 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Even as the investigations into the 2G scam are now on and several high profile figures are already in jail, a new set of allegations have emanated against current textiles minister and former telecommunications minister, Dayanidhi Marath. We have with us associated editor of the Times of India, Shankar Raghuraman and with whom we shall discuss the issue of malpheasance and little bit more. So, Shankar's system of spoils has been generated in both these cases, wherein ministers have manipulated the license system favored a certain player in both the cases and then also got a bit of the spoils. Now, could you just tell us a bit about the modus operandi that is common to both these cases? Well, what is common is really the fact that unlike in the past, ministers now have control over national resources which can be privatized. That is not possible in an earlier era where these were regarded as public sector monopolies. So, that is now become possible. That creates a whole new arena where spoils are available where they would not have been available earlier. So, that is the common pattern and it is to be fair it is not just the DMK which is playing this game, but the DMK has some advantages with others have not had. Now, the DMK has made the most hay out of the sunshine, the sense that it has been in power far more than any other political party in the country in the last 15 years at least. That is why the DMK is central in this whole issue of Malfeasance. You mentioned the period of the last 15 years that is starting 1996 when the DMK joined the United Front Government in New Delhi. From that period on there has been roughly a year when they were not in power at the center which was when Jail Alta was part of the first NDA government. Apart from that they have always had ministers in the central government since 1996. Now, one thing which has aided this process is the somewhat peculiar politics of Tamil Nadu where either of the Dravidian parties tends to sweep the parliamentary elections and typically the one which has the Congress as the ally will be the one that sweeps in a parliamentary election not necessarily in an assembly election as we just saw. Now, that also means that if the alliance sweeps then whether it is the DMK or the ADMK the winning Dravidian party has a huge chunk of seats in the Lok Sabha and typically they end up as being either the largest or among the largest allies of the either the Congress or the BJP or even in a United Front kind of situation. So, right now for instance the DMK is the second largest ally after the Trinamool Congress. DMK is very specific on the kind of portfolios it wants. Telecom is one portfolio which it has been insisting on for quite some time now. It has in the past held portfolios like environment, shipping, these are portfolios which are if you notice the common thread is they are all so called economic ministries. And in many of these cases in the environment for instance the ability to block or allow clearances means that there is a possibility of rents being garnered. Similarly, in telecom because you have licenses and spectrum to give away there again the possibility of rents being garnered is very high. So, it is interesting that they have focused on this these kinds of portfolios. There is also an advantage that a regional party has vis-a-vis a national party in terms of corruption. The advantage being that you have to contest elections only in one state. And if you can build a system of patronage and therefore distribute a large amount of goodies and freebie then what image you carry nationally becomes of no consequence. This is not true of a party like the congress or the BJP where you know the BJP nationally will suffer some damage from the image that say Yadiyurappa has or the congress suffers when Chavan is has to be dismissed because of a corruption scandal. That does not apply to a party like the DMK. So, they have made the most of the circumstances which exist and developed this system of you know patronage. Can it also be said that renterism which are talking about and also this patronage system is something that has afflicted Indian polity as a whole in the sense that in the sense that any as Ashok Mitra points out in his telegraph article that any any political party these days irrespective of ideology accepting for the left is primarily a party of spoils. But what the DMK shows is a certain degree of you know perversion of this patronage model and also some kind of democratization of this patronage or renterism model which was limited to the congress or the larger national parties, but it is now being done in a even larger scale you know relative to the size of the political party. But followed by this followed by regional parties as a DMK as well. It is true that there is a whole new arena of spoils which did not exist earlier. See that is that is the result of the liberalization of the economy right where earlier entire areas were operated only by the public sector. The private sector now has entered into those areas and typically they are areas in which there are key natural resources to be given away to somebody you know whether it is mining whether it is telecom whether it is power etcetera. So, contrary to the theory that the liberalizers pushed which was that as government gets out of business and there are less and less discretionary controls available with the government and licensing goes out of the window the scale of corruption will come down. It is now quite 20 years down the line it is now very very evident that exactly the opposite has happened. The scale of corruption has gone up to levels which would have been undreamt of two decades ago and yes I mean for the DMK it has worked particularly well. They have also discovered I think in the in the process