Wetergate has become a synonym for political corruption. The burglary on that fateful June 17, 1972, using photographic equipment and electronic gear, at the headquarters of the Democratic National Convention in the Watergate office-apartment-hotel complex on the banks of the Potomac in Washington was by itself not an extraordinary development. A similar misuse of official power against the Opposition, minus of course the technological frills, would have perhaps gone unnoticed in India. (Even in the U.S. if the Watergate burglars had not bungled their job the scandal would not have surfaced.) How many times haven't we heard Opposition M.Ps complain that their telephones are tapped and mail meddled with? Haven't we on each such occasion readily accepted bland denial of the charge by the Government ? Secondly, there is so much talk about the use of police or the Central Bureau of Intelligence dossiers by the powers-that-be against politicians, civil servants and others to bend them to a definite political purpose, be it crossing the floor, abandoning some investigation or simply reconciling oneself to be eased out of office. Yet not a single case has been pursued or exposed.
In the context of the law of libel prevailing in India and especially due to the authoritarian trend in the political system, the scope is extremely limited for a Watergate type of exposure of misuse of power. Therefore I had to be content in this book mainly with recounting cases of political corruption already enquired into. But each case study has been presented against the larger perspective of the political and other factors involved. Politicians belonging to the Congress party have received a lion's share of attention because the others have not so far had an equal opportunity to be corrupt. But there is no political bias in the choice of the subjects. The larger problem of political corruption in different milieu and some of the widely recommended cures for it have also been studied.
Having spent ten "Watergate months" in the U.S. until June 1974 as a Fellow of Harvard University-I had hit on this title for the book when the political motives behind the break-in, the effort at the highest level to cover up the crime, the attempted use of Executive power, including the intelligence apparatus and the taxation machinery, to silence persons engaged in bringing the culprits to book, the lies, the sanctimonious hypocrisy that any threat to Nixon's position will affect world peace, all endowed it with the character of full fledged political corruption. But its al-most revolutionary culmination in Richard Nixon's ignominious exit from public life brought out the positive dimension of the episode that the system has health enough to purge itself of the filth. I hope in India, too, we will develop similar strength of character at different levels to wage war on political corruption because as the Santanam Committee pointed out without ensuring ministerial integrity at the Centre and in the States graft in the administration cannot de tackled, and a dishonest administration, especially in Indian conditions, distorts national growth. In the short run, it is adding to the people's distress, though it is fashionable among some politicians and journalists to decry parliamentary and public preoccupation with the problem of corruption as waste of time to be better devoted to economic and political issues. If my prayer is answered and if we are able to forge effective methods of exposing and fighting political corruption it will be a vindication of the choice of the title for the book.
But we have to go a long way. First, at the institutional level, Parliament has not had time so far to enact legislation for establishing an Indian version of Ombudsman or Lok Pal. The Lok Ayuktas, wherever they are operative, lack teeth and worse still even public support. Otherwise, how does one explain highly respected jurists taking up legal cudgels against the Lok Ayukta in Bihar on behalf of ministers charged with improprieties? Or even the more grotesque instance of a radical Congress party leader of the eminence of Rajni Patel defending a person described by the Minister of State for Finance as a king among smugglers? The alibi, no doubt, is that unless a person is convicted he or she is presumed to be innocent and is therefore entitled to the best de-fence money can buy. Such an approach ignores the larger ethical and political aspect, which prompted the Prime Minister some time ago to advocate social boycott of such evil-doers.
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