The corruption discourse is back in the Bengal public sphere after about five years since 2016 election when the opposition tried to capitalise on the issues of Sarada scam where several heavyweight Trinamool Congress leaders were allegedly involved and Narada sting operation where several key leaders were seen as accepting bribes. A fieldwork based study in four districts reveals that corruption is accepted as a necessary evil by the people at large and that they are happy to pay to expedite the process of public works. Using Foucault’s notion of Discipline and Punish this process is theorised as disciplining of corruption by the ruling TMC. While everyday corruption was overlooked by the electorate in West Bengal, globally corruption became crucial electoral issue that brought political change in countries like Brazil and India particularly because of the involvement of a growing middle class. Ruling BJP continues to use corruption narrative rooted in India Against Corruption (IAC) movement to channelize the dominant narrative against the Indian National Congress that even gave dividend to failed experiments like Demonetisation. Global initiatives like the corruption indices of Transparency International or anti-corruption drive, social audit or the Right to Information in India should be seen as a continuum of the recognition of corruption as a major issue of democracy and governance.
Politics,
Corruption and West Bengal:
Corruption
and politics interface as an outcome of the cost of democratic functioning in demographically and
territorially vast location is well documented. Existing literature show that while
everyday corruption is acceptable to a certain extent; large multi-million
scams are still seductive to the public sphere. Field
research on West Bengal shows that a change from elaborate party mediated governance during the Left era to local
leader dependence of TMC has created a new form of dependency structure bringing people closer to corrupt form of transaction in West Bengal, Corruption,
therefore, has microscopic stories ranging from getting public services
delivered to grabbing a government job. The stacked money recovered from properties of erstwhile
minister Mr. Partha Chatterjee and his friend for the first time gave an
impression of the accumulation of microscopic stories in piles of cash. Such
recovery is the visual spectacle of a juxtaposition of bribed money for job and
continuous job seekers’ movements. The recruitment scam or more lately the
cattle smuggling scam is neither everyday disciplined corruption nor a large
scale multi-billion scam against which IAC was organised. Yet, the spectacle of
the accumulated stacked money has shaken the new form of middle ranged
corruption that got wide public attention. TMC’s initial response was to distance itself from the arrested Mr. Partha
Chatterjee to scapegoat one person to save the party’s overall image. As more
heavyweight leaders including Mr. Anubrata Mondal got arrested, TMC felt the
importance of image recovery. They launch protest against the Enforcement
Directorate (ED) and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) standing with Mr. Mondal, district TMC
secretary of Birbhum. Although CBI and ED investigations are often seen as
politically motivated which earned the Supreme Court sobriquet that CBI was a caged parrot speaking
in the master’s voice,
the public demand for CBI enquiry shows the level of people’s confidence on
these agencies.
The
limits of disciplining:
It’s been
five years since the last serious allegations of corruption was in the public discourse.
Will we witness a continuation of disciplining of corruption in the
public sphere as
we have seen in 2017 West Bengal, or for that matter of late, globally. Although, it is difficult to
predict the future, nevertheless, the recent corruption charges against TMC
have several unique features.
·
While
West Bengal is full of petty corruptions, they are usually restricted to
relatively smaller amounts ranging from a few hundreds (e.g. ₹200 for Samobyathi scheme meant for assisting the
performance of last rites of a poor person) to a few thousands (e.g. ₹10,000/-
for getting entitled for housing scheme or ₹5000/-
getting caste certificates). The bribery for recruitment made it into lakhs. During
my fieldwork at Purba Medinipur in 2012-2013 TMC leaders reported a ‘demand’ of
the party to seek an amount of ₹400,000 per job. They were free
to charge more to feed themselves. For a secured job people have sold off their
assets and arranged for the money. In my subsequent fieldworks across Southern
part of West Bengal I came across same incidents everywhere.
Figure 1 A generic model of the flow of
bribed money bottom-up (Source: Field data)
Partha
Chatterjee’s arrest has several consequences. First, those who got the job are
uncertain about their future; second, it opened up the open-secret of the scam
which was going around for quite some years now and third, the involvement of a
relatively younger lady in the scam has added additional moral dimension to the
character of not only of Mr. Chatterjee but also of the TMC leaders as a whole.
·
The
wide media coverage of the money stacked in cash has created a perception of ‘positive’
implications of Demonetisation. Consequently, a narrative of BJP over TMC has started
to float. Bribery, money stacking, extravagant life of ministers- all these
have added something new to the taken-for-grantedness of everyday corruption.
·
During
the last decade of Left rule people got employed in hundreds of schools each
year. Since 2011 the recruitment process has slowed down considerably. A
movement of the Teachers Eligibility Test (TET) qualified job seekers is
continuing for months in front of education directorate in Salt Lake, Kolkata.
Meanwhile, on August 21, five contractual teachers
consumed poisons
during their demonstration in front of the Education directorate. Apart from
these, frequent incidents of teachers being harassed by the TMC’s students union
personnel which includes beating up college principal adds to the existing
grudge. A combination of the vanishing of much coveted teaching jobs,
protesting educated youths on the streets of Kolkata, regular incidents of
teachers’ harassment by the party leaders and cadres and ultimately the
recruitment scam have created a unforeseen challenge to the TMC leaders to wash
their hands off from the issue like they did easily in case of the earlier
financial scams.
·
The
recruitment scam, therefore, is quite different from other existing scams which
include, amongst other, an accumulation of individual grievances against local party
cadres, people’s frustration for not being able to pay for their dream job and
disgust towards the moral and financial corruption of the key TMC leaders. Additionally,
there is a cultural and cognitive dimension of the students attached with
School Service Commission (SSC) as a gateway to respected profession and
settled life. There are three reasons for aiming at SSC: a) the SSC examination
is relatively easy compared to other administrative positions like West Bengal
Civil Services Examination (WBCS) or banking jobs, b) the recruitment process
has largely been simple and subject specific, c) school teachers have an added social capital especially in the villages which
has a long legacy rooted in the Left era.
·
There
is a growing scepticism in people’s everyday discourses regarding the
authenticity of all of the government employees recruited in TMC era. This is
subtly creating a division among those who were recruited during the Left era
and those who are in the TMC era. Labelling of government employees as products
of recruitment scam is a problem that adds to employees existing
dissatisfaction with the widening gap in the Dearness Allowance between the centre and state.
While everyday
corruption is not new to the people of West Bengal who have ‘accepted’ it as a
necessary evil with a trust that party requires money to function, the
recruitment scam has unravelled a different dimension of the accumulation of
everyday experiences of corruption. It is true that TMC could get away with
serious corruption charges during 2016 Assembly Election and bagged even more seats,
but 2021 election has shown an astronomic rise of the BJP in the state at the
expense of LF and Congress. The opposition voice is sharper and heavier than
2016 and central agencies are investigating against one after another
heavyweight leaders. The recruitment scam is perhaps going to be the acid test for
the limits of disciplining of everyday corruption. It also bears the potential
to redefine and liquefy the boundaries between petty and everyday corruption
and large scams for the corruption research in future.
Suman Nath teaches Anthropology at Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Govt. College, West
Bengal.
