At an intuitive level, I long knew that purity of intent is no defense against the poverty of outcomes. But it’s only recently I learned that this dilemma was actually a well fleshed-out philosophical debate already: Kantian vs Utilitarian.
For instance, who was responsible for the 1993 Bombay Bombings?
Dawood Ibrahim? Wrong!
Tiger Memon and Yakub Memon? Wrong again.
In a strange train of events, the person responsible was one regarded to be “a man of impeccable integrity” by his rivals, no less: Morarji Desai. Desai, reportedly, refused to field a candidate with a shady background at an electorally-significant by-election. He persisted despite being told that they would lose the election otherwise.
In 1963, Morarji Desai, as India’s Finance Minister, imposed gold control to save foreign exchange. But the Indian appetite for gold is a stuff of legends. Some 1800 years ago, Roman historian Pliny called India the “sink of world’s gold” and lamented how it became a national drain for Rome. Even today, India has the 10th largest gold reserve in the world without comparable gold mines in the nation.
A newly-minted law was unlikely to whet the nation’s insatiable appetite for gold. Result: the gold imports simply went underground. Remember the villains of the 1970s and 80s Indian movies? Yes, the ever-present, reliably stylish and smug-looking gold smuggler.
To quote MJ Akbar, “All that happened in the 1960s was that the consumer turned to smugglers. From this emerged underworld icons like Haji Mastan, Kareem Lala and their heir, Dawood Ibrahim. India has paid a heavy price, including the whiplash of terrorism.”
A heart of gold… isn’t enough!
Why did the mafia influence wane towards the end of the 1990s? Strong police response and the notorious “encounters” of the mafia gangs definitely helped. But it’s not that this was the first ever police retaliation. So what changed this time?
In 1991, the then-PM of India, PV Narasimha Rao, initiated a series of economic reforms, including the legalization of gold imports. With a single stroke of pen, Rao took the wind out of the thriving mafia’s sails.
With gold imports now legal, there was no need for underground dealings. In less than a decade, the mafia’s hold on Mumbai was relegated to the past and to movies.
Now, interestingly, Rao faced various charges of corruption after his tenure as PM in 1996. At one point he was even sentenced to three years of prison, though he remained on bail. Before his death in 2003, Rao was acquitted of all the charges against him.
Let’s get back to the Kantian vs Utilitarian debate.
We can safely say that against an embodiment of “impeccable integrity” that Desai was, it would seem that Rao at least had a cloud of corruption hanging over his head for long.
And now, consider the irony.
That someone famed for personal integrity inadvertently enabled the descent of the nation into the abyss of corruption. And that this descent was finally broken by someone who faced corruption charges on a scale an Indian PM rarely saw before.
Life is rife with ironies such as these!
Musings by Madhav 