While few and far between, the instances of one or the other kind of the three sets of corruption in the Indian public office did come up even during the early years of independence. A.D Gorwala Report (1951) and Santhanam Committee Report (1964) pointed fingers at the integrity of ministers and civil servants. The reports speak of relative tolerance and shielding of the miscreants. Enriching themselves through illegitimate means, practicing nepotism and securing good jobs and business options for their children and relatives and reaping other advantages inconsistent with any standard of purity then constituted common refrain among the deviants. Factors at work included a web of restrictive rules and regulation regime in face a general resource and opportunity crunch in the economy and rise of power brokers, who, at one end, served as necessary link between the system and the clientele, and thus, bore mantle of legitimate go between and on the other end, created system glitch to transparent transactions. In the bargain, discretionary powers at different ends of power centers, subject to corruptibility quotient of the individual player and accountability glitch in the system, turned out to be the fountain head of corrupt practices in governance.
Indian state and its institutions were then in a nascent state. However, the responses were quite straight and stringent. While not exhaustive, the system response to some of the often quoted corruption cases of the era such as Jeep Scandal (1948), Mudgal case (1951); LIC-Mundhra deals (1957); Partap Singh Kairon case (1964); and, Biju Patnaik case (1965) stand testimony.
The Jeep Scandal, so to say, related to V.K Krishna Menon, the then Indian High Commissioner UK. The Indian army had placed orders for procurement of 155 Jeeps worth Rs 8 millions. They were to be used in then troubled Hyderabad and Kashmir regions. The Indian army had placed services of a Brigadier, which he bypassed and instead outsourced through an agent, Cleminsan. While the roadworthiness of the Jeeps in question was certified by Lloyds, the sulking Indian Army made an issue in accepting, and the opposition, in particular those who were ranged against the then Prime Minister Pt Jawaharlal Nehru blew it out. Even as the Jeeps remained on road for over a decade, V.K Krishna Menon, one of the most austere political people of the time, suffered the insinuation.
H.G Mudgal, a Member of Parliament, accepted Rs 1000 each on two occasions in his dealings with Bullion Merchant Association. On receiving complaints, the then Prime Minister first approached Speaker G.V. Mavalankar for a thorough parliamentary enquiry. A member of Lok Sabha wanted reference of the case to the Privilege Committee. The Speaker did not find it workable. The Prime Minister moved a resolution for appointment of an Ad-hoc Committee of the Parliament to go into the issue, which found his conduct "derogatory to the dignity of the House and inconsistent with the standards of member of Parliament”. He was formally expelled from the House.
LIC-Mundhra deal remains a legend by its own right. It was the first financial scandal of independent India. With his connections, Haridas Mundhra, a Kolkata based industrialist and stock speculator, got Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) to invest Rs. 1.24 crores (US$ 3.2 millions) in the shares of his six troubled companies such as Richardson Cruddas, Jessops & Company, Smith Stanistreet, Osler Lamps, Agnelo Brothers and British India Corporation. The investment was done under governmental pressure and bypassed the LIC’s investment committee, which was informed of this decision only after the deal had gone through. In the event, LIC lost most of the money. The irregularity was brought to the notice of the Lok Sabha by the ruling party member Feroze Gandhi, the son-in-law of the then Prime Minister. The matter was disposed in record 24 day inquiry by one-man Committee of Justice MC Chagla. Haridas Mundhra was sentenced to imprisonment. The Committee found the Finance Minister T.T Krishnamachari constitutionally responsible. He subsequently resigned. The Committee recommended trial of Finance Secretary, H. M. Patel, along with two LIC officials, L S Vaidyanathan for suspected collusion. The incident turned to be the harbinger for the coming up of statutory Central Vigilance Commission to play a pivotal role looking into the phenomenon.
