Illicit India - Implosion: India's Tryst with Reality - page 200

a former head of an economic think tank. 23 After many visits, the certificate was procured.
She had clearly known that it was not worth trying to fight the system, and the bank official
saw an opening to create work for a tout, and possibly also receive a reward. 'Such pro-
cedures are one cause for low-level corruption,' says Rao. 'It seems that the bureaucracy
in government and the public sector has created procedures that require intermediaries to
get the bureaucrat to exercise his discretion on whether to sign the form or not. Such dis-
cretionary powers exist at all levels and they invariably are sources of additional income
for the bureaucrat. Even to do the job he is employed for, the bureaucrat expects additional
payment. When he is violating a rule to favour an applicant, the fee is higher.'
Wealth Equals Success
Hegde's view that 'the biggest culprit is society itself' has been well illustrated by Sonia
Gandhi and Manmohan Singh who condoned corruption in many areas of their government
- not least by having Lalu Prasad Yadav, the leader of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), a re-
gional political party in Bihar, in the cabinet as the railway minister from 2004 to 2009. Ya-
dav, a short stocky man with a proud gait and cropped white hair brushed forward, had been
jailed on remand (and released on bail) five times for alleged involvement in a mid-1990s
corruption scandal when he was Bihar's chief minister. 24 Aid money for fodder and other
animal husbandry totalling Rs 900 to 1,500 crore (estimates vary) were siphoned off from
government funds.
The CBI filed a charge sheet in 1997 and formal charges were framed against Lalu and
44 others in 2000. 25 In a move that illustrated how corruption charges have little impact
on political careers, Yadav installed his wife as chief minister when he was forced to give
up the post because of the charges and between them they ruled for a total of 15 years. He
then became an MP and was the railway minister in the 2004-09 Congress-led government
when he became popular with Sonia Gandhi. He was eventually convicted in October 2013
along with 44 others and sentenced to five years in jail, which threatened to upset his plans
to rebuild his run-down party for Bihar's state elections in 2015 and secure prominent roles
for his two sons. 26 He was later released on bail but had to leave the Lok Sabha because of
a new Supreme Court ruling that convicted MPs could not retain their seats, even if they
appealed. 27 (A Congress government plan to legislate against the court ruling was aban-
doned after the dramatic intervention by Rahul Gandhi.) 28
Yadav's case illustrates how, till very recently, people have rarely been punished, except
occasionally with shortish jail sentences during investigations. Many cases are eventually
closed or drag on indefinitely without convictions, and that is what Lalu had been anticip-
ating, hoping that a change in his political fortunes would continue to keep him out of jail.
Even though many of those involved have been named publicly, investigating agencies (of-