gullwani@gmail.com
Mushkil hai ki halaat ki guthi sulajh jaye
Ahle dainish ne bahut soch ke uljaya hai
In Jammu and Kashmir, after the removal of Art 370, corruption and its causes dotted the newspaper headlines and has become subject matter of debate. The dynastic rule (as if it is confined to Kashmir only), and Art 370 (nobody talks about Art 371), are largely held responsible for corruption in Kashmir. True, autonomies need a culture of accountability but in a post-colonial democracy the devil lies in the nature of the state, whether it allows federating units to democratically exercise power granted to them. This didn’t happen in case of Kashmir and Art 370 was made controversial right from the day it was incorporated in Indian constitution. The larger point made is that local political/bureaucratic elite amassed and misused power in an unaccountable manner to the detriment of public interest. During my student days political science teachers would tell us in a text book style that ‘power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely’. As I have grown up in my career and experience I found that it is fear of losing power which corrupts and absolute fear corrupts absolutely. In Kashmir corruption stems from political instability created by a Unitarian, ‘flailing state’. More precisely corruption in Kashmir has evolved as a sort of “financial whip” issued by the state to ‘floating leaders’ at a given point of time to behave in a certain manner.
True, corruption, many argue, is a universal phenomenon and is prevalent even in advanced western societies. But in some cultures it comes as a shock and does not have social approval no matter whether people living in that culture inhabit developed or developing parts of the globe. In south Asian societies corruption has a class basis. In upper classes there is generally a sort of acceptability and more money is associated with your social status. Without generalizing it among illiterate lower classes (probably being more God fearing) there is a fear working at the back of their minds about ill-gotten money. In poor developing countries the educated middle class has been found responsible for many social ills. It has rightly been said that ‘many have been misled by education’. In Kashmir-society corruption is disdained as “haram haresa” equating it with a type of food preparation not permitted in Islam thereby making it unacceptable. The corrupt people in Kashmir society are in simple language called as “haram khor”. I have empirical evidence to prove that many families refuse to marry their daughters/sons to persons/families who have earned their wealth through corrupt means. However, consumerism and greed has dented even ethically strong cultures. The dynastic parties lack inner party democracy and there is no doubt that when family interest come, political parties become weak, and governments performance declines. But then political families are as big a threat to liberal democratic order as is the crony capitalism of certain business families.
Be that as it may, corruption anywhere and everywhere is a serious problem. Late Rajiv Gandhi confessed ‘that 85 percent of plan resources do not reach the common man in India’ though, he did not say that this was largely a result of corruption, including among political elites’. In India corruption starts right from birth of a child – when parents pay for a birth certificate and ends only when you die and your children have to pay for a death certificate. Recent media reports related to pandemic suggest that people had to bribe in order to have last deedar of their loved ones who were bundled together in hospital mortuaries. Psychologists have been telling us that there is something called human DNA and how it is imprinted with a natural propensity to favour the kith and kin. John Steinbeck – American author, who got Noble prize for Literature in 1962 wrote, “The things we admire in men – kindness, generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest sharpness, greed, self-interest, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism are the traits of success. While men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second”. Moving back to Kashmir corruption here according to Haseeb Drabu has evolved an an ‘institutional system, in which rights of Kashmiris are dissolved in exchange for acquiesce to constitutional changes and electoral illegitimacy of governments. To put it simply and starkly, to buy loyalties. This is classic strategy of corruption as mode of cohesion”.
