Unfortunately, these accumulations were used not only for conspicuous consumption, but also had tremendous political and criminal ramifications. Over the years, accumulation through corruption had gradually reached a cancerous proportion. With democratization and empowerment of people, it is only recently that corruption is now viewed with revulsion and disdain. A powerful constituency which was created by it and forestalled all development in the state is now in retreat.

To begin with, in pursuit of transparency for the public functionaries, details of their assets were on the official website of the state government. The Local Area Development Fund for legislators, a great source of corruption,  has  recently  been  abolished. 

Further,  the  bold initiative of enacting two formidable laws, Prevention of Corruption Act and Right to Service Act, may change the rent seeking profile of the state in a decisive manner. The first relates to confiscation of such property by the state governments which are disproportionate to an individual's income. The second relates to providing service by the state functionaries to the citizens within a stipulated time, so that rent seeking can be prevented. Earlier, rent seekers could accumulate with 'gay abandon' and even a most blatant   rent seeking got either inconsequential censure or at best a suspension order. Additionally, in the name of Right to Private Property, their illegal accumulation was not touched. Both these laws are now acting as 'swords of Damocles' for the rent seeking government functionaries.       

The leakages of public spending in Bihar had a peculiar character, not to be seen elsewhere in the country. Here the funds for state programmes, either of agriculture or animal husbandry or social sectors, would be siphoned off for private accumulation right at the input stage. Secondly, such private accumulation, even if buccaneer, will not get invested within the state, as was the case in Indonesia; instead, the amount would often be transferred outside, as was case in Philippines. With their limited knowledge about capital markets, domestic or international, the looted resources of the state were generally invested in the real estate in the metropolitan cities. 

Unlike in the 'Rywatwari' and 'Mahalbari' tenurial systems in some parts of India before independence, the social position of an individual in Bihar was measured not in terms of his placement in the incentive structure, but in terms of his capacity to weaken the state structure through leakages. In the process, society had developed a preference for accumulation through input related leakage. In the post-independent period, most of the scams were input related like, cooperative, fodder or recruitment scams. Further, Bihar had another distinction of recruitment of human resources which were not qualified for the task in the state administration. This not only affected the quality of governance, it also resulted into organized siphoning of resources from the state exchequer in the name of 'salary'. There was no shame attached to it. Unfortunately, even though the input related scam stars had staggering accumulation, it did not go into industrial investment. It only promoted conspicuous consumption. For example, one initiator of the fodder scam in Bihar had hired a chartered plane, filled with relations, attendants and minions, flying to Australia for a surgery. Another cooperative mafia had accumulated so much wealth that he had to float a bank to legitimize its resources.

The developed states have reached that status by carving a productive accumulation path. It is not that corruption is not there; in terms of magnitude, scams are possibly much wider there. However, in these states, input related scams are almost a 'blasphemy'. If that was practiced, it will take away the state from the grammar of incentive structure which is a pre-condition for a capitalist transformation. Instead of input scams, these states have witnessed post-production scams, characterized by turnover based, profit sharing arrangements, ensuring their growth. 

After the present ruling dispensation took over the reigns of the state in 2005, the public investment had leapfrogged. Apart from plethora of construction-centric activities, the social sectors outlay had also increased manifold. Bihar society and its ramshackle state were not possibly prepared for such high amount of capital inflow. At the same time, vigilant people in the state were also not prepared to allow the public money to be frittered away. In this backdrop, recent opening of a primary school in the confiscated mansion of a senior IAS official of the state, facing disproportionate assets case, is a benchmark.                 

Thus while interpreting the world is a  easier proposition, working out the nuts and bolts of change is a difficult exercise, that too at a great personal risk. Unlike ordinary criminals, it is not easy to tame the white collar law breakers who are part of the power structure. In some sense Anna Hazare recently and Jay Prakash Narayan (JP) earlier had fulminated against rampant corruption, which appeared to be more symptomatic. It is only Nitish Kumar who has stolen their thunder by actual operation of reining them in Bihar, and changing the profile of the state.

* Member-Secretary, Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI), Patna

Comment

comments...