Coolie baba who showed the way

In 1999, I was taking a train from Jodhpur to Delhi after 15 days of election coverage. At the station, I hired a ‘coolie baba’, who carried two heavy suitcases belonging to me on his head with my leather bag clutched under his arm.

After he placed the luggage inside the train compartment, I paid him Rs20. He looked at me silently. I thought he was unhappy with the sum I had given him, and so I gave him another Rs10. He still looked upset. A little irritated, I asked him to quote his price. He lowered his eyes and replied: “You have paid me extra. I have come to return Rs10.”

His reply took every one in the compartment by surprise. I tried to persuade him to keep the money, but he insisted on returning Rs10. Firmly, he said: “I am 70 years old. I have worked hard for the last six decades to make a decent living. By God’s grace, my sons are also working hard to make a decent living. At the end of the day, what matters to me is that I am able to sleep with a clear conscience. I cannot cheat you of Rs10.”

Today, as the entire nation is fired up by the zeal to combat corruption, the image of the coolie comes to mind. Unlike Baba Ramdev or Manmohan Singh, he neither had followers nor an audience to lecture. But through his personal example, he had taught the people in the train a lesson on honesty.

Like the coolie, there are hundreds of faceless people in every walk of life across rural and urban India — whose selfless service has kept the spirit of India alive. When you have individuals with such integrity holding on to their values despite having to battle for survival, the cacophony over the Lokpal Bill seems to be a sham.

In this clamour about corruption, what no one is talking about is the need for reforms in election funding, arguably the root cause of all political corruption. Former deputy prime minister LK Advani had, in the early 1990s, embarked had made electoral reforms his one-point agenda.

Throughout his campaign, he talked about transparency and accountability in election funds. But the half-a-dozen political managers deployed for the dirty task of fund raising suddenly realised that it was not possible to raise the kind of funds required to run a party with the limited resources they had.

Be it the Congress, the BJP or any of the other parties, they have all found means to draw funds from corporate houses and builders. In return, they have to oblige their sources even if it amounts to violation of laws. No one sticks to the spending limit of Rs15 lakh for assembly polls and Rs25 lakh for general elections. In private, candidates admit that assembly elections cost go up to Rs1 crore per candidate and general elections about Rs3-5 crore.

No matter how much we debate the issues of black money and corruption, they cannot be tackled unless there is strong political will. At this moment, there are no signs of that happening. The Congress may have milked Baba Manmohan’s image of integrity for what it’s worth in the 2004 and 2009 general elections. But if he cannot initiate reforms in the system, he will soon be held as guilty as the ones he has so far been set apart from.