Anti-graft crusaders fight a lonely battle

MUMBAI: Paagal aadmi hai. This dismissive phrase, coupled with a smirk, has been thrown at former IAS officer Arun Bhatia more times than he can remember.
"I even had ''Imbalanced''written on my internal reports," he says ruefully. "A lot of people view you with contempt when you attempt to fight corruption."
The courageous few who''ve made it their mission to battle venality in public life—from Mr Bhatia to firebrand cop Y.P.Singh to social activist Anna Hazare to former deputy municipal commissioner G.R. Khairnar—have paid the price in many other ways as well: they''re been suspended, transferred, had their promotions frozen and even had false cases filed against them.
The latest casualty is spunky bureaucrat Ratnakar Gaekwad, whose clean-up operation of the cooperative department ended in his being handed his transfer orders two days ago. "Even the British government didn''t do what our government does to its own people," says ex-bureaucrat Avinash Dharmadhikari, who quit his job in 1996 to join Anna Hazare''s anti-corruption andolan.
Given this tenacity on the part of a system that reduces virtually every effort to nought, what makes crusaders carry on with their seemingly unachievable task? Do they think it is at all possible to destroy corruption''s hydra-headed monster? And do they perceive any support from a public that, having seen no tangible results in years, is suffering from crusader fatigue?
Anna Hazare, currently in the limelight for his continued struggle against alleged corruption in the Democratic Front government, does not believe that one should accept defeat, whatever the odds.
"Yes, some of the ministers I fought against are back. I was also imprisoned in the Babanrao Gholap case," he says. "But I am not disheartened. I know that corruption is not going to vanish with ministers resigning—it''s the system that has to change. And we are working towards this."
Given the sheer impregnability of a system that seems to exist only to protect itself, this is easier said than done. "It''s a formidable task," says IPS officer Y.P. Singh whose recent novel, Carnage of Angels , on the murky dealings of the police department, put him in the line of fire. "Only those of us who are within a department actually know what is going on, and the minute we speak, they say we are ''indisciplined''."
Mr Singh points out that there is no recourse for redressal: government permission is needed for everything from talking to the press to going to court to complaining to the Anti-Corruption Bureau or Lok Ayukta.
"The irony is this goes under the name of ''disciplinary rules''," he says. "And evidently no one wants to transgress these—of 205 IPS officers, I''m the only one who''s spoken out."