In Jammu and Kashmir, as already stated, due to endemic political instability, corruption expanded due to fear of losing power among political/bureaucratic elite. The politicized bureaucracy, especially at middle level, in league with political elite reaped the harvest of corruption. This fear is not limited to political class. Kashmir over the years has also been declared as a prize posting even for people working in the security grid. This usually happened when a democratically elected state government was toppled by state and dismissal was linked to the imperatives of security of Indian state. It happened after the dismissal of government in 1953 and remained basic to state machinations thereafter. During years of militancy corruption enveloped the security grid also. Unfortunately opinion leaders, academics and leading political leaders at national level have this feeling that loyalties of Kashmiris can be purchased and corruption is the visible trait of a Kashmiri. This demonization of an entire group of people is an assault on their identity and dignity. Kashmir fairly is an egalitarian society. True, it has suffered prolonged subjugation in history and at least one British missionary Tyndle Biscoe noted that had the “British experienced the same oppression as suffered by Kashmiris they would have lost their manhood”. This wrong impression orchestrated against a community needs to be dispelled in times when model of economic development has shifted from state to the market. private capital has to move from one part to the other on certain matrix of good governance following what international institutions call as ‘ease of doing business’.
Post-colonial India inherited many policy instruments from erstwhile colonial state structure as far as border states are concerned. One such policy was to privilege persons rather than institutions in matters of statecraft and pump money into the pockets of select political elite to facilitate “elite capture” of political process. Dr. Haseeb Drabu (economist) and late Prof. Riyaz Punjabi have in different writings examined it. Prof Punjabi went a step further and argued in one of his papers “normal democratic process in Jammu & Kashmir was disrupted with the arrest of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah in 1953. The alienation of a large majority of the people of state in post 1953 era and formation of Plebiscite Front posed a great threat to the cohesion of India. It was in this context that corruption as a model to bring about national integration was applied to the state of Jammu &Kashmir.” This line of thinking has lot of scholarly and academic support. John Waterbury – Global professor of political science at New York University in journal of “world Politics’’ stated that corruption in the form of patronage and spoils checks the alienation of minorities”. Michael Gohuston – political scientist in a research paper in journal of Comparative Politics (July, 1986) on political consequences of corruption’’ also draws a clear cut distinction between “integrative and disintegrative corruption, the former links the people and groups and the latter cause’s serious conflicts”.
The dismissal of Farooq Abdullah government in 1984 and formation of a new government under GM Shah with Congress support was essentially a financial transaction. The Rajiv-Farooq alliance followed by Congress/NC coalition under Farooq Abdullah and PDP/BJP coalition government 2015 were rudderless to the point that without money no business whatsoever was done in the state. For paucity of space, the 1984 dismissal of an elected government can be an appropriate case for understanding how fear of losing power corrupts and absolutely fear corrupts absolutely. The most credible source to examine this phase in Jammu and Kashmir politics is the then Governor Mr. BK Nehru who in his Memoirs: “Nice Guys Finish Second” writes (page 700-701) that while he was trying to convince Delhi about sensitivities of Kashmir situation a different ballgame was being played against Farooq Abdullah to topple his government. He writes:
Mr Gul Shah and DD Thakur aided and abetted by Congress party were engaged in a desperate attempt to achieve the magical number of thirteen. The members of the legislature were no fools, they knew that if they defected to Gul Shah they would be torn to bits by an angry populace. The inducements for defecting had then to be substantial. The standard rate was Rs 2 Lakh in cash and a Ministership., this latter would, of course provide the defector with a substantially larger cash return even though his career in office might be short. The funds were provided by a staunch Congress worker Tirth Ram Amla and transported in the mail pouches of the Intelligence Bureau…….Tirth Ram used to complain of Gul Shah’s perpetual demand for more ‘bullets’. When the term bullet was used for the first time I did not understand Tirth Ram explained that bullets meant cash which was the ammunition used for winning a political war. He also used to complain that the fellow gave no accounts for what he had done with the previous supply of bullets. Tirth Ram did not know how much he had swallowed himself and how much he had passed on to others…”.
Alas, the flailing state had no idea as to how these bullets used for toppling governments and short-circuiting electoral democracy (forget about substantive democracy) shall get converted into real bullets to be used for killing people in Kashmir after the eruption of militancy. The state is paying its own price but poor Kashmiri is paying it through the nose. This is how Kashmir policy got its birth in sin, and the Sufi/Rishi land hijacked through psychology of hate and fear.
May I conclude with the beautiful words of Eugene Wigner, Nobel laureate: “in national politics the truth is often less popular than a clever lie”.
The author is a political Scientist