Corrupt Indian Politicians Loot $14.5 billion in Food

From Bloomberg,

as much as $14.5 billion in food was looted by corrupt politicians and their criminal syndicates over the past decade in Kishen’s home state of Uttar Pradesh alone, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The theft blunted the country’s only weapon against widespread starvation -- a five-decade-old public distribution system that has failed to deliver record harvests to the plates of India’s hungriest.

“This is the most mean-spirited, ruthlessly executed corruption because it hits the poorest and most vulnerable in society,” said Naresh Saxena, who, as a commissioner to the nation’s Supreme Court, monitors hunger-based programs across the country. “What I find even more shocking is the lack of willingness in trying to stop it.”

In every instance of corruption, the public’s attention have mechanically been directed at the immorality of the culpable political leaders. Yet media fails to investigate or even attempt to understand the incentives that encourages such nefarious acts. Thus the easy implied solution has always been to seek the appointment of persons of supposed “virtue”. But in reality, politics has never been about virtue but of the preservation of power.

Looking at the symptom than the disease won’t really lead to comprehensive solution.

More from the same article

This scam, like many others involving politicians in India, remains unpunished. A state police force beholden to corrupt lawmakers, an underfunded federal anti-graft agency and a sluggish court system have resulted in five overlapping investigations over seven years -- and zero convictions.

India has run the world’s largest public food distribution system for the poor since the failure of two successive monsoons led to the creation of the Food Corporation of India in 1965. The government last year spent a record $13 billion buying and storing commodities such as wheat and rice, and expects that figure to grow this year.

Yet 21 percent of all adults and almost half of India’s children under 5 years old are still malnourished. About 900 million Indians already eat less than government-recommended minimums. As local food prices climbed more than 70 percent over the past five years, dependence on subsidies has grown.

In reality, political distribution of resources tends to create two classes of people: particularly the powerful politicians—bureaucrats and the helpless public. With God like powers from legal mandates to determine the beneficiaries (winners and losers), many will try to influence or win the favor of the political class through various means, including bribery or through coopting or gaming the system.

On the other hand, the political class will always act in accordance to their self interest, particularly personal values and preferences, ideology, personal networks (family friends and etc..), career, social status and even financial interests. After all, political class are humans too.

As the great Professor Ludwig von Mises wrote in his magnum opus Human Action,

Unfortunately the office-holders and their staffs are not angelic. They learn very soon that their decisions mean for the businessmen either considerable losses or—sometimes—considerable gains. Certainly there are also bureaucrats who do not take bribes; but there are others who are anxious to take advantage of any “safe” opportunity of “sharing” with those whom their decisions favor.

In many fields of the administration of interventionist measures, favoritism simply cannot be avoided. Take, for example, the case of export or import licenses. Such a license has for the licensee a definite cash value. To whom ought the government grant a license and to whom should it be denied? There is no neutral or objective yardstick available to make the decision free from bias and favoritism. Whether or not money changes hands in the affair does not matter. The scandal is the same when the license is given to people who have rendered or are expected to render other kinds of valuable services (e.g., in casting their votes) to the people upon whom the decision depends.

Corruption is a regular effect of interventionism. It may be left to the historians and to the lawyers to deal with the problems involved.

Since interventionism are coursed through laws, laws create corruption and corruption engenders laws.

This striking quote from the same Bloomberg article is very much revealing of the true nature of the state and of the importance or of the superiority of the market: (bold highlights mine)

“If you can buy a Pepsi in every village in India, why can’t the government get us our rations?” asked Vaish, who lives in Satnapur. “The reason we don’t is because the government doesn’t want us to -- they all get a cut.”