearances. We are taught that only idiots pay taxes. Just like millions of us spit, spit, spit everywhere, undeterred by the law or exhortations in the name of public health. People do it not just because they get away with it but also because they have always done it, and seen others do it.

A large part of our corruption problem, I suspect, is that generations have grown up contemptuous of the government and its rules. That sentiment isn’t going to disappear. So, even with a Lokpal, corruption isn’t going to disappear unless we create a culture of honesty and commitment to our jobs and our people — those who march, those who vote, and those who do both.

Annie Zaidi writes poetry, stories, essays, scripts (and in a dark, distant past, recipes she never actually tried)