of liberalization one thing which happened was the DMK had always had a very good understanding of the use of media and I am using media here in the larger sense including things like films and so on all forms of media. The DMK as a party the Dravidian movement of the movement had a very good understanding of the use of these for, but post liberalization they also discovered that media could be used not just for propaganda but could also be a great money spinner. So, the whole process of Sun TV and the control over the cable distribution network and so on it gave them a new understanding of the extent to which you know controlling resources can lead to money spinning. For the DMK though it started off as a you know a symbol of regionalization and a party that drew its ideology from the social movement led by Ivi Ramaswamy or Tande Periyar. But now it is it seems to be like any other patronage dispensing political outfit could you just tell a bit about this transformation? There is a process of de-ideologization of the DMK and not just of the DMK it is a more pervasive phenomenon, but it is particularly telling in the case of the DMK you know which today has it even it is even stopped paying lip service to the ideology of Periyar or Vandana you know they there is no longer talk about you know the Dravidian movement in any meaningful sense there is certainly no furthering of the agenda of you know anti-Bramanism. Even in its early years it had corrupted anti-Bramanism to anti-Braman you know. So a state like Tamil Nadu which has one of the oldest histories of a movement against the Brahminical order it is ironical that today it is probably the state with the worst record of atrocities against Dalits right and neither of the Dravidian parties has really done anything about that. So all of that when you mentioned Dr. Shokmitra when a party becomes bereft of ideology then what is it that keeps people together I mean why why does it exist as a party obviously the uniting thing then can be only two things one is power and the other is money and both of these are you know you need power to get money and you need money to get power. Let us talk specifically on this means of making money you know the in the pre liberalization era corruption was done in a different way in the sense that the ministers used to basically get you know bribes or cuts in while deciding contracts. But now corruption is of a different far higher scale now ministers demand stakes in the in the new businesses and as we pointed out the media empire that the DM case minions have created the marines for example has now branched out into other sectors of the economy as well aviation and so on and so forth and in this Diana the modern case at least in the allegations it is very clear that the interests of the sun group and that of the DMK are intertwined in this. Absolutely one as I said the scale of what is achievable is much larger today right I mean for example in the 2G spectrum scam the CAG is estimate of the loss to the X checker is 1.76 lakh crore. Now what corruption could a person pre 91 have indulged in which could have yielded anything even a fraction of that total right so the scale has changed b you were talking about how politicians have themselves started running businesses and so on that again I mean pre liberalization it was the attempt of every politician to try and portray himself as having no connections no you know because connections immediately the word used would be nexus. So everybody wanted to portray himself as having no nexus with business post liberalization that value system has changed totally right it is no longer a bad thing to be seen as having links with business you in fact have businessmen becoming politicians you have for example Anil Ambani becoming Raj Sabha MP right you had others like the like Viren Shah of the BJP and so on there I mean you can keep Vijay Malia there is a whole host of names of prominent businessmen who have joined politics become MPs and so on so it is no longer a no no now once that has happened then what is to prevent the politician from himself also the scale of the corruption means that you are able to actually own business empire which are not possible earlier again right and once you have the ability to own a business empire and there is no price to be paid for that in terms of public perception and what is to prevent it from happening so that is exactly what is happened and of course then it complicates matters further because once you are in business yourself then apart from just you know rent seeking you also become a player in the whole corporate business yourself a corporate player so even the presumed non partisanship of the minister goes for a six so in essence some degree of legislation which you know at least addresses this office of profit should be present that should actually regulate ministers from doing what they are currently doing right Sishini I do not think any legislation can deal with this because it is a question of the fundamental underpinnings of the system right what can the piece of legislation do can you today given today's ideological moorings of the system can you can you have a piece of legislation which says that businessmen cannot be MPs or that MPs cannot be businessmen it would done completely contrary to the very ethos of liberalization right so I do not think laws can deal with this what the only thing that can deal with it is a political mobilization against this whole system of crony capitalism and unfortunately there is not there are I mean the left certainly has pointed out these factors but I do not think there is a sufficiently strong mobilization as of now against this whole phenomenon of crony capitalism pointing out what liberalization has led to it has not quite gathered the kind of momentum one would have expected