Tata, by far the biggest industrialist in India after the take-over of Corus and Jaguar-Land Rover, has no regret. The concerned aviation minister, instead, went beyond the brief to create new rules to facilitate two West Asian carriers - a la condemned telecom minister A Raja - start a new domestic airline with the help of an NRI with dubious distinction. There was a lot of hue and cry in the media over the unfair treatment meted out to the Tata-SIA project. But, neither the civil aviation minister nor the then prime minister, whose son was named in the Rs. 400-crore financial scam involving the Andhra Pradesh based Gold Star Steel, paid little attention to the media reports and opposition criticism.

The Tatas went up to the extent of hiring the services of an internationally acclaimed private detective agency, Fair Fax, to get to the bottom of incorporation of the airline of the minister's choice and its Isle of Man connection. The Fair Fax report was privately given to the government and was also selectively shared with a few newspaper editors. But, the then Narasimha Rao government refused to investigate into the matter, leave alone taking any action against the civil aviation minister. The foreign promoted private airline today is India's biggest air carrier, bigger than even Air India. This is history. Tata might have raked up the issue rather unwittingly in an interactive session at Dehradun, after his key note address at Uttarakhand's Foundation Day, on a question of political corruption in the wake of Rs. 1,77,000-crore spectrum allotment scam, leading to the ignominious exit of the telecom minister, whose party, DMK, an important UPA ally. The spectrum scam is potentially capable to rock the government. The open invitation to Tata by the current civil aviation minister to start an airline, if the business house still wishes, in keeping with the existing rules would appear to be a 'joke'. Praful Patel, who seems to have been working overtime to oversee the grounding of Air India, if possible, allegedly for the benefit of private carriers, knows fully well that the Tatas are not going to step into his trap. Will the Tatas be given the permission to bring in SIA? Certainly not. Such a facility was created for the entry of one single airline and was promptly closed after that airline became operational.

In fact, there is a lot of similarity between the actions taken by the then civil aviation minister and the presently condemned-out telecom minister. Both acted in haste, bent rules, ignored internal expert advice and external dissentions to benefit a certain chosen private parties. In both the cases, the prime minister and the union cabinet restrained from making an intervention before it was too late. In the case of Tata-SIA airline proposal, the then prime minister let the civil aviation minister total freedom to tamper with entry rules. The concerned civil aviation minister, who was alleged to have long held a personal grudge against the Tatas, has nearly retired from politics. Raja, however, exited under pressure. But, the damage was done. The country lost a lot of revenues and the prospect of donning a world-class airline. The real beneficiaries were a handful of smart private operators, the cookies and corruptors.

Unfortunately, the growing corruption in corporate life involving powerful persons in the government is, to a good extent, a product of the licence-permit raj, which still exists in various forms despite the government's claim that it has been abolished. The country is being governed more by rules and regulations, which are changed at will by departmental minister and bureaucrats, than by laws enacted by Parliament or state assemblies. The changes in the rules and regulations are notified to the public with the help of brief press notes, which rarely expose the real intention behind such rules or regulations. Invariably, these rules seem to be meant to help or benefit certain specific private parties. Once the objectives are achieved, rules are changed again to prevent others from taking advantage of them. This has been constantly happening in almost all key sectors of economy. The practice encompasses all sensitive areas - from land acquisition for industry to private participation in the so called restricted sectors by domestic as well as foreign direct investors.

While those infamous press notes helped enterprising and less scrupulous businessmen in a number fields spanning from petrochemicals, hydrocarbon, man-made fibre, steel and mining, power, telecommunications, drugs, banking and insurance, fertilizer and chemicals and civil aviation to agri-products such as sugar, oilseeds and edible oil, potatoes and onions, make billions and trillions of rupees . Some of the top politicians and bureaucrats are alleged to be under permanent pay-rolls of big businessmen, even when they are out of power. Many are given regular half-yearly or annual 'ex-gratia' for the services rendered to them or not rendered to their rivals. The corruptors gain probably over a millionth time more than what they spend on the corrupt politicians and bureaucrats to get rules bent backward or forward to their business advantage and to squeeze their rivals. A very positive side of the growing political corruption is that it ensures high living standard for politicians, retired big bureaucrats, judges, etc., who have amassed massive wealth at home and abroad and have their kin studied and partly settled abroad to acquire NRI status to bank-roll more unaccounted money for their parents or providers. Several Indian businessmen themselves have turned NRI.

Corruption is nothing new to Indian political life and business environment. A key argument in favour of economic reform was that it would compress, if not entirely do away with, economic corruption by creating an open environment, transparency in financial deals and accounting and by giving emphasis on governance. However, post-reform political corruption and financial fraud have been rising by leaps and bounds. The amount of political kick-back in the Bofors guns purchase case was at one time alleged to have been only Rs. 67 crore. The kick-back rates now being talked about run into hundreds and thousands of crores and the size of financial frauds, involving government, has gone up to tens of thousands of crores. The cost escalation in executing the last Commonwealth Games in Delhi and 2G spectrum allocation racket is the most such recent examples. This is rather frightening. Corruption has plagued the entire public life, not sparing even parliament and judiciary. No one seems to have any clue about how to free the system from such rampant corruption. Who is to blame - politicians, bureaucrats or private entities, the biggest and the final gainers? Can the disease be tackled? When questions are raised even about the integrity of top investigating agencies such as CBI ED and DRI, any talk of combating corruption could be really frustrating.

In such a vicious atmosphere, a statement coming from Ratan Tata saying that “I just want to go to bed at night, knowing that I haven't got the airline by paying (bribe) for it. And I can tell you I would have felt tremendously shameful had we got the airline and we had paid for it” provides a great relief and will, hopefully, act as a great inspiration to future business community. If businessmen such as Ratan Tata and N.R. Narayan Murthy could fight the system, hold the moral ground and yet build world-beater business organizations, not all hopes for a less corrupt society are lost. (IPA Service)