NK SINGH
Prime Minister Narendra
Modi, talking about black money at a public rally in Ghazipur earlier this
week, made specific mention of corruption in Madhya Pradesh. In a pointed reference
to disgraced IAS couple Arvind Joshi and Tinoo Joshi, both of whom were
arrested and dismissed on corruption charges, Modi commented in his typical
colloquial style: “When income tax people went to some sarkari babu’s house in MP,
they found three crore rupees under his bed. Whose money is this? Does not this
money belong to the poor?”
The notorious case of the
MP cadre IAS couple has forever been etched in public mind as an example of
corruption permeating sections of bureaucracy. So much so that the Prime
Minister, when he wanted to give an illustration of massive corruption, readily
recalled the case of the ‘Madhya Pradesh babu who slept on a pile of
banknotes’. The income tax department had raided Joshis’official residence at
Bhopal in 2010. They had to summon note counting machines to tally banknotes recovered
from the house. The former high profile couple is currently facing prosecution
for disproportionate assets estimated at Rs 360 crore.
Modi’s ‘carpet bombing’
on black money, as the Supreme Court described demonetisation, has set the cat
among pigeons. Particularly nightmarish is, for many, the Prime Minister’s
promise of impending action against benami property. It has created a flutter
not only among businessmen and politicians, the two biggest sources of black money, but also in a section of government
employees.
The BJP Government in MP has
put up huge hoardings and bought space in the media hailing New Delhi’s drive
against black money, trying to bask in reflected glory. Portraits of Chief
Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan vie with that of Narendra Modi on billboards to
proclaim the State Government’s resolve to fight corruption. But no amount of
hoardings and advertisements can gloss over the fact that, in public memory, MP
has forever become associated with the mother of all scams --- the great Vyapam scandal.
The scam is one of the
most glaring examples of corruption and complete subversion of system in
Independent India, probably next only to Bihar’s notorious fodder scam. Senior
politicians, including a former minister in Shivraj cabinet, government
officials and businessmen ganged up, connived and conspired to systematically
rig medical admissions and recruitment to government jobs for nearly a decade.
The police made over 2,000 arrests in the voluminous case. The CBI is also
investigating about two dozen cases of mystery deaths of key accused.
Did the State Government
learn its lesson after the cash poured out of Joshi couple’s official bungalow
at Bhopal or the entire nation started talking about the Vyapam scam? Even as thousands
of arrests were being made in Vyapam case and the Joshis became a pariah among
their former colleagues, MP kept hitting the headlines with frightening
regularity due to its crorepati chaprassis and lowly clerical staff in
possession of with mind-boggling wealth. The corrupt government employees in
the State continued to literally mint money out of dirt. In one bizarre case, government-run
godowns supplied 185 bags of wheat mixed with soil to flood victims in the State.
In the last five years
the Lokayukt ombudsman has discovered at least one dozen multi-millionaire peons
and patwaris, the lowest ranking government employee. A peon working for at
Ujjain Municipal Corporation was found to be worth Rs 13 crore, with 18 acres
of farmland, farm houses, 10 bank accounts and 4 luxury cars. Everyone knows
which department of government mints more money for its employees and why
postings there command a premium. However, the BJP argues that detection of
such cases is possible only due to Chouhan who has asked the Lokayukt to go
hard against corrupt officials.
If it is indeed so, the only
inference that can be drawn is that the corrupt have become brazen in Madhya
Pradesh. They go on plundering the state exchequer and common man alike without
bothering about consequences. To use Narendra Modi’s phrase, “the malaise is
too deep.” This week, even as the entire nation was groaning in bank queues, three
employees of MP Board of Secondary Education were caught red-handed accepting a
bribe of Rs 25,000 from one of their colleagues, a lady clerk. The news hit the
front pages because the lady had managed to procure 10 newly-introduced
currency notes of Rs 2,000 to pay the bribe.
Something is
rotten in the State of Madhya Pradesh.
Powers That Be, my column in DB Post of 20th November 2016.
Email: nksexpress@gmail.com
Twitter handle @nksexpress
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