/CORRECTED REPEAT/POLITICS-INDIA: More Sympathy than Criticism for Convicted Ex-Premier

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Oct 3 2000 (IPS) - The conviction of a former Indian prime minister on the charge of using money to stay in office, has evoked more sympathy than criticism of the leader credited with ‘liberating’ the country’s economy.

Media commentators and social activists noted that P.V. Narasimha Rao, who was found guilty Sep. 29 by a lower court of having bribed opposition lawmakers to save his minority government in 1993, was caught even while others had got away.

The erudite politician, who won international fame for ending four decades of stifling state economic control, is being seen more as the ‘victim’ than the wrongdoer.

According to Vineet Narain, a leading social campaigner against corruption in high places, Rao has been punished for having broken the unwritten code among politicians that they must stand by each other.

“In this country everything can be fixed for the right price paid in black money, from cricket games to voting patterns in Parliament — but there is honour among thieves,” Narain said.

Rao became the first Indian prime minister to be charged with a crime. He was accused, along with a member of his then government, of using monetary inducements to persuade a small opposition group to back his then minority Congress government in a crucial trust vote in July 1993.

One of the bribed opposition lawmakers admitted that he and three other members of parliament from their regional Jharkand Mukti Morcha (JMM) party took bribes of 120,000 dollars each to vote in favour of the Congress.

The lawmaker not only gave a detailed account of how the money was paid, but the bank accounts into which the money was transferred, leaving little chance of a cover-up.

However, the case, which became famous as the JMM bribery case, was only one of political corruption scams to surface during Rao’s tenure.

The former prime minister’s five years in office till 1996, were remarkable as much for the sweeping economic reforms, as for the series of multi-million dollar scams that seemed to accompany these.

The irony is that during his years as prime minister, Rao vigorously pursued cases of corruption against political rivals within the Congress as well as those in opposition parties.

“The law will take its course,” was the usual response of the taciturn Rao when asked about the progress of the probe into India’s most famous political corruption scandal involving his predecessor Rajiv Gandhi, who was assassinated in office.

The so-called Bofors kickback case involved millions of dollars paid by Swedish arms maker Bofors to clinch a howitzer supply deal with the Indian Army in the mid-1980s. It was responsible for bringing down Gandhi’s Congress government in a national election.

Rao allowed the law to take its course in another scandal in which, India’s leading politicians, including Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani, were charged with getting funds from abroad through the so-called ‘havala’ system.

Several of those accused in the havala case such as Civil Aviation Minister Sharad Yadav, openly admitted to having received foreign funds through the illegal havala channels.

The havala case was remarkable for the alleged attempts by those in high places to influence the country’s top investigating agency probing the scandal.

The then chief justice of India’s apex court, who was supervising the case, even declared in court that his bench was “approached” with an offer of bribes. But he stopped short of naming anyone.

In the end, the accused were let off because of lack of sufficient evidence. Several of them hold office today while the law actually “took its course” in Rao’s case, commentators noted.

Rao is said to have been caught while others escaped, because he lacked “finesse”. As constitutional expert Rajeev Dhavan remarked: “Inducements for crossing the floor can come in many forms such as the offer of seats in the cabinet.”

Arun Kumar of New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, sees a close nexus between corrupt politicians, bureaucrats, judges and tax- evaders among big business.

Political patronage for tax evaders will continue as long as political parties continue to be funded by unaccounted money, he says.

According to Kumar, the only way of ending corruption in high places in India is to allow state funding of elections and legalisation of business donations to political parties.

Another corruption scandal during Rao’s regime surfaced with the discovery of the equivalent of 750,000 U.S. dollars under the bed of one of his cabinet colleagues.

Then communications minister Sukh Ram claimed the money belonged to the Congress party. But the Congress disowned it and Ram subsequently switched allegiance to Congress arch-foe, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Ram, who introduced cellular phones to India, had a reputation for dealing with trans-national telecom companies on a ‘suitcase (stuffed with cash)-by-suitcase, rather than on a case-by-case basis.’

The suitcase stuffed with currency notes became the hallmark of corruption during the Rao regime when famed Indian stockbroker, Harshad Mehta claimed that he had offered Rao a suitcase filled with some 25,000 dollars.

Mehta, who was accused of using public funds in government banks to play the stock markets, claimed that the money was offered to let him get away with this.

Even Mehta was let off lightly for his market manipulations, which led to a ten-billion dollar scandal involving several foreign banks.