Official venality, of course, is nothing new in India. But the most recent scandals involve increasingly large sums of money, encompass officials from coast to coast and seem to be occurring with greater frequency. Although India’s economy is posting its best numbers in a long time, the growth in business does not mean the country has broken the shackles of corruption–if anything, the temptations are all the greater as the trough gets bigger. Even worse, the incessant scandals may be making Indians dangerously inured to the proliferating graft. “There is growing cynicism all around,” says Ashis Nandy of New Delhi’s Center for the Study of Developing Societies.
If India’s newest tale of graft and greed is accurate, no one may better understand how the tentacles of corruption work than Abdul Karim Telgi, a former peanut seller and travel agent from the southern state of Karnataka. Imprisoned in 1991 without bail (he was neither tried nor convicted) for having bilked customers of his travel agency, the ambitious Telgi allegedly learned the art of forgery from his cellmate. Authorities say that by 1997, only two years after being released from prison, Telgi had set up a sophisticated forgery operation in Mumbai, printing and selling government stamp papers–official documents bearing a tax stamp of denominations ranging from $1 to many hundreds of dollars on which most legal and commercial transactions in India must be written. Given that Indian states earn some $7 billion in tax revenues annually from the sale of stamp papers, Telgi’s potential market would have been enormous. Officials claim that he was soon raking in tens of millions of dollars a month.
The money might still be pouring in if it hadn’t been for Anna Hazare. The 65-year-old social activist filed a public-interest case against Telgi in Mumbai’s high court this summer and the court, in turn, appointed an honest, retired supercop named S. S. Puri to lead an investigation into Telgi’s business exploits. Since September, 60 people have been arrested, including two state Assembly members and six senior police officers. Telgi is being held in jail on forgery charges while Puri’s Special Investigation Team continues to pore over 1,300 hours of Telgi’s cell-phone conversations that the police secretly recorded in the hope of uncovering still more politicians, bureaucrats and cops who were on the take. Even Hazare is shocked by the sweep of Telgi’s alleged crooked domain. “I suspected that the racket was big,” says Hazare, “but never that so many top officials would be involved and caught.” Despite all the investigations and the breadth of the scandal, Telgi’s lawyers insist he has been falsely implicated in the case.
The public’s growing cynicism with each revelation may have less to do with the scandals than with the reaction from India’s politicians. The country’s main political parties seem unabashed by the reports of corruption. Far from admitting that graft has become a national problem or that its prevalence may handicap economic development, accused parties immediately charge their rivals of either fabricating the scandal or of being even more corrupt. Last week India’s Deputy Prime Minister L. K. Advani gave Judeo, who denies any wrongdoing, a strong vote of confidence rather than censuring him. He said that Judeo, who resigned under pressure two days after the scandal surfaced, would continue to act as the party’s “star campaigner” in upcoming elections. According to Advani, citing allegations of fraud, the only one who should resign is Judeo’s main political competitor from the Congress Party.
Such political scapegoating is the last thing the economy needs now. Although a combination of economic reforms and private-sector modernization will boost economic growth to 7 percent this year, a steady injection of foreign investment will be necessary to keep the Indian economic engine humming. But the country’s parties seem more intent on scoring cheap political points than in contemplating serious government reforms, and the specter of corruption continues to scare off major investments. “It’s the rule of the jungle here,” says Nandy. “There is no limit on greed.” Or, perhaps, the depths of cynicism.
