By IANS,
New Delhi : World renowned Indian economist Jagdish N. Bhagwati Thursday slammed the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government for its policy on 2G spectrum allocation, saying its auctioning may have prevented the scandal from arising.
Bhagwati, presently senior fellow in international economics at the US-based Council on Foreign Relations, said this in the presence of Home Minister P. Chidambaram, who was in the dock in October over a finance ministry note that said he could have prevented the 2G allocation by insisting on its auction.
The 2G scandal has resulted in then communications minister A. Raja, DMK MP Kanimozhi and telecom honchos being arrested after their arrest by the CBI. While Kanimozhi and most of the others were granted bail, Raja and another accused are still in prison.
“If the market-using reforms had been used in allocating the 2G spectrum by auctioning it off, the scandal would not have arisen,” Bhagwati said, delivering the 24th Intelligence Bureau (IB) Centenary Endowment Lecture. He was speaking on ‘Designing Institutions for Governance Reform’.
Bhagawati also said it was distressing for all thoughtful Indians to witness the “gargantuan” 2G spectrum scandal and the “spectacular” Anna Hazare agitation that it triggered.
“It has been distressing for all thoughtful Indians to have been witness recently to gargantuan 2G spectrum scandal, the spectacular Anna Hazare agitation that it triggered, the unedifying spectacle of even the prominent civil society leaders stooping to abuse one another, the near-paralysis in the Lok Sabha that it has accentuated, the continuing inability of the government to advance the reform agenda exemplified by the inept political handling of the now-shelved retail sector initiative by the UPA government and much else,” he said.
Tracing the history of economic reforms initiated by the Congress government in 1991, when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was the finance minister, Bhagwati said it had rescued India from this self-inflicted fate.
“But pretty soon, corruption spilled over in the deteriorating moral climate to lower-level bureaucrats who began to charge money to do what they were supposed to do.
“That brought in the common man who had to pay bribes to get a birth certificate, a death certificate, a caste certificate, a ration card, and other certificates, which are necessary for one’s well being.
“There is little doubt that masses of citizens who were fed up with this predatory behaviour were flocking to the Hazare movement,” he added.
It was in response that the UPA government in the last few weeks to both types of corruption by introducing a blitzkrieg of legislations — such as the protection of whistle blowers, the Lokpal Bill and the Judicial Accountability Bill — that are of the “adaptation” variety, Bhagwati said.
“They have been immediately questioned as weak and inadequate. But the real problem with this response is not its problematic efficacy. Rather it lies in the fact that these measures do not provide ‘mitigation’ which would reduce the incentives for corruption,” Bhagwati dded.