Physician, heal thyself’ is an oft-quoted Shakespearian exhortation. Its popularity is mainly due to its applicability in diverse human situations where the healer himself is more sickly than the sick. This kept floating into my mind on watching the newly-elected Karnataka MLAs being ferried to resorts and back. ‘Resorting to the resort option’ is not new; it has been tried elsewhere in the past. It has become a routine drill when government formation becomes an arithmetic puzzle. The familiar spectacle of elected representatives being herded and held captive in five star luxuries conceals an alarming moral decay than its comic side conveys.
Let us ask a plain (or naïve) question. What happens if these MLAs are allowed to remain at their homes? The answer is obvious. In the context of a hung Assembly it is feared that one party or the other would influence MLAs to cross over to the other side. This crossing over is evidently against the interest of the party that has fielded that candidate and secured him/her a victory. Soon after the election, when the winning candidate switches sides and walks away with the party whose candidate was defeated, it is nothing short of treachery and a betrayal of electorate’s faith. It is well known that there are several allurements to take such a decision. When elected representatives are whisked away to a resort, a party is only trying to insulate them from possible allurements (and temptations). But that is only a physical insulation. What about the mental vulnerability of these persons? Why they don’t switch sides later is only because there is no scope for barter once a government is formed.
Isn’t this a dismal commentary on the quality of our democracy? Some of these MLAs are to become ministers and decide the fate of development projects involving a few thousand crores of public money. Will they be free to carry out the mandate of protecting the interests of the poor and marginalised and working in public interest without ‘fear or favour’? Will they be able to give guidance to civil servants and police in their discharge of duties? With a propensity for moral promiscuity, will they be in a position to uphold high secular and democratic values in public life and deal effectively with injustice and corruption?
If their own party considers it necessary to keep them away from temptations, what is the guarantee that they will not be tempted later in other situations? Once the bureaucracy and the electorate accept this moral vulnerability, they forfeit their authority and legitimacy to check, prevent and punish the corrupt and the guilty among government servants. With the loss of faith in the moral underpinning in public life, corruption will not only become rampant, it will also acquire an aura of inevitability.
Ordinary citizens cannot be blamed if all the pious official and ceremonial pronouncements about ‘clean administration’ ethics in governance’ social justice’ and ‘sathyameva jayathe’ sound hollow and hypocritical. In the long run this mistrust will subvert a society’s faith and confidence in the ethical dimension of administration and institutions meant to check corruption. With the perception about the abyss between spoken word and deed getting ingrained in social psyche, integrity in public life and administration gets the tag of ‘a-once-upon-a-time-virtue.’
It is not without reason that corruption at the grass roots level is hardly an election issue in any state. Not because corruption has been weeded out. All the hype about e-governance and technology-driven administration has not ushered in corruption-free governance. It is not surprising that the recent report of Transparency International ranks India at 80 among 180 countries in corruption index has not made much news here. Because it is no surprise; we know we deserve it.
All parties are aware of the corrupt practices prevalent in government offices as well as in higher level decision making and policy formulation. But eradication of corruption is not on the top of agenda of any government in the country, though it is often mentioned cursorily as a statutory warning. That is why law-enforcement agencies and quasi judicial authorities are hardly given professional freedom in the crusade against corruption. When the moral credentials of an elected government are suspect, independence of law enforcing agencies is will be in peril. Worse, they will be used with targeted precision on other considerations.
The consistent concern of Mahatma Gandhi in the freedom movement was its ethical and moral dimension. The moment he suspected the movement was going astray from its ethical framework, he was quick to act and correct. He would go to any extent to regain the moral realignments in any given situation. No doubt the overwhelming calculus of practical politics had exerted its pressure on Gandhiji too on several occasions. But his moral stamina was such that he wouldn’t accept a compromise at the expense of truth.
We seem to have almost completely parted ways with such ideals. We believe they could be venerated but not acted upon! It is frightening that our politics and administration seem to have become so pragmatic and short-sighted that we have even stopped dreaming a corruption-free India. That fading dream needs to be instilled again in the minds of our youth so that the coming generation will have the honour and pride of living in a country whose rank in the corruption index will be in a single digit group. In such an India the MLAs will remain in their homes in times of tricky government formation and none shall even dare to tempt them. Only such leaders can heal the system of the sickness of corruption. Till then we can only say, ‘Physician heal thyself.’
K Jayakumar
Former Chief Secretary to Government of Kerala and former Vice Chancellor of Malayalam University
Email: k.jayakumar123@gmail.com