Just imagine the culture that exists within the Uttarakhand unit of the Congress. A man claiming to be Rahul Gandhi’s secretary can convince a local woman leader of the Congress to pay Rs 25 lakhs for a high party position. That she was willing to bribe her way to power and believed Rahul Gandhi could be so persuaded shows how hollow are claims of the party being honest and committed to public service. And why should someone pay such a large amount of money for a post in a party that is not even in power? It leads one to wonder what the structure of the internal economics of the party could be like.
It is no wonder then that there is so much effort being put in by contenders – some of whom are well past their prime – to unseat the present State President Ganesh Godiyal. Just imagine how much lucre can be obtained when it comes to distributing tickets for elections – from the panchayats to the assembly and parliamentary levels! How much does the public know of such practices and does it influence the way they vote?
Of course this is not the case with one party alone. Since public office is an established way to siphon off government funds, it is considered ‘normal’ to indulge in such give and take. Eventually it impacts on the quality of services and infrastructure the state is supposed to deliver. Things are often so bad that bridges, roads and buildings develop cracks or, in some cases, even collapse before they are inaugurated! In an age when global stress is on the increase, can a developing economy afford such a level of corruption?
It is not as if the remedies are not available. It is just the lack of a political will to undertake corrective action. Even when the corruption is out in the open, there is no adverse public reaction, mostly because such practices are taken for granted. It is necessary, therefore, for the people to be made to understand how much such a culture impacts their lives, how much suffering it causes. Once they know that the trade-off between what is given as freebies, etc., and what is taken amounts to, they will make the right choices at election time. Not just for the higher positions, but at the village, block and district level, also. They should not wait for a West Bengal like situation to emerge, where everything had been handed over to extortionists of one kind or the other.
