Email : Comments : Code: Security Code : Scandal in the Abode The BOPEE scam is a result of rot at multiple levels, beginning with the Government’s failure to hold the corrupt accountable SPOTLIGHT FAHEEM ASLAM The ruling National Conference started with a bang: “We’ll give corruption-free system to the people.” It didn’t happen. The corruption in public administration only grew by the day. We kept quiet. It promised to “replace meters with heaters for the good of people.” It proved to be a hoax. We kept quiet. There was an unprecedented 70 to 80 percent hike in power tariff in the past five years. We kept quiet. The non-metered areas face 57-hours-a-week power cuts. We are quiet. The metered areas were promised round-the-clock power supply. They are facing 17-hours-a-week power cuts. We are quiet. A minister charged with moral corruption found his way into the Cabinet while his colleague allegedly involved in massive land grab in south Kashmir forests remained stuck to his chair. We kept quiet. And yet another minister’s son was involved in an examination impersonation case. We kept quiet. At least 70 officers, of different ranks, were either given extension or re-employed after their retirement despite the growing figures (officially four lakh above) of unemployed youth in the State. We kept quiet. We were promised improved “Bijli, Pani and Sadak”. The power crisis only worsened in the past five years while the road potholes only grew deeper. We kept quiet. We were assured “protection of human rights.” We saw unarmed civilians, mostly young—as many as 120 in 2010 and about 60 in 2008—falling to police, Army and CRPF bullets. We heard an ex-army chief telling us about JK ministers taking money from Army “for peace-building in J&K”. We kept quiet. We now have a former BOPEE chief and his accomplices, who were supposed to uphold the sanctity of the prestigious institution, selling the CET question papers in lieu of money. And our response is meek. The BOPEE scandal allegedly involving ‘Peer and Co’ reflects a rot at multiple levels, primarily the Government’s failure to bring about accountability in the system, and then our collective failure to hold the government accountable. When the Chief Minister Omar Abdullah failed to act against his ‘tainted’ ministers and bureaucrats from time to time, it had its fallout: a free run for ‘all’ to indulge in wrongdoings. So while Omar sought to ‘apologize to the nation for the BOPEE shame, it was only a damage control exercise given the enormity of the scam that had hit right in the face of his government. Omar needs to ‘apologize’ for everything then, beginning with his party’s failure to deliver on the promises made to his electorate in 2008; apologize for why he allowed the people like Peer to hold plum positions in his government and grant extension after extension to them; apologize to the fact that it is now the courts in J&K which are giving the governance impression in the State which his Government was supposed to; apologize to civilian killings at the hands of armed forces. But then apologies, they say, don’t help remove the scars off your hands, though they may hide them from the surface. Over the years, the levels of anarchy in Jammu and Kashmir have gone horribly up. The “system” (if it can be called so) has turned corrupt to the core where the government—short of legalizing corruption through legislation—has informally accepted it as a norm; where the honest and upright officers are pushed to the wall and harassed by different overt and covert means. That is the reason why we have tainted ministers and retired bureaucrats finding a way into the ‘system’ for twin reasons: to protect themselves from investigations and also enjoy a privileged life. Mind you, in J&K only politicians and legislators are a privileged lot in terms of civic amenities, security, perks and ‘free hand’ to indulge in malpractices. This is the system failure. Now our response to this: Why didn’t the students and their parents, who should ideally have been in the last year’s Common Entrance Test selection list, protest after coming to know that ‘Peer and Co’ had sold their seats in lieu of money? Why didn’t they stand up and speak out that the BOPEE chairman and his accomplices sold their dreams and their hard- work, and thus set an example of accountability for others to follow? Why didn’t the student community in our colleges and universities, particularly GMCs, raise their voice against this brazen murder of hopes of thousands of poor students, many of whom studied under candle- light to qualify the CET? Where is our academic and medical fraternity? Where are the civil society groups? It is a sorry state of affairs that instead of debating how to improve the functioning of our premier institutions and press the government to end this business of corruption and reemployments, a section of Kashmiris dragged the discourse to whether the ex-BOPEE chief is a ‘Peer’ or ‘Bhat’. Does it matter, anyway? Neither his being Bhat would (or should) absolve him of the charges or his being ‘Peer’ would remove the stains off his hands. So if the level of debate of these virtual debaters or some columnists is this, then God alone can save us! The issue has to be looked through the lens of crime, and crime alone. And the quantum of punishment has to come for the crime only. Barring newspaper coverage to the BOPEE scandal and a bit of outrage on social media, the civil society response—a collective protest from the people irrespective of whether they are affected by the scam or not—is by and large again missing, drawing us straight to this point: Have we turned deeply personal in our approach that the collective concerns don’t matter to us any longer? In that case, we are equally responsible for the mess we are in. Because the bottom-line is: unless we stand up and speak out against the injustices done to us and by whom, we shall continue to be the victims of injustice and produce ‘n’ number of Mushtaq Peers!
Posted on: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 10:25:28 +0000
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