Hams & Scams And Dubious Deals

By JB Lama

A recent report says corrupt Indian politicians and corporate officers have siphoned off public money worth $12.3 billion between 2000-08.

According to Kordy Cuscio, a junior economist with Global Financial Integrity (Washington), “corruption is rampant in India as in almost all developing countries... as the economy grows so do illicit flows.

This positive correlation exhibits the increasing incentive to conduct illicit flows mostly because money is flowing within the system to steal away…”

This rings true particularly for the Northeast, where the Centre has been generously pumping in funds for its development in the absence of commensurate results.

Politicians and bureaucrats of the region have long ceased to be the paragons of simplicity and honesty they were before the creation of new states, beginning with Nagaland in 1963.

Scams were unheard of then, but since the ’80s there has been any amount of diddling, with that all-too-familiar ring of ministers and officials being involved. Needless to say, they must have had good tutors from outside.

In Assam, it was the veterinary Letter of Credit scandal in which Rs 175 crore was fraudulently drawn from the state treasury between 1989-93. In Manipur, fraud in the power department came to light when Rishang Keishing was chief minister.

Earlier, a “chota Harshad Mehta”, as our Imphal correspondent described him, tried to swindle a cooperative bank of  Rs 2 crore. Former Arunachal Pradesh chief minister Gegong Apang was allegedly involved in a Rs 124-crore power department scam. Meghalaya was rocked by a Rs 50-crore rural electrification scandal. There was yet another Rs 294-crore forest racket.

The Meghalaya Forest Corporation  allegedly sold  1,777 teak and sal trees for just Rs 67.85 lakh when the market value was more than Rs 2 crore. About 120,000 valuable trees reportedly disappeared from the Chimabangnshi reserved forest in the Garo Hills, the explanation being that these were “uprooted by storms”.

The disease has also percolated to autonomous bodies run by tribals. There are reports of some of them openly cultivating insurgency with the help of funds allocated for economic development. Last year, the newly-formed National Investigation Agency brought to light politicians being hand in glove with the Jewel Garlosa faction of the Dima Halam Daoga in Assam’s North Cachar Hills district. It has allegedly been procuring arms with money supplied by the council. Its chief executive is under arrest.

In 2008, the Justice RK Manisana Commission that probed the alleged misappropriation of funds by the North Cachar Hills Autonomous District Council said there was an understanding among politicians before the 2007 council elections to pay a certain amount to a rebel group. There are allegations that one of the ministers in the Tarun Gogoi government is involved in the Rs 1,000-crore scam. An NGO, Krishak Mukti Sangram Samity, has called for a  CBI probe and the Centre, too, is said to be in favour of this inquiry. Hopefully Dispur will act.

In October last year, Niranjan Hojai, commander-in-chief of the Jewel Garlosa faction, formally surrendered to the authorities with 460 others in the aftermath of their chief’s arrest in June last year from Bangalore. But after a month, he disappeared from the designated camp and was arrested in July this year from near the Indo-Nepalese border. How he escaped from the designated camp was puzzling. Could it have been a deliberate act, given that he is said to be in the know about the extent of the politician-rebel nexus in the council? Last year when the Army went into action in the North Cachar Hills, the intelligence  network did not even know that Jewel Garlosa was holidaying in Kathmandu.

Chief minister Tarun Gogoi has promised to not only resign but even quit politics if the charges against his minister is proved correct. Hopefully, the truth will be not be a long time coming.