PUBLIC SINS, PRIVATE LUCRE, GOA DAMNED

Valmiki Faleiro

Goa?s stink would put a skunk to shame. Never was the awful stench of corruption in public life so overpowering, so intense, so pervasive. Originating from ministerial chambers in the State Secretariat, bribe culture permeated down to the lowest rung of Government functioning. So rampant it today is that we, the people, have accepted it as ?A way of life.? If corruption has become institutionalized, it is thanks to our politicians. And, in a roundabout way, to us.

Bureaucracy is steeped in corruption because the top itself is. It?s not just a case of setting a bad example. Instances show that our elected honourables actually initiated field officials into corruption. For starters, how do you imagine the poor official will recover the lakhs he paid to the minister to secure his job?

Leave alone the individual ?scoops? for favours and licences granted by bending or breaking the law. Forget the by-now-conventional ?percentage? on all government spending. Ministers have developed ?Regular Income Plans.? A fixed amount every month collected by the department for the minister. The lucre is not confined to RTO check-posts, gambling, petro-adulteration,narcotics and rave parties. Newer rackets are hatched and choreographed from the top.

Take the case of Sub-Registrars. Times were when Sub-Registrars like Floriano Barreto, Vishnu Sinai Priolkar or Egidio Fernandes might have actually dug into their own pockets to help a needy person rather than demand, expect, or even accept a bribe. As corruption seeped into the corridors of the Palacio do Adilcao, Sub-Registrars began demanding
money for not referring ?undervalued? Sale Deeds for adjudication. Then a Mapusa advocate became Law Minister. Based on average transaction volumes and values, he fixed a monthly ?quota? for each of Goa?s eleven sub-registries. Even the few fairly decent Sub-Registrars had to fall in line.

Corruption was unheard of during the first government of Dayanand B. Bandodkar, 1963-66. Bandodkar of course was smart in knocking off money for every \"donation\" he announced in Chief Guest appearances. He got it from his
Richie-rich brother mine -owners. He knew to deal with defaulters -- he knew how they under-invoiced ore exports, which foreign accounts they stashed away the difference, and how they abused impex incentives to smuggle in gold.
But corruption (as we know it today, for personal enrichment) was anathema in that era.

The first signs of the malaise surfaced after his daughter, Shashikaka Kakodkar, took over. There were published reports that Gurudatt, her husband, abused position to black market commodities then in severe shortage. Opposition leaders
like Dr. Jack Sequeira, Madhav Bir and Babu Naik screamed \"corruption, nepotism!\" In fairness, corruption but in a few places then, was not a whisper of what it turned out to be in the post-1980 Congress regime. It galloped, horizontally.

Corruption zoomed vertically, at the turn of the century, after the BJP assumed power (even if, it must be said, Parrikar kept corruption at the bureaucratic level in some semblance of control.) Parrikar and his boys (not all from his party,
some were from coalition partners) gave corruption a new dimension, a new sophistry. Gone were days when Congress ministers accepted small change for a bribe. The lowest denomination was half-million, a crore in bigger swindles.
Routine kickbacks on government spending skyrocketed to a new high of eight/ten percent.

Corruption today has wriggled into a vicious circle. Thanks to we, the people. Unless the elected politician makes pots of money, he cannot hope to win the next election. To win, he must bribe the voter. And, once elected, recover it and make more. (\"I didn?t win on your vote, I won on my money,\" a minister told his constituent grudging to pay.) Whether the politician corrupted the voter or whether the voter corrupted the politician will remain a dilemma like which came first, the chicken or the egg.

Politicians have minted scores of crores. They will deploy them to perpetuate a corrupt electoral system. The vicious circle will be broken only if Goans turn smart enough to partake of the loot but vote with their conscience. But then, the politician is prepared for a Goan reformation: in several constituencies, migrants bring up half the electoral roll, or at least in sufficient numbers to sway the verdict.

History lessons for politicians would be water over a duck?s back. History tells us that when corruption peaked in the polity of the time, our once proud capital, the ?Cidade de Goa,? was devastated. The capital had to be shifted to Panjim. But before another plague wiped out the Adil Shah palace, our thugs had bolted to Porvorim.

History, in this case, will not repeat itself. It will have to chart out an entirely new course..