Scandal Sweeps India On Eve of April National Election

by M.M. Ali

If Indian Prime Minister Narasimha Rao had known the extent to which corruption and graft had spread in the Indian body-politic, he might not have allowed the Indian intelligence bureau to investigate his own cabinet ministers on the eve of general elections. As a result, however, several Congress Party ministers who were close associates of the prime minister have resigned from their posts and Rao's name has been dragged into indictments against some of them.

The bright side of all this for the Indian prime minister is that L.K. Advani, president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the leading opposition group, also was indicted and had to resign his parliamentary seat. Members of some other opposition parties were indicted as well.

There is another view of why corruption investigations were pressed at such a sensitive time, based on the fact that Narasimha Rao has been accused of many things, but never of political naiveté. A seasoned politician, he turned what was to be a stop-gap arrangement following former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's assassination into a lengthy term as prime minister for himself.

He wants desperately to be re-elected to another term. He also knew that his Congress Party was vulnerable on the issue of corruption, and that the Bharatiya Janata Party was considering making that corruption the centerpiece of its election campaign.

There is reason to believe that when evidence of a major scandal was discovered, he examined it carefully. When names of his political rivals began to emerge, he decided to sacrifice some of his own pawns to destroy those rivals.

Kenneth Cooper wrote in The Washington Post of Feb. 23, 1996 from New Delhi: "Government investigators filed corruption charges against 14 politicians [increasing] to two dozen the number of political figures formally accused of accepting illegal payments from a foreign-exchange dealer. The investigation is based on diary entries of accused money launderer S.K. Jain, whose notations indicate a total of $18 million in payments made to 114 persons beginning in 1988."

Underlining the potential extent of the problem, Arun Shourie, a political analyst and a former newspaper editor who had earlier worked for the World Bank, observed: "This is [just] one diary of one accountant of one business operating in one part of the country."

The cabinet ministers who have resigned so far include, among others, Buta Singh, minister for civil supplies; Arvind Netam, junior minister for agriculture; Mahadev Rao Scindia, minister for human resource development, who was considered a possible successor to Rao as prime minister; V.C. Shukla, minister for water resources; and Balram Jakhar, minister for agriculture. The Indian press has dubbed the scandal Hawala, which in Urdu means "to hand over" and is an underworld term for money laundering.

Rao has gone on the offensive in recent weeks, noting that opposition stalwarts Advani, Arjun Singh and N.D. Tiwari were named in the Jain diaries. The BJP has launched a counter-attack accusing the prime minister himself of taking $850,000 from Jain, although Rao's name is not in the diaries. Most of the people accused have denied taking any money, while others have said that the listed amounts were donations to their political parties.

The Wall Street Journal observed on Jan. 27, 1996: "Few Indians are surprised by revelations of corruption in the leadership. The surprise is that there may be a crackdown on graft, though there is no assurance the scandal will lead to convictions or start to overhaul the system."

In India, bribery and corruption go by different names and are almost taken for granted both in political life and in the bureaucracy. Some call it a "commission" or a "fee" and others call it "baksheesh," meaning gratification money or a tip.

To run its colonies, the British Empire created an over-regulated system and India has inherited it. With an entrenched civil service and unscrupulous politicians at the center of a web of rules and regulations, industrialists and consumers alike are trapped in a system where the only way to get anything done is through kickbacks. Corruption stretches from the lowest functionary who opens the door of a government agency, to the official at the top who signs the papers. Each one has to have his proportionate share.

In the midst of the continuing scandal, an Indian newspaper published a price list for each task, ranging from the cost of getting a child admitted into a school to the "commission" for a major industrial permit. A former U.S. diplomat who has served in South Asia explained the tenacity of the system: "At a point, creature comforts and amassing wealth are no longer life's objectives. By demanding money one is exercising power and authority. Bribery acts as a political aphrodisiac."

Perhaps that explains the corruption, but it does not justify it in the minds of Indian voters. With lower house of parliament elections scheduled for April, the corruption issue will not be the exclusive weapon of any one party, but it may be a major preoccupation of the electorate. Unfortunately, however, although the press and political pundits will have a field day explaining the varying shades of involvement of the parties and individuals on the ballot, the end results cannot be predicted. The majority of Indian voters, after all, still cannot read.

Post-Election Crisis in Bangladesh

Despite protests and a boycott by the combined opposition, the government of Bangladesh completed elections on Feb. 15 to fill the 360 seats of the National Parliament. According to the results announced by the government-appointed Election Commission, most of the seats went to Prime Minister Khaleda Zia's Bangla National Party (BNP).

For months the opposition, led by Shaikh Hasina of the Awami League, had demanded that Begum Zia step down and allow the president to appoint a caretaker neutral government to conduct the elections. Zia refused and said that she found no constitutional provision for such an arrangement.

As a result, it was widely reported that of a total population of over 125 million and an electorate of about 47 million, only 10 to 15 percent of the electorate voted. Further, close to 50 people died in election-related violence and Election Commission Chairman A.K.M. Sadeque said results from more than 10 percent of the 21,000 polling stations were thrown out because of "voting irregularities."

The Khaleda Zia government attributed the low voter turnout to the fact that the election was held in the month of Ramadan, when Muslims fast during the day. However, Feroz Hasan of the Fair Election Monitoring Alliance said the elections were "flawed from the beginning."

Sensing in advance the election's outcome and the shape of things that would follow, envoys from six countries,the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, Italy and Japan,led by U.S. Ambassador David Merrill, met separately with Khaleda Zia and Shaikh Hasina before the elections to seek a compromise leading to more representative elections. Their effort failed.

Commenting on the political stalemate that has followed the elections, a U.S. State Department spokesman said that a good opportunity to reinforce democracy has been lost. The spokesman expressed concern that the economic growth that had started in the country is likely to be slowed down by the current political maneuvering.

Shaikh Hasina announced a three-day strike starting Feb. 24, following the end of Ramadan. It turned out to be a total shutdown. Anything that moved on the streets risked attack from opposition vigilantes. Now regular weekly strikes and protests are planned. The crisis that started two years ago now threatens to get out of hand if the parties do not come to a workable compromise.

The present trouble had its beginnings almost from the day that the eastern wing of Pakistan seceded amidst war and bloodshed to become the independent state of Bangladesh in December 1971. Since then, the country has experienced bloody coups in its brief history of 25 years. Shaikh Mujibur Rehman, the founder of Bangladesh, was killed along with his family in 1975. His daughter, Shaikh Hasina, now 48, was in Germany at the time. She told a Washington Post correspondent: "Everybody knows. They attacked our house and killed my father, my mother, my three brothers, my sister-in-law and everyone else who was in the house."

Hasina holds Gen. Ziaur Rehman, the late husband of present Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, responsible for the massacre of her family. Gen. Ziaur Rehman ruled Bangladesh until 1981 when he, too, was killed in yet another military coup.

His widow, Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, now 50, says, "I was not interested in politics when my husband was alive." She considers his successor, General Ershad, responsible for her husband's death. Ershad became president in 1982, was deposed by special elections in 1994, and was charged with maladministration. Ershad now is in jail and his wife, Raushan Ershad, now 57, has joined ranks with Shaikh Hasina to oppose Khaleda Zia.

Although Khaleda Zia's Bangla National Party won the Feb. 15 elections and she again became the prime minister, the tragic history of Bangladesh's three previous rulers both symbolizes and underlies the country's continued turmoil. With political tensions mounting, the country again may be heading for yet another extra-constitutional change.