[Reader-list] On narratives of corruption

[zainab at xtdnet.nl]

The Narrative of Corruption

Good governance, accountability, transparency, efficiency
Good governance, accountability, transparency, efficiency
Good governance, accountability, transparency, efficiency

Good governance, accountability, transparency, efficiency – the mantra of
new urban management as you all know. Standing from the pulpits of the
city with who I share an ambiguous relationship, estrange yet intimate, I
now deliver one more narrative of corruption.

Friends, Romans and countrymen, a few months ago I started meeting up with
some technicians, some politicians, some actors in local politics, some
financiers, some lumpen proletariat and some of the lumpen bourgeoise.
Conversations and teas revealed that corruption is more ambiguous than the
transparency of good governance and the accountability of transparency –
that corruption is an important pawn in the new chess of urban management
and that corruption has facets, some evident, some hidden and some yet to
be revealed. Who plays the corruption card, directs the game (and the
direction).

Sometime ago, we lived with corruption in municipal governance. ‘Arre, you
need to pay to get a water connection,’ ‘arre, they don’t issue
birth/death certificates till you don’t grease their palms’, ‘arre they
make you wait if you don’t pay’. And cities continued just as the
inhabitants did. But today something has changed. Infrastructure is
collapsing, slums are proliferating and suddenly we have realized that we
are living in the Times of Corrupt Indian Cities. What realization (and
what transcendence as we ascend peaks towards becoming global cities)!

In the Times of Corrupt Indian Cities, municipal services are inefficient,
delivery is slow, but the city continues to grow (despite!). We need to
move fast because local politicians are corrupt and always filling their
coffers, we may miss the bus because financial resources are inadequate
and public-private partnerships are the order of the day.

Friends, Romans and countrymen, we are living in the times of urban
renewal and transparently accountable good governance where corruption is
opaquely invisible. There was a time when the local municipal councilor
made money on repair and maintenance contracts and they still do. But
today the chunks of moneys have moved to the higher echelons of
governments. When a proposal for a mall is submitted, the moneys reach to
the state and central government politicians since the projects have grown
bigger in size and the stakes are higher (stakeholders hai nah!). As the
public-private partnerships take over, contracts start to get signed in
the offices of the state and central government urban development
departments, amidst the babus and the bosses of the babus (opaque
corruption). And then, who said corruption is all about moneys. It is
about khushi which you give to the babu in the form of phoren trip. It is
the price paid for efficiency of contract approval.

Then there are some who sincerely believe that transparency is critical
for good governance, but who needs to know how decisions are made in the
cabinet and what compromising is done to arrive at those decisions. Those
need to be kept outside the ambit of any of the rights to information. And
then we have the right to information, that powerful tool which will
transform the face of corruption from this country. So let us bring out
all the skeletons from the closets of those municipal councilors who have
been siphoning public funds by building public toilets in slums,
smoothening roads, and not putting the money where the horse’s mouth is
and filling their potbellies and coffers. Those rascals! And as budget
analyses are done, their misdeeds are revealed. And who smiles upon us?
The gods of the state and central level politicians who would love to
tighten the noose on these erratic scoundrels. Such a mess this local
politics! (Apparently, the Chinese central government is also peeved with
the erratic local politics and wants transparency weapons to crack the
whip!)

Friends, Romans and countrymen, someone wise once said that decentralized
corruption is not as lucrative as the one which centralizes
decision-making. The rest is for you to figure out.

Ah, our dying cities! Long live good governance, accountability,
transparency, efficiency (and opaque be corruption) 




Zainab Bawa
Bombay
www.xanga.com/CityBytes
http://crimsonfeet.recut.org/rubrique53.html