HVK Archives: A derailed state - An editorial
A derailed state - An editorial - Times of India - Editorial
Posted By ashok (ashokvc@giasbm01.vsnl.net.in)
29 June 1996
Title : A Derailed State
Publication : Times of India - Editorial
Date : June 29, 1996
With one skeleton after another tumbling out of the
closet with monotonous regularity, the appalling systems
failure in Bihar has once again been exposed. In the
course of four months this year the state has been rocked
by a series of scandals. First, it was revealed that a
handful of field officers in the animal husbandry
department had systematically plundered the exchequer
right under the nose of the government. It led to
investigations elsewhere and brought to light the
purchase scandal in the health department which had
apparently paid at least Rs 100 crore for medicines which
were never supplied, or were supplied but found their way
to be sold in the open market. Finally, it was the turn
of the state's land revenue minister to conduct a random
sample survey and discover that in just one town of
Ranchi, officials had settled government land for a
pittance to the bold and the powerful while the market
rates would have fetched at least Rs 400 crore more. The
exposures, ironically, were made possible not by the
checks and balances which are supposedly built into the
system but were almost entirely due to fortuitous
circumstances and efforts of individuals. This is the
reason why similar scandals involving other government
agencies have not yet surfaced although there is
sufficient evidence to indicate the existence of
flourishing rackets in several departments.
Significantly, the amount involved in the animal
husbandry scandal alone is ten times higher than the
amount being investigated in the hawala pay-offs. But
while the hawala scam has rocked the nation, the seams in
Bihar have caused only a ripple.
For more than a decade and a half, politicians in Bihar
have flourished by accusing the Centre of step-motherly
treatment. The scams have now made it clear that all
this has occurred while the politicians in the state were
feathering their own nest, and that funds were never in
short supply. The fact that successive state governments
allowed several thousand crores of rupees worth of public
funds to be siphoned off should eventually bring about a
qualitative change in the state's politics. But in the
meantime, it is the ruling Janata Dal, leading the United
Front government at the Centre, which is likely to bear
the brunt of the fall-out. The position of the Bihar
chief minister, Mr Laloo Prasad Yadav, has weakened
considerably within the party and there is genuine
anxiety in the Dal to ensure that the party's national
president, who has also been the finance minister of the
state, remains untouched by the controversy. The UF
government has also the unenviable task of convincing
people that it will not interfere with the course of
justice to save its leading constituent. Already,
apprehensions have been expressed that the CBI may be
asked to soft-pedal the proceedings against politicians
in the Bihar seams. The Union government would only be
rendering a mandated public service by allowing the law
to take its own course.
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