[Reader-list] "The lobbying menace" (in India)

[Patrice Riemens]

bwo Eveline Lubbers




http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=239643

The lobbying menace

The News

Monday, May 17, 2010

By Praful Bidwai

Corporate lobbyists have become a menace to democracy in India. Recent
developments, including the release of the intercepts of a telephone
conversation between a member of parliament and a well-known lobbyist
(Nira Radia), and media stories on the growing power of the
lobbyist-politician-policymaker nexus, should concern all conscientious
citizens.

The tapped telephone conversation shows that Radia was pivotal in
getting A Raja, a Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam MP, a cabinet rank and the
telecommunications portfolio in the second United Progressive Alliance
government. Radia also weighed in to tilt the balance in the DMK´s
internal power struggle in favour of one faction.

The lobbyists´ clout extends to the point of influencing the choice of
cabinet ministers, nominating key bureaucrats and interfering in
political party affairs. They increasingly formulate economic and
industrial policies at the nuts-and-bolts level.

Lobbyists are important mediators - and sometimes active players - in
business-government relations. This would have been unthinkable only
years ago.

Major areas of lobbyist influence are the infrastructure (highways,
ports and huge projects under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban
Renewal Mission in 63 cities); energy (including gas, oil and
electricity); telecom (where current 3G auction bids show that the
earlier 2G spectrum was sold at a fraction of the market price); and
mining (where global conglomerates have developed billion-dollar stakes
in India´s tribal heartland).

Lobbyists also wield considerable clout in military contracts,
agribusiness, civil aviation, and in opening up retail trade to
organised business, including multinational hypermarket chains like
Metro, Carrefour and Wal-Mart.

The lobbying industry has over 30 major firms based in New Delhi alone,
some of which have diversified from public relations. Each firm appoints
dozens of "facilitators", "account executives" and lawyers to secure
sweetheart deals and licences for their clients and ensure that their
clients´ rivals don´t get them. In addition, there are individual
entrepreneur-lobbyists like MPs Amar Singh and NK Singh, who work for
different clients.

Corporate lobbying has become the highest embodiment of crony capitalism
in India. Unlike advertising agencies, which offer certain services to
anyone for a fee, lobbying companies are intimately allied with specific
business groups in political ways. Since they have access to business
secrets, including malpractices, their loyalty to individual industry
magnates is all-important.

Common to them are all the slick techniques and skills that successful,
if unscrupulous, lobbying requires, including ability to cherry-pick
facts that suit/favour the client; make attractive PowerPoint
presentations that suggest familiarity with the subject; determination
not to be fazed by hostile interactions; and knowledge of which keywords
to use and which buttons to press.

What matters above all is the ability to do social networking, spend
lavishly, throw dazzling parties and please industrial magnates,
politicians and key bureaucrats by finding out their strengths and
weaknesses and shamelessly exploiting them to the point of blackmail.
Lobbyists are typically flamboyant, high-profile, even exhibitionist.

In some cases, lobbyists´ success in swinging spectacular deals for
major clients (e.g. Coca-Cola) depends on personal proximity to key
bureaucrats and ministers. Right since the early 1990s, when AN Verma
was the principal secretary to Prime Minister Narasimha Rao, bureaucrats
and politicians like civil aviation minister Praful Patel have played a
special role in dispensing favours to businessmen.

Other lobbyists´ reach and influence derive from the numbers on their
payroll -business journalists, TV anchors, law firms (to deliver subtle
threats), personal assistants to middle-level bureaucrats all the way to
top ministers, and income-tax officials (to coerce and cajole
decision-makers).

Some TV anchors were implicated in lobbying for high berths in UPA-2 for
certain MPs. Corporate lobbyists assiduously cultivate the media, which
duly returns the favour.

Some of India´s biggest corporate conglomerates plant loyalists in the
headquarters of the top papers, TV channels and news agencies. Their
personnel know - typically before the news editor - which stories will
appear which might affect their interests or their rivals´. Like the
mafia, they have inconvenient or "hostile" stories killed and favourable
ones played up. If all else fails, they threaten to withdraw advertising
support.

The reach of corporate lobbyists, their political influence, financial
power and fervour have acquired menacing dimensions during the past
decade or so. There were lobbyists earlier, of course - from individual
influence-peddlers like SK Patil and Rajni Patel in the 1960s and 1970s,
to the organised "liaison agents" of the 1980s who hung around the
industry and defence ministries´ offices.

But the lobbying business didn´t have an organised character, a sharp
enough focus, concentration of high-level manpower, and even
one-hundredth of the ability to secure shady deals.

Precisely because India is energetically globalising and pursuing
neoliberal policies, Big Business today has an incomparably bigger stake
than before in securing windfall contracts for highway, airport and
flyover construction and special economic zones; in privatising natural
resources and obtaining leases on land, water, minerals and forests; and
in rigging the capital markets.

Other stakes include opening up foreign air travel routes to private
airlines; helping multinational corporations to penetrate retail trade;
and taking over city bus transportation at assured super-profits.

Corporates are now invading the public sphere so that food grains can be
diverted to alcohol production, and pricey, artificially flavoured
biscuits can displace wholesome, nutritious, freshly cooked food in
mid-day meal schemes for schoolchildren. So much for the much-vaunted
"free market"!

Such blatant manipulation of the entire policy-making apparatus dwarfs
the old-style "licence-permit Raj"- always exaggerated for its
supposedly debilitating impact on the economy, and forever deftly
manipulated by business groups. Then, the bureaucrat had to be
influenced and induced to open up a partially-closed system. Now, the
bureaucrat is an already-willing ally of Big Business. The contest is
over who will secure the favour first to keep the rival out.

Secondly, lobbying is about recruiting as many retired top-ranking
public servants as possible so they can influence their former
colleagues and juniors on their clients´ behalf. Thus, private oil, gas
and electricity companies, steel producers, telecom corporations and
airlines have all recruited retired bureaucrats or public sector executives.

This pernicious practice should be banned and punished. No retiree
should be allowed to accept any position in a related company for ten years.

Another characteristic of the new-generation corporate lobbyists is
their strong global connections. They work closely with organisations
like the US-India Business Council and major Washington lobbying firms
Patton Boggs and Burson-Marsteller. The US-India nuclear deal would
probably not have gone through US Congress without the USIBC, Patton
Boggs and the American-Israeli Political Action Council.

Corporate lobbying is far more insidious and collusive than the
politician-criminal nexus. It´s also much more damaging at the national
level.

Lobbyists exert the most pernicious conceivable influence on
policy-making and corrupt the process of democracy. They introduce
irrational and extraneous elements in decision-making and subvert the
public interest. They add uniquely to sleaze, venality, cynicism and
corruption in the polity.

India´s political class acknowledged in the 1980s the corrosive role of
lobbyists in military contracts and altogether banned middlemen from
defence purchase negotiations. But now it has succumbed to that very
influence on a greater scale - not just in military contracts, but in
every sphere.

Unless this toxic influence is removed, and lobbying outlawed and
punished, it will undermine and hollow democracy, India´s most precious
possession. Democracy must be defended against business manipulation.

The writer, a former newspaper editor, is a researcher and peace and
human-rights activist based in Delhi. Email: prafulbidwai1 at yahoo.co.in
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