Vasu Reddy From Chicago
Since PV Narasimha Rao’s
government at the Center, every government seem to be embroiled in some scam or
the other. Every government has been
under the scanner for irregularities and misappropriation of funds. The cost of elections also has been going up
with each election cycle, and successive governments have engaged in behavior
that is not befitting a democratically elected government.
Democratically elected
government’s definitely spend election money to get messages across to the
population and promote their programs as the best option available for the
country each time an election is held, and certainly the candidates and the
parties that are contesting need to raise money to promote their messages. The creation of political parties, political
funding and promoting the agenda is all a democratic and transparent process
which is simple to manage and has a process of money and message
management. The global democracies
foster in open elections where every party and candidate has equal opportunity
to present and promote their messages and the people decide who they would like
their representation from.
No democracy is a ticket for
embezzlement and stealing from the public and government coffers by electing
individual for a certain amount of time, just because people believe in the
message and elect the individual for a certain period of time. The last few governments in New Delhi have
gone to great extent in creating and fostering massive amounts of funneling of
public resources into private and individual coffers, just because the people
elected were placed in position of decision making and creating the environment
for embezzlement of public resources.
Granted that the system’s
created by the elected officials allowed for such loopholes leading to the
scams and embezzlement, the systems should also have been practical in
approaching the rules set by the same to monitor any discrepancies in implementation
of policies that should be in public interest.
Even the individual push to a truly transparent and public interest
policy has been difficult to be upheld in the center and also state and local
levels of administrations. A push for
ombudsman failed at the gate and only had a short life, and fizzled out when it
came for vote in the parliament.
Scams are not limited to the
center but each state and local levels are also heavily involved in creating
their own money making process at the expense of public policy and
benefit. All most all the state
governments are embroiled in some controversy or other, and it always leads to
money making by people in power. Just
that each successive government has gone with greater and greater schemes to
siphon the money into a few pockets.
When in power the government is
funneling the money into their pockets without abandon, and next government
coming in starts to dig into the action of their predecessors, and will unearth
the irregularities and start to which hunt the previous administration to
either push them into oblivion and jail, or demonstrate that the previous
administration was corrupt. At the same
time they will begin engaging in greater siphoning of resources into their
coffers. Granted that the cost of elections
and promotional activity is expensive, the money siphoned is never used for
electioneering, always to the benefit of individuals and typically moved out of
the country and never entering into private or public sector investments.
In the current environment the
government itself is not even waiting to go out of the office and chasing its
own tail by identifying and going after their own party men who are scamming,
and this is a phenomenon that is unlike the previous governments of chasing
down the past. It is now and current
government identifying their own party men and brining them to task. Everyone pleads innocent until they are
somehow or the other linked to the embezzlement, and everyone pleads ignorance
when the scams surface.
How difficult it is to create
public interest policy that fosters openness and corrupt free environment? If the elected government itself is sending
its appointed ministers to jail, then who else but the entire government is at
fault. A political party cannot simply
claim that its own elected and appointed ministries are conducting massive
fraud or embezzlement without the consent of the party chiefs. Even if party chiefs say that they are
unaware of the scams and are not involved in the process of scamming, they are
responsible for actions of the party men, and cannot simply say I did not know,
or I am not a party to it.
There are no holy cows in the
process, as the party of elected officials and their chiefs are responsible for
the actions of the party men. They are
not innocent or ignorant of the scams, as they are not ignorant of the election
process, money management, party mandates, or decision making of the part
men. There is no such thing as an
individual scam as the magnitude and scope of decision making is across the
board and everyone is responsible, whether or not they are directly
involved. The responsibility lies with
the entire government; both elected and bureaucratic.
The public should hold every
government accountable for all its actions and not just listen to the rhetoric
of the elected representatives. Each
government must be accountable for all actions of all the party men, and should
stop pointing fingers at one or the other.
There are no holy cows, except that the individuals involved should be
responsible and not be left out as outcasts, who are acting alone as they are
never alone in scamming a country.
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