As the cancerous growth of corruption is what agitates people most, it was quite natural for both President K.R. Narayanan and Prime Minister I.K Gujral to lay considerable emphasis on rooting it out in their Independence Day speeches.

It is all very nice to hear the leaders waxing eloquent on corruption and exhorting the people to launch a satyagraha against it on such a grand occasion as the Golden Jubilee of Independence.

However, it is a different matter whether the platitudes will carry conviction with the masses who know only too well the extent to which corruption has grown in almost all walks of life. They cannot, therefore, be found fault with if they expect some evidence of the government's determination to fight corruption.

Setting up a Lok Pal, about which the nation has been hearing for more than a decade, and conferring the right to information on the people are, no doubt, steps in the right direction. Equally important is Gujral's promise of greater transparency in government purchase of goods and services.

However useful a service all these steps may render in the crusade against corruption, they are no substitute for swift and sure punishment of the guilty. It is a well known principle in criminal law that what deters crime is not so much the severity of punishment as the certainty of it. This is equally true in the case of corruption also.

Yet, there have been few instances of conviction in corruption cases. Come to think of it, the perpetrators of the securities scam have not yet been brought to book while the Britisher who brought about the downfall of Barings Bank through similar deals less than two years ago has already been tried and punished.

Imagine how many more years the Indian system will take before those who took bribes from Bofors and are still alive are convicted and sent to jail.

However desirable the satyagraha against corruption may be, it will have little effect unless corruption at the higher levels of the executive is ended. Instances of the victims in Delhi's Uphaar cinema episode having had to pay bribe to obtain death certificates of their kith and kin are so commonplace that they no longer shock the nation.

After all corruption has become part and parcel of everyday life and the law-abiding citizen has no choice but to pay up.

To be effective, the campaign that Gujral lays great store by should have the unstinted support of the government. Given its track record this is indeed doubtful. Take the case of the hawala scandal, which provided an excellent opportunity to show the world that nothing would restrain the system from acting against the corrupt.

But shoddy investigation, coupled with excessive reliance on a questionable diary by the investigating agency, ensured a clean chit for the scamsters.

The fate of the fodder scam, where the investigators seem to be more bothered about the manner of a person's arrest rather than the arrest itself, is unlikely to be different if the CBI does not mend its ways.

Equally pernicious has been the influence of crime on politics which can be busted only if political parties decide not to seek any assistance from such forces. But Gujral's credentials to end the unholy nexus are suspect as some of the constituents of the United Front, including his own party, are notorious for their links with criminal.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.