Guest Article - Life after scams
Nov 17, 2010

Is there life after a scam?

Such is the cynicism of the average Indian that even after the sacking and resignations of three prominent politicians – Suresh Kalmadi, Ashok Chavan, A Raja -- in recent days – most of us are convinced that they will not be brought to book. The resignations and dismissals are just an eyewash, is the general reaction. After a cooling period, they will be back in public life, their careers restored, their ill-gotten fortunes still with them.

Indians know that there is all pervasive corruption in public life. They see politicians and civil servants living a life that is clearly beyond their means. Many who started life with virtually nothing now own flats in posh areas. There are rumours of politicians linked with builders and industrial houses. Some have even started construction companies.

So when there are allegations of massive fraud in the tendering and ordering process in the Commonwealth Games, or of getting apartments at subsidized rates in an apartment complex on false grounds or indeed subverting the rules to allow favoured companies to bid for licences, there is a strong whiff of corruption in the air. When the media picks up the story – and lately it has been the media rather than opposition parties who have kept up a campaign – the government comes under pressure and takes action.

But is it the end of the story? The skeptic will say that public memory is short and soon enough the scandal is forgotten and the politician is rehabilitated. The skeptic has a point. Yet, it is not so simple.

A big corruption scandal can debilitate if not end a politician’s career. There are many examples of this. Take the case of Abdul Rahman Antulay, the chief minister of Maharashtra in the 1980s who had to quit when a judge held that his action of granting cement quotas was linked to donations made by businessmen to a fund named after Indira Gandhi. Antulay had to step down and though almost two decades later came back as a Union minister with a nondescript portfolio, his career was more or less destroyed. Much was expected of him as a brilliant lawyer and a progressive Muslim, but he turned into a bitter man reduced to making wild allegations about the killing of police officers during the 26/11 terror attack.

Sukh Ram was another politician who had succeeded in kickstarting the telecom revolution, bringing connectivity to remote villages in north India. When cash was found in his puja room, he was arrested and had to step down. He later vanished into obscurity. Our political landscape is littered with names of politicians who are today forgotten because they got embroiled in a scam.

Does this mean that this scares politicians or stops them from indulging in corruption? Hardly. What it does it makes them more careful of getting caught. They learn newer ways to cover their tracks. They deploy more sophisticated ways to indulge in such nefarious activities.

A favoured method is to set up institutions, including trusts, foundations and other such bodies. Pick up any major politician and count the number of institutions he or she is involved in. Then count the number of schools, colleges, universities they run. If you can (and this is the difficult part), access the names of donors to these institutions. It may throw up interesting results.

This does not imply that there is necessarily corruption going on. It may be a simple case of public service. But it is equally true that such institutions can and sometimes do provide a good cover to hide corruption. Many a smart politician has managed to keep his hands clean in public using this stratagem.

In the case of Ashok Chavan (who is also connected with several trusts, as it happens), his apparent crime was to give permissions to the Adarsh cooperative society in which three of his relatives, including his mother-in-law got flats. This was too blatant a conflict of interest, more so given that the antecedents of the society itself were suspect. Ashok Chavan may be right in wondering why others have escaped such a fate, though of course that does not make him less culpable.

Will Ashok Chavan, or Kalmadi or Raja ever make a comeback? In politics, you can never say never. Stranger things have happened. But if they want to escape the fate of other politicians, they will need a few things. Patience of course is a virtue in politics, as is a good network which will help to tide over the difficult times and then push your name forward at the right time. A little help from the powers that be to ensure that any inquiry against you does not go anywhere also comes in handy. But the most crucial skill is a thick skin. Suresh Kalmadi was booed throughout the Commonwealth Games but he brazened it out, instead of appearing shamefaced on national television. When the Asian Games opened in China, he was there, without a care in the world. That kind of skill has to be admired.

Even so, chances are, his power will slowly ebb away. He will find it difficult to reach the same dizzy heights that he did earlier. Whether he (or anyone else) found guilty of malfeasance or fraud will ever be convicted is another matter, but in this day and age of hypermedia, it is not going to be easy to revive a political career after being involved in a high-profile scam.

This article is written by Sidharth Bhatia is a senior Indian journalist who has worked in print, broadcast and online media. He is a columnist and regular commentator on current affairs for several leading publications and on national television.

He can be contacted at sidharth01@gmail.com

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