Corruption cleansing from ‘bottom’ not ‘top’!( By DR. JITENDRA SINGH )

Finally, at last, the National Conference led Congress supported government seems to have blown the much awaited whistle against corruption.. albeit, but as usual, beginning from the bottom and sparing the top. Living up to the three generation old tradition of identifying Engineering, Forest and Revenue departments as presumably the ugliest face of state corruption, the very first blow of axe has fallen on low and middle level engineers, technicians and junior assistants… in much the same vein as nearly 40 years ago soon after taking over as Chief Minister in 1975, Late Sheikh Mohd Abdullah gave a call for 'Yaum-e-Hisaab'' and showed the door to a couple of officials including the then chief engineer of public works department. The rest, of course, is history. What followed was a long spell of a regime in which corruption flourished with impunity.

It has become a routine, infact too monotonous to be cited. Whenever a new regime takes over or an existing regime finds its grip on governance loosening, it promptly cracks down on a couple of junior engineers, patwaris and clerks to prove the point that its writ runs as powerfully as ever. Recall the history of successive regimes in Jammu and Kashmir over the last 40 years. After Sheikh Abdullah's socalled ''Youm-e-Hisaab'', when Farooq Abdullah took over, it was his turn to terminate the services of a couple of officials including a former Principal of a Government Medical College and when Ghulam Nabi Azad came in, one of his first announcements was that he was going to rid the government of what he described as "dead wood''.. whatever that meant.
 

Another characteristic feature of every anti-corruption drive, whatever be the political party in power, is that the cleansing operation always begins from the bottom and tends to spare the fountainheads of corruption at the top….possibly to make sure that corruption in state offices should continue to survive for initiation of yet another anti-corruption drive another day in future. As a result, scams implicating influential ministers in land encroachments, bribe for licenses, money for transfers and cash for vote go unpunished while a Patwari nabbed by Vigilance authorities while receiving a bribe of Rs two thousand makes it to the newspaper headlines.
 

The bottomline, however, stands elsewhere. A voter who casts his mandate for a bribe wll get the kind of leader he deserves and a minister who has spent crores to get elected and then to purchase a ministerial berth will have to discover means to make quick crores if he nurses the ambition for a second ministerial term.
 

Meanwhile, as a farcical crusade against corruption hogs the headlines, the common man pays the price for electing scamsters as custodians with Umapathy citing late Josh Mallianbadi's poetic refrain ‘‘….Namak-Haraam The Jitne ‘‘Kaptaan’’ Ban Gaye !’’

http://www.jammukashmirnow.org/corruption-cleansing-from-bottom-not-top-by-dr-jitendra-singh/