• PAGE ONE
• INDEX
• HOME

Vital Vittal

THE other day, the Attorney-General of India, Mr. Soli Sorabjee, was quoted as having said that the Central Vigilance Commissioner, Mr. N. Vittal, should desist from ``over-enthusiasm'' in trying to accomplish his ``laudable and praiseworthy'' task of tr ying to root out corruption from public life. As everyone knows, too much of anything is bad, the inference being that too much enthusiasm on Mr. Vittal's part as CVC is also undesirable. But can this standpoint be defended from the social point of view?

First, over what is Mr. Vittal so enthused that wise counsel to go slow should have flowed from no less a person than Mr. Sorabjee? Briefly, as of now, Mr. Vittal has been exhibiting exemplary energy and initiative in his effort to fight corruption among public servants, an effort which can only be lauded by the whole of society, a very large part of which is absolutely powerless directly to fight such corruption.

And yet the Advocate-General has cautioned restraint on the (reported) ground that the CVC should ``take into account the rights of the aggrieved persons''. Now, what are these ``rights'' Mr. Sorabjee is talking about? The most important of these is, of course, the ``right'' of people not to be called thieves unless and until they have been convicted by a court of law. Does this right also cover publicity of the fact that charges of corruption have been levelled against some people pending their convict ion or otherwise, and that investigations are on in this regard?

Certainly, one cannot ignore the fact that someone against whom there is a chargesheet will be socially penalised if that chargesheet is widely publicised. In fact, this is precisely what happens to a citizen (public servant or otherwise) who has had his office or residential premises raided by the tax people even if it is found subsequently that nothing incriminating has been found by the authorities. Curiously, no one has ever raised a little finger against the publicity of such tax raids (of which th e papers are full) even when it is clear that the ``right'' of the raided party has been ``impaired'' in the same way as the right of the public servant whose name has been put on the black list by Mr. Vittal.

The fact that the Advocate-General has tried to caution Mr. Vittal suggests that ``public servants'' are perhaps a special breed of citizens who deserve special treatment compared to what is meted out to the average citizen of the republic. If they are, then it would appear that Mr. Vittal's so-called ``over-enthusiasm'' is perfectly in place. After all, special people should be treated specially, even when it comes to penalisation of any sort. If ``public servants'' are to be treated specially (they do have the Prevention of Corruption Act), then the least the average citizen can expect of them is that their conduct will be above any hint of suspicion, in which case the CVC would not have had the need to include their names in his list at all.

There is no doubt whatever that corruption is increasing in this country rapidly and that very soon it will be almost impossible to find honest people either in the administration or among politicians. There will, of course, be honourable exceptions but, clearly, they would be fighting a losing battle. In such a situation, one thought that someone like Mr. Vittal would be given all the support possible to press on with his crusade against corruption.

At the end of the day, perhaps, Mr. Vittal, like others, will have passed on without making much of a dent in the problem. But at least people will remember him for having tried his best to attain his objective, enthusiastically or ``over-enthusiasticall y''.

Ranabir Ray Choudhury