Towards probity in public life

VBN Ram

 I would like to begin with a caveat, essential to dispel the disingenuous notion,  “Every homeless politician has a greater proclivity to become corrupt for buying a home. “  Former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri  had the mettle to disprove it.

Minutes before the Budget Session of the Punjab Vidhan Sabha was to be adjourned sine die in March 2015, a senior Congress legislator had pleaded with Speaker Charanjit Singh Atwal that the Prakash Singh Badal-led Shiromani Akali Dal  government must, forthwith, set aside land for a housing society for the residential requirements of legislators.

As expected, the politicos got the required legislation cleared by the Vidhan Sabha. This move is a godsend for the sitting and former legislators who do not own a plot or land in Chandigarh, Panchkula or New Chandigarh.

The beneficiaries will get a residence in Punjab Legislators’ Cooperative House Building Society (PLCHBS) in Mullanpur,  for which 2.5 acres has been provided by the Greater Mohali  Area Development Authority  (GMADA ). This is the culmination of a relentless pursuit by the legislators to own their dream home.

This is a milestone any Chief Minister will be immensely proud to achieve, perhaps no one more than Andhra Pradesh’s iconic Chandrababu Naidu — who is laying the blueprint for the state’s new capital,  Amravati. 

Governments, the world over, have been browbeaten by their citizens to seek recourse to all legal means towards ensuring that corruption is wiped out. Despite being forced to cleanse the system – constraining factors like avarice, cronyism and the imperatives for marshalling resources for election funding,  preventing governments from heeding the sane demands of  its citizens, 

who want across the counter honesty. 

Political will has ensured that the aforesaid objectives have been achieved in some Scandinavian nations. Singapore comes as a stellar example worthy of emulation. Singapore stood seventh on the 2016 Transparency International Corruption Perception Index (TI ), up from the eighth position in 2015.

As early as 1980, its then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew brought in enactments to increase the emoluments of legislators and officials. He also introduced strict punitive measures against corrupt officials. By tackling both the policing and financial factors of corruption, the pay-off of corrupt activity is shifted from a low-risk high reward, to high-risk low reward.

Politicians and former MPs continue to live in the prime real estate of Lutyens’ Delhi, though many of them should have vacated these several years back. Mind you, some such squatters occupy properties valued at prices higher than areas like Malabar Hill and Altamount Road in Mumbai. Many of Lutyens’ Delhi properties are valued at Rs 300 to Rs 500 crore. American senators earn salaries of $174,000, but have modest perks and homes that cost a fraction of Indian MPs’ bungalows.

Stringent   implementation of electoral reforms designed to put an appropriate ceiling on total election expenses improves voter trust and cleanses the opaque or non- transparent political order.

For example, the total financial outgo for the 2012 US elections was a staggering $7 billion. At that time, public trust that the government will do what is right, reached an all time low according to a 2014 report by the Pew Research Centre. Although three-fourths of Americans had expressed such trust in the 60s, only one-fourth do so now.

Like the housing society in Chandigarh for present and former legislators on the threshold of being launched, why can’t the defaulters living in Lutyens’ Delhi be made to reside in a housing complex, with adequate infrastructure suitable for their needs. It would bring in a perceptible reduction in expenses on their security.

If this writer’s soul could communicate with Le Corbusier, the French planner of Chandigarh, he would ask what additional lustre he could have given to PLCHBS, if any.