Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
economic activity such as construction of infrastructure projects. In India, it slows growth
because of the pushes and pulls of a hyperactive democracy, and the greed of politicians
and other vested interests. Extensive and complex government rules and regulations within
an overdeveloped state apparatus provide politicians and officials with endless opportunit-
ies for exercising discretionary powers, and businessmen with consequential opportunities
to gain illicit advantages over competitors. This is corruption at its most destructive. In In-
dia, it is damaging the heart of the society, pushing dishonesty down to the lowest levels
so that even members of tribal communities and other poor suffer when they take their first
steps into India's mainstream economy.
Permissive Religion
One of India's many curious contradictions is the way widely publicized acquisition of ob-
viously illicit wealth is not only practised but is tolerated in an open society when two-
thirds of the population struggle to make a living. 'The only surprising fact about most cor-
ruption stories is that anyone in authority gets surprised. Everyone in charge knew that the
Commonwealth Games Organising Committee was buying toilet paper at art paper prices,
and turf at the rate of platinum. This was not considered unusual, let alone criminal, be-
cause the price of cream is built into public expenditure,' says M.J. Akbar, a newspaper
editor and author, 4 in a colourful reference to problems that dogged preparations for the
Commonwealth Games in Delhi in 2010.
'The biggest culprit is society itself,' says Nitte Santosh Hegde, 5 a leading anti-corrup-
tion campaigner who was the Lokayukta (state corruption ombudsman) for the state of
Karnataka from 2006 to 2011, having earlier been India's solicitor general and a Supreme
Court judge. 'Wealth is regarded as a sign of success - you are felicitated. Society has lost
the sense of differentiating between legitimacy and illegitimacy. When I was young, people
didn't respect the corrupt - you never invited people perceived to be corrupt to a function,'
adds Hegde, who was born in 1940. 'Now hordes of people welcome them when they are
let out of jail.'
That this should happen and be tolerated leads to the suggestion that India's religious
and cultural base encourages, or at least tolerates, such crimes and bending of rules. In the
Bhagavadgita, Lord Krishna advocates doing one's duty detachedly without caring about
personal consequences, but he breaks the rules of warfare - one could say cheats - to win
a battle in the larger epic of the Mahabharata. 'In Hinduism, there is no binding or univer-
sal code of conduct that gives unequivocal primacy to the moral dimension,' says Pavan
Varma, a diplomat-turned-politician and a prolific author. Ethics do 'not have an absolute
or unalterable definition,' he suggests in his book, Chanakya's New Manifesto . 6
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