Asian Window

For Indian voters, news of a corruption scandal is a sign of a political system in ruddy good health. It’s honesty we distrust. Arvind Adiga, author of The White Tiger, in The Guardian:

When I was growing up in the south Indian city of Madras, there were only two political parties that mattered; one was run by a former matinee idol, and the other was run by his former screenwriter. My mother, giving me my first lesson in politics, explained that the difference between the two parties was that one party took large bribes and usually did the work that it was bribed for; while the other took equally large bribes – and did not do the work it was bribed for.

Corruption, which does for Indian political life what sex scandals do for western democracies, is once again in the news in New Delhi, where the furore continues over the allegations that bribes – colossal bribes, ranging into the millions of pounds – were paid to some members of parliament in a bid to save the Indian government. After the Communist parties withdrew their support to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, because of his decision to push through a controversial nuclear power deal with the US, his government looked likely to collapse. Yet when parliament met on July 22 to vote on Singh’s future, he survived. A few opposition MPs, at the very last minute, changed their votes in his favour. A Communist leader alleged that the government’s supporters had bought these votes with bribes – he claimed that nearly three million pounds had been paid for each opposition vote. To add to the drama, three MPs smuggled in bags containing nearly a hundred thousand pounds in cash into parliament, and waved the money in front of the gathered journalists, alleging that the money was given to them in a bid to influence their votes. The government has survived, but the furore over the alleged bribes continues to grow by the day, dominating TV and newspaper headlines.

More:

Similar Posts:

• In Bangladesh, an inauspicious rebirth for parliamentary democracy
• Indian Parliament: Show me the money
• Starship enterprise
• Bhutto ghost dominates Pakistan election
• Change is a February feeling