After Wagle and Chaturvedi are out of incarceration, it is likely that their careers will take flight in different directions. Wagle may be welcomed back to his old party as a prodigal son who had been a victim of political machinations. Madhes-based parties would vie with each other to attract a high-profile professional like Chaturvedi who may opt for a national party instead of a regional one. The competitive advantages that self-proclaimed nationalist outfits offer to sanitized Madhesis who love to don labeda-suruwal and speak Nepali with just the right amount of inflection that accentuates their place of origin but proves the subject’s complete assimilation at the same time can be alluring. Chaturvedi personifies the ‘Nepali-fist’ attitude that prominent members from ‘othered’ communities put on display to gain acceptance into the sanctified salons of power elite in Kathmandu.
Alternatively, Wagle would have the option of enlarging his son’s travel and other businesses. Chaturvedi could use his talents and contacts developed during the stewardship of premier government enterprises such as Nepal Oil Corporation and Nepal Airlines Corporation to launch himself into consultancy. After the aid industry and the NGO-sector, commission agency is the third most rewarding business in contemporary Nepal with facilitation fees for fixing deals like the printing of polymer notes or recruiting security guards for dangerous duty in occupied territories of Afghanistan and Iraq running into millions. Over time, instances of financial wrongdoing are conveniently forgotten as its direct and indirect beneficiaries settle down and acquire social respectability.
There is nothing wrong with such a process per se. It has been said that behind every great fortune there is a great crime and what is felony today may have been considered normal in an earlier age. Adam Smith talked about the ‘original accumulation’ where a combination of trade, specialization, hard work, savings and investments made some people richer than their fellow citizens under free-market conditions. Karl Marx looked at what created a free-market in the first place and found the horrors of ‘primitive accumulation’ where warlords expropriated commons and criminalized evicted serfs who were then forced to work under inhuman conditions to produce enormous profits for the dominant classes.
GREASED PALMS
The upper class condones corruption as a useful tool of exercising control. It can easily sideline or silence the ones it finds inconvenient to persuade through other means. Kickback is an essential part of doing business anywhere in the world. In the United States of America, it has been legitimized under the names of campaign contribution, speaking fees, outrageously priced donation dinners, and exorbitant lobbying charges. Europeans are more refined and use a combination of consultation assignments abroad and mutually beneficial property deals at home to lure and keep loyalists. In large parts of Asia and Africa, gifts of all kinds are the glue that binds relationships of blood and wine. Corruption is always what someone else does to harm your interests and they need to be shown their place once in a while.
The poorest of the poor have no dreams and remain outside the ambit of formal economy for the most part. They can wriggle out of uncomfortable situations by pleading mercy. Survival at the lowest rung of society can often be bereft of all self-respect. The lower middleclass has no option other than making compromises at every step. Any kind of trickery is fraught with high risks.
It is easy to pontificate about evils of graft, but then what other way is there in a state of ‘state capture,’ defined as ‘the process through which business or other elites capture the state/regulatory apparatus for their own profit-seeking, and influencing policies,’ and where all structures and institutions are stacked up against everyone else?
That leaves only two ways for the ambitious members of the struggling class to climb upstairs in life: Corruption and violence. The relationship between bribery and banditry is complicated, but the rich and the poor prefer violence—mafia, militarism, Maoism, have your pick—while those in the middle find it more expedient to live with graft. North Korea and Norway, highly militarized societies at different ends of political spectrum, probably have little corruption as compared to say Costa Rica or Japan. The USA is the most militarized, but corruption is largely legalized in that exceptional nation.
Opportunities for inventive individuals for making quick money abound in economies opening up for formal businesses. Traders routinely overcharge; suppliers habitually sell underweight goods; some businesses cheat taxes; a few others claim fraudulent VAT-refunds. All of them require services of competent accountants, auditors, lawyers and complicity of public officials. It doesn’t take long for talented individuals from the lower middle class to climb up and acquire a fully paid membership of the bourgeoisie. And then everything begins to get complicated. The fear and resentment against the masses below begin to overtake future hopes of those who think that they have made it in life through the dint of hard work.
The chorus against corruption is mainly a middleclass pastime. Borne out of wounded pride of those who consider it an insult to pay bribes even as they benefit from the system that makes graft an essential element of survival in the free market, the anti-corruption agenda soon succeeds in getting the support of the upwardly mobile professionals in developing countries. Under-invoicing and over-pricing apart, the bourgeoisie takes it as an offence that public servants can even think of tips for services rendered as facilitation fees. It hurts their self-esteem to shake greased hands out of sheer necessity.
CLENCHED FISTS
Campaigns against corruption routinely fail to find traction in developing societies for one simple reason: Advantages likely to accrue to the person in street is less than clear. A policeman that denies bribes would drive hawkers off the footpath and impose punitive fines on cyclists that park along roadside to sell fruits and vegetables. The same policeman would be powerless to act against mall-owners who may not be depositing taxes that they collect from shoppers. It would be impossible for a Dusadh residing on marginal lands to get citizenship certificate if the cook or the clerk of the Chief District Officer refused to intervene in the matter for a small consideration. The Dalit labor back from Kala Pahad would rot forever in custody on trumped up charges if his relatives were unable to pay for his release. Corruption is mainly an issue of political economy rather than a problem of ‘Good Governance’ that Nepal’s influential lenders and donors make it out to be.
The standard definition of political economy limits the discipline to the interrelationship between political and economic institutions and processes, but its influence extends deep into the structure of society, its history and culture. One of the reasons manufactured for the rise of Maoist insurgency was widespread corruption of the parliamentary system; the cost of controlling violent eruptions ultimately crippled the economy and drove the poor out of the country. Chairman Gyanendra selected ‘clean and competent’ individuals to head various ministries; all they succeeded in doing was completely alienate the people and isolate monarchy.
It is easy to pontificate about evils of graft, but then what other way is there in a state of ‘state capture,’ defined as ‘the process through which business or other elites capture the state/regulatory apparatus for their own profit-seeking, and influencing policies,’ and where all structures and institutions are stacked up against everyone else? The answer probably lies in clenched fists of peasants, workers, women, Dalits and forums of oppressed solidarities rather than media ‘actorivism’ of the socio-cultural elite. Since organized workers are the most vociferous of all such groups, the bourgeoisie have begun to attack them vehemently.
Conspicuous consumption by owners and criminalization of labor unions are inter-related phenomenon. Investment is no charity and high capital has no nationality—it would always go where returns are highest. The only way to fight graft is to combat it where it grows—at the supply side of the table. Vilification of trade unions is hardly as innocent as it appears to be. It is necessary to tarnish their image to silence the political class. The campaign may be precursors of spectacular ‘failures’ such as that of Indreni Soyabean, Jyoti Spinning Mills and Necon Air that duped lay investors with little or no cost to their promoters. Whether promoters benefited from such failed enterprises remains an open question.
Whose turn is it now? That’s the main question, not whether trade union leaders sport ‘fake-original’ Chinese smart-phones or ride fancy bikes. The capitalist class in any case is recognized less by the brand of its cars than the dress and address of their chauffeurs.
Meanwhile, Wagle and Chaturvedi need not worry too much. They have saved the system from acute embarrassment and it will serve them well in their future careers.
cklal@hotmail.com
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