Mukul Kesavan: Intimations of evil - The Vyapam deaths
NB: A timely and incisive piece by Mukul Kesavan. For a long time now it has been convenient for our ruling elites to separate the theme of corruption from that of failures of justice. Now the links are clear as daylight. We are witnessing nothing less than the creeping normalisation of murder, the criminalisation of state institutions. If the Modi regime does not take credible steps towards investigating this ghastly cycle of murders and punishing those responsible, it will begin to resemble not a government so much as a mafia. Kesavan is absolutely right:"if the mainstream media that we depend on for news - our newspapers and our television news channels - continue to treat the Vyapam deaths - literally and metaphorically - as an inside-page item, we should be very afraid." DS
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I can't see 40 deaths linked to a single scandal in Delhi being treated as indifferently as the Vyapam deaths have been
If you google 'vyapam', the first hit on the first page
takes you to the website of the Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board,
Bhopal. The Hindi for 'Professional Examination Board' is 'Vyavsayik Pareeksha
Mandal'.
The website's design is Standard Sarkari: ugly fonts, moving
straplines that skate across the window from right to left, tender notices,
bulletins and disclaimers. On the left is a vertically stacked set of links
that are meant to help you find your way around the site. 'About Us', 'FAQs',
'Right to Information', 'Statistical Information', 'Want to work with us'. In
the light of recent events, the answer to the last question has to be no.
Vyapam is the Hindi acronym for Vyavsayik Pareeksha Mandal.
It sounds like one of those newly minted words that characterize modern Hindi,
opaque but well meaning, only this one isn't. 'Vyapam' has a reasonable claim
to being the most sinister word in contemporary journalism. Between 25 and 40
relatively young people linked with a corruption scandal centred on the MPPEB
have died in suspicious circumstances, several in the last few months.
The corruption scandal consists of ministers, officials,
businessmen, students and their parents conspiring to rig the competitive
examinations for entry into Madhya Pradesh's professional educational institutions.
Vyapam administered these examinations on behalf of the Madhya Pradesh
government.
A government medical officer, Dr Anand Rai, blew the whistle
on the systematic bribery and impersonation that had corrupted the pre-medical
examinations in Madhya Pradesh, and, in the aftermath of this, investigations
suggested that Vyapam's recruitment examinations for bank probationers, police
constables and food inspectors had been rigged too.
The scale of the scandal can be judged from the number of
arrests: some 1,800 people have been arrested. A Bharatiya Janata Party leader
who had once been the minister in charge of Vyapam was arrested and later
resigned from the party. The Congress alleged that the chief minister of the
province, Shivraj Singh Chauhan, was implicated in the scam and asked for his
resignation. The political implications of this scandal for the ruling BJP are
obvious. Chauhan is one of its stars; he has been chief minister of Madhya
Pradesh for three consecutive terms and his reputation for probity, and the
BJP's claim to being the party of honest governance, are on the line.
But the political fall-out from subverting competitive exams
is dwarfed (or should be) by the appalling implication of the deaths of some 40
individuals, connected to the scandal as accused persons and potential
witnesses. These are relatively young people who have died in ways and in
contexts that should be closely investigated.
Several of them died very recently. Narendra Singh Tomar,
who was accused of organizing impostors to write pre-medical exams, died just
over a week ago in an Indore jail. Since his was a custodial death, it has to
be formally investigated by the government, but there have been other deaths of
accused released on bail, like Rajendra Arya, who died in a Gwalior hospital of
some unnamed disease the day after Tomar's death. Dr D.K. Sakalley, dean of a
medical college in Jabalpur, died of burns in his house. Sakalley, a forensic
specialist, had been on a committee investigating the Vyapam scam. Namrata
Damor was a student at a medical college in Indore and was one of the students
accused of using corrupt means to get admission. She was found dead on railway
tracks in Ujjain in 2012. A panel of three doctors declared that she had been
smothered to death; the police, however, proceeded on the assumption that it
was a suicide.
The Madhya Pradesh government's response to these deaths and
others has been routinely grotesque. Babulal Gaur, its home minister, insisted
that the deaths had occurred from natural causes. Gaur played ingenious
variations on this theme. So "...the accused fell sick and died" came
a close second to "whoever is born has to die one day". The Madhya
Pradesh government refused to ask for a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation
arguing that the Special Investigation Team (which reports to it) is being
monitored by the Madhya Pradesh high court. Meanwhile, whistle-blowers like
Prashant Pandey and Anand Rai have testified that they have had threats to
their lives, threats that in the context of the string of scam-related people
who have died recently, ought to be taken seriously.
As lay consumers of news, none of us is in a position to
come to forensic conclusions about these deaths. So how do we process them?
Well, one way is to ask whether it is statistically significant when between 25
and 40 people, most of them young and hale, associated with a single scandal,
die in suspicious, unnatural, unexplained -call it what you will -
circumstances. The answer must be yes. These deaths are both strange and deeply
frightening.
Many of the people who died were potentially valuable
witnesses, links to powerful figures associated with the scam. Given the fact
that Indian police forces and desi politicians routinely
collude with each other to suppress inconvenient truths, why would anyone
automatically give the Madhya Pradesh government and its police forces the
benefit of the doubt when it comes to investigating this sequence of mysterious
deaths?
Oddly enough, Indian newspapers and news channels had, till
very recently, treated the Vyapam scam, its investigation and its attendant
horrors, as business as usual. It's only now that these deaths and their
implications have begun to make the front pages of newspapers, and then, not
all of them. The television news shows are still too busy with Lalit Modi to
systematically pursue news of dozens of people connected to a single corruption
scandal dying at a great rate. Apart from one 'debate' on Times Now, I haven't
seen news channels spend time on Vyapam beyond the odd news report; nothing
like the obsessive zeal that they have displayed in snouting up princely
property disputes.
This might be about to change with the death of Akshay
Singh, an India Today journalist. Last Saturday, Akshay Singh went to Meghnagar
in Madhya Pradesh to interview Namrata Damor's parents about her unnatural
death. After a preliminary meeting with her father, as he waited for some
papers to be photocopied, he began foaming at the mouth outside the house and
died. The medical officer at the hospital in Gujarat where the post-mortem had
been done declared that there was no evidence of foul play even as he waited
for the forensic analysis.
We must, as dispassionate readers, allow for the possibility
that Akshay Singh and all the other dead people connected to Vyapam, died
natural deaths. It is possible but it is a great deal less than probable.
Vyapam is the terminal rot in desi governance made
frighteningly visible. After Akshay Singh's death, if the mainstream media that
we depend on for news - our newspapers and our television news channels -
continue to treat the Vyapam deaths - literally and metaphorically - as an
inside-page item, we should be very afraid.
Because that will mean one or more of the following: that
metropolitan news organizations are unconcerned about provincial deaths (I
can't see 40 deaths linked to a single scandal in Delhi being treated as
indifferently as the Vyapam deaths have been); that, in spite of Akshay Singh's
death, journalists lack both solidarity and a sense of self-preservation, or,
more simply and more scarily, that they just don't want to go there. We shall
see.
See also
"The masterminds of the 26/11 attacks are treated
like heroes in Pakistan. We are not there yet, but if hidden hands nudge
the judicial system to free murderers of the saffron variety, we will be
soon"
The
psychology of hate: How we deny human beings their humanity
Travesty of justice - Bombay High court refuses bail to artists of Kabir Kala Manch in jail for two years without trial
Travesty of justice - Bombay High court refuses bail to artists of Kabir Kala Manch in jail for two years without trial
