If there is one ground-breaking precedent that Ajit Pawar, former Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra, set when confronted by media reports of a Rs 20,000 crore scandal during his tenure as Irrigation Minister for a decade from 1999 to 2009, it was his immediate resignation.

Breaking the mould of politicians who have stuck to their positions of corrupting power until forced out by the party High Command, embarrassed by the mud slung at the face, Ajit Pawar of the National Congress Party, undoubtedly at the behest of his uncle, party chief Sharad Pawar, resigned without so much as a whimper of protest of innocence or charges of ‘conspiracy’.

At first glance, it might appear that Ajit Pawar had set new standards for moral integrity, for prima facie acceptance of responsibility pending full investigation. A resignation is the first condition, it would seem, for governments to appear clean. That tradition seems to fly in the opposite direction of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence that holds a person innocent until proven guilty. But for politicians facing fraud charges, it works.

So has Ajit Pawar set new standards of political morality?

Consider the developments that followed his resignation. Media attention at once shifted to the fate of the State government — and to NCP’s support to the Centre. Instead of fortifying the Prithviraj Chavan Government, now rid of the reported taint, the resignation seemed to have turned it more fragile.

No one asked questions about the misuse of power; public attention had drifted away from the more damaging repercussions of mis-governance to vicarious thrill over an imperilled government.

All that the public has got is the promise of a White Paper on irrigation projects. No one needs to be told what that means: In any case, public memory is short even as its anger is long and inchoate. For the media, yesterday’s news is today’s fish-wrapping paper and Sharad Pawar will make sure to provide scintillating copy, with his tactics aimed at keeping a Centre, desperate to enter the next round of elections with as few wounds as possible, neurotically anxious.

Ground-breaking farce

Ajit Pawar’s disingenuous attempt at establishing a moral benchmark only confirms the need for the Lokpal Bill that the Anna Hazare team had fought for before succumbing to the temptations of Parliamentary politics. Anna Hazare admitted that political ambitions had queered the pitch, but it was clear that a struggle targeting key officials and feeding off television cameras, instead of a mass movement, would have to fight the battle on the terms set by those in power.

The Lokpal Bill gathers dust; in the absence of the real-life presence of all those earnest followers who posed before the electronic media in support of Anna Hazare, no one will moan the Lokpal Bill’s fate.

Two hands to clap

In large part, the reductionist logic of Team Anna is to blame for the decisive inaction on the Bill.

It failed to recognise the fact that every misuse of power benefits someone unfairly; any mechanism that does not seek to recognise the mutual self-interest between the one who dispenses favours and its recipient is akin to a man shaving half his face.

Punishing the misuse of power is one thing, but making it difficult (if not impossible) for intended beneficiaries to even consider maximising unfair advantage is equally, if not more, a potent deterrent to mis-governance.

The governance gap

Around the time Ajit Pawar was setting precedents of sorts, Raghuram Rajan, the newly appointed Chief Economic Advisor to the Finance Ministry, was airing views that should have received more attention.

Rajan, whose reputation for insightful and incisive economic insights precedes his appointment, made an observation that cuts to the heart of India’s weak political administration. Governing capabilities, he said, had not kept pace with economic growth and the hiatus had allowed sections of the private sector to reap huge advantages.

Rapid economic expansion over the past decade or more had added immense value to natural resources, but the mechanisms for their allocation had not changed commensurately, resulting in an overall loss to the nation, even as some parties made a killing.

After a long time, a policymaker has had something noteworthy to say. For once, an advisor has taken the overarching view that misallocation and, by implication, its accomplice — corruption — operates in the dark shadows of that chasm between galloping economic growth and obsolete or sputtering governance capabilities.

Key policy failure

This viewpoint allows us to locate the failures of public policy since 1991 and, particularly, since 2002, not in some reform tiptoed around but in the growing chasm — the capability gap.

“Streamlining” procedures, as successive policymakers claimed, simply meant fewer decision-making levels but, paradoxically, that left power concentrated in fewer hands usually at the top.

The ideological moorings of that power to “allocate,” historically rooted in “democratic socialism” and its extra-economic subjectivities were never overhauled to create mechanisms more appropriate to present day concerns.

But the ruthless logic of rapid economic growth has forced upon us a rethink of the kind of “economic” considerations that should inform newer governing capabilities.

Measuring the value of natural resources not just in the light of GDP numbers, but against future needs, against social indicators of well-being and justice — these must be the foundations of fresh governing capabilities that Rajan hopes will evolve. Hopefully sooner than never.

( >blfeedback@thehindu.co.in )

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