Partap Singh Kairon was Chief Minister of Punjab from 1956 to 1964. While he is credited for much of the developments the state achieved, the controversy about his corrupt actions in promoting the economic interests of his sons, relatives and cohorts transcended beyond the epoch of the first Prime Minister of India. In close contrast to all other cases that found logical end, his assassination in February 1965, just two months after he resigned after being indicted by the S.R Das Commission, closed the chapter.[v] The case of Orissa Chief Minister Biju Patnaik did not as well have a logical end.. After a long time, charges of corruption against him were investigated by HR Khanna Commission. He was indicted for awarding government contract to his privately held companies and was forced to resign.
There were some lesser known cases of corruption of the kind in the early years of independence. They included: Cycle Imports scandal (1951); BHU Funds scandal (1956); and, Teja Loans case (1960). S.A. Venkataraman, the then Secretary, the Union Ministry of Commerce and Industry was proceeded against and later jailed for accepting a bribe in lieu of granting a cycle import quota to a company. BHU fund scandal was then first of its kind in an educational institution. The employees had misappropriated Rs 5 millions. Once found guilty by the court of laws, the perpetrators had to under go imprisonments. Shipping magnate Jayant Dharma Teja took loans worth Rs 20.2 millions to establish the Jayanti Shipping Company. In 1960, the authorities discovered that he was actually siphoning off money to his own account, after which Teja fled the country.
The situation, in subsequent decades, witnessed a sea change, in particular in the mode, scope and end results. The political class and the civil servants literally came to operate in a sort of network orgies in contrast to individual aberrations during the early years. There are individual political players, in certain cases the political entity of their affiliations, who once vowed to fight pitched political battles with no holds barred to expose and eradicate corruptions in high places, carried out and let their kin to pursue the same course. Much the same could be said about the bureaucracy.[vi]
For a variety of reasons, in 1970’s, despite outcry of a different order, the number of corruption cases, then making headlines in substance, were just handful. The case of public sector Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), which awarded contracts worth Rs 20.2 millions for supply of petroleum products at constant price in an epoch of falling prices to a Hong Kong based said to be non-existent Kuo Oil Co in 1976 is one onstance. Political storm, nevertheless took place on couple of other occasions.[vii]
1980s brought a spate of cases, the major ones were: Antulay Trust scandal (1981), Lakhubhai Pathak cheating scandal (1983) Bofors Pay-Off (1986), HDW Commissions (1987), and St Kitts Forgery (1989). Things were little different in 1990’s. Counts went up. Airbus Scandal (1990); Solanki Exposé (1992); Securities Scam (1992); Indian Bank Rip-off (1992); Hawala scandal (1993), Sugar Import (1994); JMM Bribes (1995); Lakhubhai Pathak Paper Pulp Contract Bribery (1996); Telcom Scam (1996); Urea Deal (1996); and Coffingate (1999). The notable cases during the first decade of the new millennium included: Tehelka Sting (2001); Stock Market Scam (2001); Home Trade Scam (2002); Stamp Paper Scam (2003); Oil-for-Food Scandal (2005); Cash for Query (2005) ; MPLADS Scam (2005) Human Trafficking Forged Passport Scam (2007); Cash for Votes Scam (2008) and Satyam Computers (2008).
The list is not comprehensive. They are nor representative of different sets of orgies. There are quite a large number of exposes, both in all India and state level cases, some of which are being tried inconclusively as matters of disproportionate assets (DA). Leave aside glaring faults in the surveys of some of the professional bodies in bracketing India vis-à-vis different countries in regional and global perspectives on the basis of ill defined corruption perception index (CPI), the sweep of the phenomenon is simply astounding and tend to affect millions of people in their every day lives.[viii] The bureaucratic core to the phenomenon is much more virulent. It figures grand, middle or petty on the scale of 10 in different situations, depending on levels of control in the transaction of individual job. Levels of transparency figuring respectively nil, least and quite reckonable again on the scale of 10, depending on the levels of absoluteness with quantum of discretions in decision making go in chartering the orgies.
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