“Legislation alone might not check graft”

Anti-graft legislation has to be backed by a concerted people's movement to effectively check the escalation of corruption in a neo-liberal regime, economist Prabhat Patnaik said on Friday.

Delivering the W.R. Varadarajan Memorial lecture on “Neo-liberalism and corruption” organised by the Indian School of Social Sciences, Mr. Patnaik said the move to a neo-liberal regime, which, it was believed, would get rid of corruption, had actually expanded the scope for graft as public assets get increasingly privatised, and therefore legislation by itself might not address the issue.

Neo-liberalism

He pointed out that neo-liberalism — characterised by increasing privatisation of public assets consequent on the significant change in property relations — had greatly accelerated the primitive accumulation of capital and led to the most blatant cases of corruption.

According to Mr. Patnaik, it was important to realise that in alleged cases of big ticket corruption such as the 2G and the mining scams, the gratification may not be direct but systemic and the loss to the people would be in terms of the diversion of proceeds through the private accumulation of capital — often at throwaway rates — to a set of individuals instead of the exchequer.

“That the political class is complicit [in big ticket corruption] is quite dangerous for democracy,” he said.

While fundamentally a transitional phase must have anti-corruption legislation, it should also be supported by a serious people's movement, Mr. Patnaik said.

Public assets

It was equally important that there was no privatisation of public assets, except in specific cases where the proposal had to get the approval of Parliament with a watchdog body constituted by it ensuring a fair price.

Exhaustible resources had to be owned and operated by the State while on scarce resources — of which land was a primary asset — the State must have the first right to purchase in order to avoid speculative pricing, Mr. Patnaik said.

The economist also urged the Left to ensure that the people had a central role in the struggle against corruption.

“The Left must also have an agenda of placing the corruption issue under the framework of an alternative problematic,” he said.

‘Not isolated problem’

Mr. Patnaik said it was critical that the corruption issue was detached from its middle class problematic which was “wrong” in viewing the issue in isolation, “unproductive” in visualising a solution solely in terms of a legislation and “dangerous” in its potential to morph an anti-corruption crusade into an anti-democratic movement.

the hindu daily 060811