Indian professor sees political corruption as the biggest peril

Bhaskara Rao questions party politics, urging people to imagine a ‘party-less’ democracy.

KARACHI:

Dr Nagulapalli Bhaskara Rao’s words could not have come at a more apt time in Pakistan. A day after Pakistan’s Supreme Court ruled that the 1990 election results were stolen as an intelligence agency had bought off politicians.

“The mother of all corruption, in fact, is political corruption,” remarked Rao while speaking on Saturday at a two-day international conference on corruption, its causes, consequences and control. The event, which features several speakers from the South Asian region, has been organised by the Hamdard School of Law and is being held at the Karachi Marriott Hotel.

“[Political corruption] starts and ends at the level of political campaigns,” said Rao, who is the chairman of India’s well known research organsation Centre for Media Studies.

Rao questions the very foundations of party politics. Imagine democratic politics which is ‘party-less’, he said.

Citing examples from India, Rao said that it was just a misconception that those who belong to lower income groups are paid to vote. “The rich too are paid, just like those below the poverty line are,” he said, adding that in India election ‘money’ has gone above Rs1,000 per vote.

According to Rao, a vast gap exists between a person’s perception of corruption and how they experience it. He asserted that perception rather than experience is how we have come to define corruption.

One of the reasons why our perceptions have been skewed is the wide coverage that the media has given to corruption and the surveys related to the idea of corruption. According to Rao, the boom in media coverage has inflated the concern that there is widespread corruption.

Pouring further doubt on the idea of corruption, Rao criticised surveys that create benchmarks as to where a country stands in related indices. “Surveys and rankings mean nothing,” he proclaimed. For instance, improving corruption indices is limited to attaining short-term goals. However, there is a need to adopt a more cohesive vision for combating corruption in the long term.

He extolled the latest ‘Happiness index’, saying it debunks some of our current perceptions, unlike other dismal surveys that just give a depressing outlook.

There are plenty of laws, but they are worthless if they are not implemented. Colonialism should not be the sole excuse for the onset of corruption in South Asia.

He said that Pakistan is a decade ahead of India in ratifying the definition of corruption, however both countries need to re-think the idea of corruption more comprehensively.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 21^st, 2012.