Contracts & graft: Imminent exit of Karnataka minister is good news. But breaking contractor-politics nexus re – Times of India
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KS Eshwarappa, Karnataka’s minister for rural development and panchayat raj, has said that he will resign today. Earlier he had been booked by the police in a case pertaining to abetment to suicide. The victim was a civil contractor who claimed the state government hadn’t paid him. The events surrounding the case provide a glimpse into the link between civil contracts and political power. For sure, it’s neither new nor unique to Karnataka. However, what’s eye-catching is that the Karnataka state contractors association had threatened to stop ongoing work as a mark of protest against the level of corruption.
At the political level, Eshwarappa’s announcement that he would resign is the right step. Given the allegations and the FIR, he couldn’t be in government while the investigation was being carried out. As a political party, BJP’s electoral success has partly been built on a perception of providing a clean government. Its government in Karnataka has to face the electorate next year and the events surrounding this development aren’t going to help. Therefore, the announced exit of Eshwarappa is smart politics on BJP’s part. In addition, political propriety required his exit.
The other dimension to the case has been the form in which corruption is alleged to be taking place. A report in this paper showed that emergency provisions which were originally meant to deal with natural calamities are used to award contracts without floating a tender. It’s a way of sidestepping e-procurement restrictions. Subsequently, other aspects of the political economy of corruption in civil infrastructure contracts kick in.
Corruption is a hydra-headed phenomenon. It can’t be tackled by a single law or a sweeping gesture. Combating it requires both institutional improvements and process refinements. Governments are the largest spenders on civil contracts. Higher official echelons have enormous discretionary power, while lower levels of bureaucracy and police lack meaningful autonomy. In this mix, the political executive and governing parties have opportunities to subvert the system. At the level of states, anecdotally, this is common. It’s worse in some states than others, but universal. Fighting corruption, therefore, is a journey and not a big bang event.
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This piece appeared as an editorial opinion in the print edition of The Times of India.
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