Prakash Karat's 4-point fix for corruption

The Left might have been feeling sidelined by the populist surge of the Anna protest. Now it appears to be trying to make up for any lost ground. On 2 September the Left parties plan to march from Mandi House in Connaught Place to Parliament.  On Sunday Brinda Karat did full court press showering congratulatory remarks on Team Anna. On Tuesday afternoon Prakash Karat showed up on his home turf –Jawarharlal Nehru University – to rally the students at a ‘Public Meeting – The Fight Against Corruption: A Left Perspective. [caption id=“attachment_74115” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“A 74-year-old man had managed to do what the Left would have dearly loved to accomplish. Photo: Pratishtha Dhobal/Firstpost”] [/caption] The full house at Koyna Mess was indication enough that people were interested in change, whether it was Left-led or Anna-induced, said Jyoti* (name changed), a first year M. Phil student. Koyna Mess was certainly full but the students who showed up were anxious to know how the Left was going to carry the charge forward post-Anna.  Comrade Karat, on his part, told them that the Left had been crying itself hoarse for a long time over corruption and the corporate-bureaucrat-politician nexus. Anna got his dues for lighting the fire under the government but according to Karat he wasn’t getting the full picture. Corruption, sadly, is part of our heritage. Kautilya’s Arthashastra, written almost 4,000 years ago, talks about almost 40 ways to embezzle your government. Here are four ways to fix the system, according to Karat. 1. Electoral reform to get rid of the protocracy That’s the buzzword for societies ruled by the rich elite. For example, the US. Karat said state legislatures like Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka were headed that way as well. Legislators’ assets were way above what they declared. The CPI(M) thinks “proportional representation” had to be a key part of electoral reform in order to have a more representative legislature. 2. Get the private sector’s hands off our resources Iron, aluminium and coal should come under the public sector. These are natural resources, not a free-for-all. The same goes for privatisation of healthcare and water. Karat was nostalgic about the days when Indira Gandhi nationalised  banks in 1969. That, he said, was the reason India didn’t feel the full brunt of the recent global recession. Now that the RBI has said corporations can open banks, it’s clear proof that the ruling party doesn’t learn from its own history.  3. It’s really about neoliberalism The big blind spot of the Lokpal movement was that it missed the main source of corruption. It’s not enough to condemn politicians. The fact is, you can’t fight corruption without politics. So when the government says they will tackle bribes they are just diverting attention away from a system that breeds corruption. This is a country, where according to Forbes, rich people are growing at the rate of 22 percent, the highest in the world. A law isn’t enough. People will find ways to bend it. While Anna deserves congratulations for his battle, the real war is the struggle against the neo-liberal order. 4. Let’s bring back that black money now Baba Ramdev made black money stashed abroad the focus of his short-lived fast, but Karat said the NDA started the trend of shipping off black money offshore. The current government has just turned a blind eye to it. He said if the US could tell UBS financial services to hand over the list of people who had stashed away their money in Swiss accounts, the UPA could very well do the same. But if Karat was interested in laying out the roadmap on how the Left could take forward the anti-corruption wave, his audience was also eager to point out where they felt the party had let them down. Why didn’t the CPI(M) do something concrete when the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) Bill was being passed? Singur and Nandigram in West Bengal put the nail in the Communist government’s coffin there after over three decades of uninterrupted rule. “You’re right,” admitted Karat. “You see before SEZ we were concerned about the export processing zones not allowing trade unions. Therefore, when the Bill was presented we concentrated on those clauses in the Parliament.” According to him the Left didn’t realise the full scope of SEZs, that they could cover 25,000 -30,000 acres. “When we woke up to the true nature of the bill, it was already too late and the Act had been passed,” he said. But past mistakes aside what was in store for the future?  “There’s no danger of us being in the Cabinet anytime soon,” quipped Karat. And though he wanted to rally the faithful ahead of the march on parliament on September 2,  and he got his share of  ‘Comrade Karat ko lal salaam’ slogans, he couldn’t deny the basic fact: a 74-year-old man had managed to do what the Left would have dearly loved to accomplish. Sneha Gaekwood *(name changed), MA first year student, summed it up. “I respect Mr Karat, and support the Students’ Federation of India. However time will only tell if we can ever pull off something as powerful as Anna.”