What is it with corruption

What is it with the protests against corruption that attracts much people, that protests on other crimes do not? Irom Sharmila had been fasting unto death for repealing the Arms force special act from Manipur. Medha Patkar had been doing various protests for long, for Narmada bachao andolan, recently against the eviction of a slum for some new building. But none of the above stuffs managed to gather any significant public support as the fight against corruption did – considering the fact that the corruption in various forms has become a part of daily life of individuals! Every employed/unemployed lower/middle/upper class would definitely have had their brush with some or the other forms of corruption. Giving bribe to get something done quickly, or maybe a traffic policeman or quoting wrong figure in the land/building registration paper. Still why are people against corruption?

Money is a big factor for all the classes, especially the middle class for whom tax is nothing less of an enemy. Nobody wholeheartedly love paying tax. It would be surprising to find people giving away tax with pleasure and a smile just because this money funds some state school or subsidize the vegetables. And there wouldn’t be anyone who have tried all sorts of schemes and techniques to save the tax. Now, despite of all the efforts we sometimes have to pay some money every month as tax. It is this piece of heart that is flowing into the pockets of certain set of people (that probably deserves only despise), explaining why corruption is such a painful thing for middle class. This explains why a dam, invading the home of a lakh farmers, or Arms force special act, curbing someone’s rights, is not much of a concern to the wider public. This also explains why the public is adamant over political corruption which according to me covers only a small percentage of the total corruption. The amount of corporate tax evasion using existing loopholes, buying out the officials or making policies convenient to them, is a much bigger territory.



I was reading an article about the tax havens, tax evasion and corporate and government’s role in it. First of all, these Tax havens and other lucrative techniques were not built by politicians nor are they built for them. They probably do hold sufficient money in many lucrative banks but that just comes to a very insignificant(for the country?, oh no!) percentage. Most of the major transactions pass through tax havens, the report says. On top of that the misquoting of taxable and non-taxable items helps evade tax better. Every year approximately 5 lakh crore rupees of corporate tax are being written off in this country and to me that is nothing short of 5 lakh crore worth a scam! The black money, tax evasion etc are some the business as usual for corporate and hence day dreaming that routing out corrupt politicians would end corruption is just futile because they are just middle men in this whole drama.



Today’s newspaper showed how RIL had been goofing the treasury department by quoting over hyped rate over the Krishna Godavari natural gas extraction and supply. The claims, that the license-raj devil can be wiped out by liberalization, proves to be just a lame tirade of the investors lobby. On the contrary what we are witnessing is pure puppetry. Just like how various corporate lobbys, pulling the strings of US policies, have shown how dependent corporates are on policy and law makers, every corporate house expects a corrupt government to be in place so that their monopolist intentions be well managed. We witnessed several high adrenalin protests against the politicians on 2G scam. The investigation reports did mention their names so they rightly deserves chappals and eggs, but the reports also mentioned the names of Reliance, Tata, Uninor and many well known corporate houses. Forget about high decibel cries, did we hear any word being spoken about these big shots in media or any other social gatherings or sites or forums? It could be imagined that Raja wouldn’t have sent out an email to all these chaps asking whether they want some spectrum. In the corporate world politicians are merely agents who gets things done for them, just like a middleman. If these middle men deserves stones and sticks, their employers deserves much more.



Imagine, if Anna Hazare asks the protesters to sell all the Reliance or Tata shares that they are holding, to protest against their corruption, how many of the corruption fighters would be ready for that? What are the chances that Anna Hazare gets tagged as a joker or something like that? Some might want to argue that, as they bring ‘development’ and all that nonsense, it is ok. So should this be interpreted as – I am ok for corruption as long as I am getting a cut out of it? My question is, whom should I slap first? :).