Illicit India - Implosion: India's Tryst with Reality - page 198

Known locally as Behen-ji (sister), she ostentatiously ordered the state government to
build massive pink sandstone and bronze monuments, stupas and domes in large parks in
Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, and in Noida on the edge of Delhi, at a reported cost
of Rs 4,500 crore 17 during her last stint as chief minister. They were designed to glorify
her and Kanshi Ram, her mentor, who founded her political party, the Bahujan Samaj Party
(BSP), as well as Bhim Rao Ambedkar, a revered Dalit leader at the time of India's inde-
pendence. She wanted them to be seen as symbols of empowerment for the Dalits, compar-
able with the palaces and forts of India's powerful Mughal rulers.
She did little during four terms as chief minister to develop the state, especially in rural
areas, although, with widespread and plausible allegations of massive corruption, she li-
censed impressive highway and other projects, including a race track for a successful grand
prix. 18 She lost the last state assembly election in 2012, but she still garners adulation from
the millions of poor Dalits who know they will never have even a tiny fraction of the for-
tunes she has amassed. Since then, the UP Lokayukta has alleged that Rs 1,410 crore was
siphoned off by 199 named politicians and government officials during the purchase and
erection of the sandstone monuments 19 and the state government's mining department has
said that the sandstone was mined illegally. 20
The Power to Say 'No'
Often regulations are designed to increase the discretionary system's ability to disrupt pro-
gress lucratively, rather than achieving the purpose for which the regulations are intended.
There is, for example, regular harassment of companies starting new businesses with state
governments' labour and other departments demanding payoffs during construction and
fire departments withholding protection approvals - often with officials inventing problems
to help the extortion.
A source in the private sector says this about serving with bureaucrats on a government
committee: 21 'Never once did I feel that they were proposing things for the good of the na-
tion or for the basic purpose we were there. They were fighting for their own turf and for
what they could gain personally from it. Ironically, they might well have moved on to other
jobs or retired by the time the policies were implemented, so they might not gain them-
selves, which presumably means they are instinctively guarding a corrupt system rather
than trying to introduce new positive policies.'
Amitabha Pande, a retired senior civil servant who writes a blog, 'Notes from a Subvers-
ive Bureaucrat', explained the system in one of his articles: 'First, decentralise and devolve
the power to say “no” right down the line, and centralise the power to say “yes” in a way
that obtaining a “yes” decision will mean having to go through many hands, all of whom