The battle against corruption is an ongoing one. But this battle must be as much about style as substance or perhaps style along with substance.
While the Anti-Corruption Bureau has done a commendable job in the arrest of Additional Collector Shabaji Shetye in the manner in which it kept watch, laid a trap and affected the arrest by waiting for the bribe cash to land in his pocket, the war on corruption, in Goa has to be expanded to see where processes and systems are vitiated in departments and how major decisions like allotment of multi-crore projects are done, by deftly manipulating the system to make it look technically above board.
Decisions that don’t fly in the face of logic appear completely wrong, and with violations clearly visible, are not taken just for the sake of it. There is a quid pro quo to all violations that are unearthed in every major project. And the trade off is either political benefits or bribes or kickbacks. And while the visible acts of corruption like bribe taking and catching the guilty red handed, come into intense focus when officials are trapped (and politicians are not), the real corruption happens when the treasury of the state is looted, for the clearance of mega projects because when that happens,the government is playing with our money.
It is our taxes which fill the treasury. So if there is a huge cost escalation in a project, it means that the government is paying money in excess of what is required to the project proponent. Surely, this cannot be out of love and affection. And it is this additional money, or a part, which goes into the pockets of those who allow cost escalation to take place. And let us remind ourselves, it is our money.
It is actually very simple to understand because corruption is not a complex subject. It becomes complex when governments do not put a lid on institutional corruption. Individual corruption at an officers level to clear NOCs or even at the panchayat level happens because the milieu feeds it. Individual corruption happens when government jobs, positions and transfers are traded. And when money is paid to secure a job, money will be made to recover the investment.
And yes, at times in order to do this, individual corruption happens in departments for the private recovery of investments made by government employees, by taking private bribes. On the other hand, institutional corruption strikes at the very core because public money is touched. Neither can be condoned but the latter causes more harm to the land and to society.
Institutional corruption is what needs to be looked at far more seriously. Without stating that this involves corruptions specifically, Herald is in the midst of a 3 part investigation into the controversial Siolim Jetty project where a 8.77 cr project was awarded at Rs 12.15 crores, 47% above the estimate. The finance department’s justification for the cost over runs, in response to the Principal Secretary Water Resources Department’s correct questions on who authorised these escalations, was this the “practice” due to ‘harsh working conditions’. The Principal Secretary was flummoxed and asked whether this has become a norm by default.
That is precisely the point. Repeated cost escalations, (and it was revealed that the Finance Department’s approval is not taken for these PWD and WRD projects) have become the norm and when it becomes a so-called “norm” it gets an element of legality attached to it. But how can something be legal when it clearly appears to be a cover up and unfair. A cost escalation has to be justified and approved. You cannot sanction crores of public money, because it is a “norm”.
Manipulations also happen in the manner in which companies which bid for projects through tenders are selected and shortlisted. In the Siolim jetty case it is clearly visible that the two companies (and not three) who pitched for the project were closely interlinked with their directors on the board of a third related company with the same address of one of the bidders. When these facts are deliberately glossed over, suspicions of graft become stronger.
Individual officers are mere symptoms of a rotten system. The engine room of this system sometimes lies in the highest echelons of government.
