To misquote Shakespeare, “something is rotten in the state of Bengal”, a visual manifestation of which flashed across the nation’s television screens last week, as the Enforcement Directorate raided the home of an “associate” of Trinamool Congress minister and secretary general, Partha Chatterjee. There were piles of Rs 2,000 and Rs 500 notes, amounting to nearly Rs 22 crore, as well as valuables. So huge was the haul, that the Reserve Bank of India required 15 trunks and a truck to ferry them away. And this even as discoveries were made of the minister’s different associates’ foreign trips, humungous property and other riches. All this is apparently the proceeds from the “cash for jobs” scam, where job seekers paid bribes to subvert the West Bengal School Service Commission recruitment process. Those who received low marks in the relevant examinations, or didn’t even make it to the merit list, got jobs, while candidates who cleared the examinations with higher marks, did not. There were several other anomalies in the recruitment process, all of which have been listed by candidates who did not get jobs in spite of successfully clearing the examinations. They have been sitting in protest in Kolkata against the recruitment process for over a year and half, and many have moved the Calcutta High Court as well, but have not been able to grab national attention. The case gathered steam only after the Calcutta High Court cancelled a few recruitments allegedly done illegally and asked Partha Chatterjee, ex education minister, to appear before the CBI, recently. What is now national news thanks to Partha Chatterjee and his comely “associates”, has been brewing for a long time.
In a job-starved state like West Bengal, where there is no industry, a state which has one of the highest rates of migration in the country because of the lack of prospects, there is something terribly obscene about the mountains of cash that were discovered last week. At a time when thousands of youngsters are desperate for employment, desperate to eke out at least a subsistence-level living, such concentration of ill-gotten wealth in the hands of the utterly corrupt is criminal. And to think that the money has been obtained from perhaps equally desperate candidates. Either way, the victim in this case is the common man and woman. This is the problem with Bengal—the biggest corruption cases in the state have always affected the people at the grassroots directly, taking away their life’s savings, the Saradha and Rose Valley chit fund scams being cases in point. Such cases have made a pauper out of thousands of people, led to years of suffering as well as death, the reason why this sort of graft is among the worst.
Even otherwise, Bengal has become a hotbed of corruption. Nothing moves in the state without bribe money, also known as “cut money” which must be given to politicians and their associates. Be it mining or real estate, transfer-posting, or getting a simple licence for any work, the phenomenon of cut money has permeated every sector, affected every class. The C-word has assumed such humungous proportions that even a simple construction job in the state cannot be completed without keeping politicians happy, or ensuring that the politician’s favoured ones get to do the work. One of the reasons Bengal is lagging behind other states in attracting industry is because of the phenomenon of cut money. Even if projects are cleared by the top leadership smoothly, there is no guarantee that the lower rungs will not want to extort money—and they do. And then there are cases like that of Partha Chatterjee where the cash is there for all to see—a bit too real.
It is not helping the Trinamool Congress that many of its leaders are becoming synonymous with corruption. Distancing the party from Partha Chatterjee or his associates is not going to convince anyone. He is one of the topmost leaders of the party, apart from being a minister. What is needed instead is cleaning the Augean stables, which is a Herculean task, but a start has to be made. The rot has reached Bengal’s core and will leave it moth-eaten, its sinews destroyed, and the state a spent force. Apparently, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has national ambitions. But visuals of crores of unaccounted for cash tumbling out of her close associates’ homes is hurting her politically. She needs to read the riot act to her party people.
