Politics Of Corruption: Whose Loss Is This Anyway?

An audit report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) on coal block allocation that set a presumptive loss of a huge amount of money to the exchequer has put the country in possibly the worst ever national political crisis. The Indian Parliament has been paralyzed for a week now with the opposition political parties not allowing it to work unless their demand is met. And what is the demand? The Prime Minister of India must resign. No yielding of even an inch irrespective of if the Prime Minister wants to give his statement or not and if the ruling coalition wants a healthy debate or not. The biggest loser in this whole ‘coal black’ process is turning out to be the ‘democracy’ and that means us the people—the biggest losers of the world.

We people never had a clear choice anyway. We were never offered to choose between corruption and no-corruption. The choice increasingly was between more corrupt and less corrupt. And, we had no clue to who is ‘more’ or who is ‘less’.

The groups or organizations that launched fights against corruption themselves got immersed deep into the ‘more or less’ quagmire. The ambitious among them wanted to muster a rooted clout to rule the country with unbridled power to fight ‘corruption’ and so became political to start their own parties. Those with lots of money but no power joined hands with established political forces to fight ‘corruption’ and enjoy the looted power together.

The political parties in power had their own logic to debate and end the crisis to continue in power. The political parties not in power had their own logic to blackmail and prolong the crisis to get elected into power. We the people had no clue as to where the truth dwelt. We the people got swinging like a pendulum from one end to the other not knowing where is ‘more’ or where is ‘less’. Sometime we the people felt they were all the same wanting to rubbish the ‘more or less’ theory. In this insane process the possible 'good' loses out hopelessly to the prevailing 'evil'.

With scams surfacing one bigger than the other and the accompanying bizarre happenings over the last two years the climax seems to have been reached now. The climax where the ‘fighting’ parties want us the people to go with them and the ‘defending’ parties want us the people to stay put on them. If, eventually and inevitably, the climax or more clearly the mid-term general elections is thrust upon us the people we only get ourselves into an utterly perplexing and stupefying ‘democratic’ situation.

We the people keep swinging like a pendulum—from one end to the other. Like the biggest losers of the world.