The ATM ministries

Indian politics is no stranger to corruption. But the kind of scams that hit the last UPA regime, especially in the ministries held by the allies in the weakly cobbled government, were unprecedented in their brazenness. So much so, that these ministries are now cynically known as the ATM ministries for obvious reasons. 

Ministries have always come with desirability tags attached to them. Even during the early idealistic decades after Independence, ministries were ranked according to the clout they held. There have always been the prestigious four, the supra ministries housed suitably in the aloof and iconic North and South Blocks: defence, home, finance and external affairs.

Then there are the ministries that bring with them a lot of power if not a lot of money. They allow a politician to disburse patronage in his constituency. The railway ministry is one such. It comes with immense resources and potential to appease and oblige your people — it allowed you to offer better connectivity, offer employment opportunities, set up facilities in your state, and so on. Information and Broadcasting was another ministry with big muscles.

But what every politician and political party on a collection spree eyes today are the ATM ministries. These are the big cash cows: ministries with great potential for expansion and private participation. Some of the most sought after and heavily fought over cabinet berths such as telecom, environment, surface transport, energy and civil aviation fall into this league.

“Politics has become business for a lot of leaders who are in a position to wangle a ministerial berth. Contracts, allocations, sanctions, helpful policy-making in sunrise sectors — these offer immense scope for huge bribes. In ministries that are really crucial for the nation, such as environment, it can be really damaging to have a minister who is on the take,” says political scientist VB Singh who heads Lokniti, a research programme at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies.

Telecom is one ministry that has been trailing the scent of scandal around it. Former telecom minister Sukh Ram was proved guilty in a Rs 1.68 crore scam involving the awarding of a telecom equipment contract to a private firm. Pramod Mahajan was alleged to have improperly favoured Reliance Infocomm. Ram Vilas Paswan has been accused of a Rs130 billion scam in issuing licences for telecom services, Raja was caught in a Rs60,000 crore scam over auctioning of licenses.

“The reason why telecom scams show up is that it is a highly visible sector. There are other low profile ministries which are almost like bottomless pits for what they can yield without anyone noticing or commenting on the scams. Mines, for instance, are on nobody’s radar,” says a seasoned bureaucrat.

At the moment, it is the environment ministry that actually tops the list of ATM ministries because it has become a super-licensing body with rights to veto or okay projects from across other ministries. Veto on mining rights is one of the most contentious powers of this ministry. It is hardly surprising then that the DMK has been holding on to the plum ministry firmly ever since its days in the NDA and continued to do so through the last UPA regime. It passed from TR Baalu to A Raja to S Reghupathy and has remained high on the party’s wishlist this time too during the ongoing bitter negotiations with the PM and the Gandhis.

Baalu’s more recent posting, the surface transport ministry, too, had the DMK asking for a second helping. Baalu incidentally had faced opposition fire for seeking favours from the PMO for two companies owned by his sons. His tenure was also marred by controversies over the national highways project (the project chairman was changed five times in two years).

“At one point we had thought that greater privatisation and end of the old-fashioned license raj would kill corruption. But the fact is that the government is not entirely letting go either. This is a ripe situation for crony capitalism,” says a retired bureaucrat. 

As he cynically points out, any ministry could be turned into a cash cow. You just need to know how to tap the potential. But notions of which one is a lucrative ministry — and which is not — change with time. Veterans recall a time when the education ministry was tossed to the weakest leader in the winning party.

“It was considered a dump because there was no money to be made there. But of course, that was long before private schools and colleges started mushrooming and several other opportunities for minting money sprang up. Then it became a very lucrative place to be in,” recalls an old timer who did a stint in the education ministry.

There was a time when culture was high on the wish lists of aspiring politicians because the festivals of India brought in huge opportunities. It is now not quite a punishment posting but nobody’s dream project either.

Those who have been watching the soaring corruption in ministries pin a large part of the blame on the rapid decline in bureaucratic standards. “The increasing politicisation of the bureaucracy, buttressed by the demands of coalition politics, is largely responsible for the situation. There was a time when the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet was almost untouchable. If the Prime Minister had to, for reasons of political compulsion, accommodate someone with a shaky reputation, then he could ensure that the cabinet secretary chose someone strong as the secretary in the ministry,” he recalls.
But in a desperately cobbled coalition even those checks and balances could become impotent. The fear of being put under the scanner by vigilance bodies like the CAG (Comptroller and Auditor General) and the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) too has reduced considerably.

What is left then at the bottom of the heap are the welfare and science ministries. It is not that they do not receive huge resource allocations, but they offer few opportunities for siphoning off funds. Tribal welfare, panchayati raj, earth sciences, minority affairs, statistics and programme implementation, development of north east regions, chemicals and fertilisers — you’re not going to  see coaltions coming together or falling apart over any of these portfolios.