Is this possible at all? Transforming
a corrupt government service into a non-corrupt service! Has it ever happened
anywhere in the history of human kind and if so, where and how was it
accomplished?
These are the questions that will
crop up in our minds when faced with such a stupendous task of transforming a
civil service of a country. Yet this was achieved, not very far off, but in our
own country, in the beginnings of the British Raj. Let’s delve into that phenomenal
phenomenon, but first a look at the corruption in the Company.
As long as the Mughal power was
strong in the country, the foreign companies, including the East India Company
of England, behaved themselves. When the British Company found itself in debt
in 1682, it fraudulently borrowed heavy sums, on this occasion, 300,000 Pounds,
from local merchants in Surat and after picking up quarrels, disappeared to
Bombay.[1]
On another occasion the Company
seized 13 rich ships from the Surat merchants and swindled them. Major portions
of these ill-gotten wealth were sent to the Directors in England. Aurangzeb,
the then Mughal Emperor in Delhi, attacked Bombay in 1688 on behalf of his
citizens in Surat.
Though the Company servants
counter-attacked the Emperor, they were defeated and had to tender
unconditional apology to the Emperor before their trade permit could be
restored. They settled down to trade alone thereafter.
However, after the Battle of Plassey
in 1757, less than hundred years, the situation had turned in favour of the
British. This battle itself was won by treachery, bribes and political
conspiracy. Huge sums exchanged hands. Clive left India in 1760 in a blaze of
personal glory and a vast personal wealth amassed during these turbulent times.
Clive, a servant of the Company, illegally
accepted an appointment under the Mughal Emperor as the Commissioner of 6000
horses and received a salary of 30,000 Pounds a year. To collect this salary,
he was permitted to collect the quit-rent of the Twenty- Four Purganas a
revenue territory, a jagir, (presently
a district in West Bengal), given to the Company. With the money thus amassed, he
entered the House of Commons, England on his return.[2]
Company officials went into a frenzy
of extortion and illegal trade practices to amass wealth for themselves after
the example of Clive. They demanded and accepted presents from the local rulers
and population. Company servants engaged in private trade as they received
unlimited credit. They paid no internal customs duties to the local officials
of the Nawab of Bengal.
Indian merchants were handicapped as
they had to pay duties or protection money to the English, if they wanted to
trade without paying customs duties. Indian boats ferrying in the river were
overpowered by the Company servants.
The country traders had to sell all
their products to the Company traders’ agents at a rate less than the market
price. Authority of the Nawab had collapsed and there was a scramble for making
fortunes. It was a wholesale and rampant smuggling, which the revenue officials
of the local Nawab were powerless to prevent. Trade itself was carried by
violence and oppression.[3]
The officials of the Company returned
to England with this filthy lucre and bought up estates and property and
parliament seats there. They were called “nabobs,”[4]
after the ‘Nawabs’ in India whom they imitated in their life style and behaviors.
This is the beginning of the famous
ICS, the Indian Civil Service of the British Raj, which ruled the country for
almost 200 years! Phenomenal! Unbelievable! But how did they bridle this
corruption? How did they bring this unruly behavior down and transformed the corrupt
service to an ‘Incorruptible Service?’
That is the subject of the next blog!
[1] Cadell,
“The History and Management of the East India Company from its origin in 1600 to
the present times,” 1779, vol.1, London, pp 15-16.
[2]
Thompson, “History of British Rule in India,” vol. 1, New Delhi: Atlantic
Publishers, 1999, p.27.
[3] All
these and more are described in “The Indian Civil Service: 1601-1930,” by
L.S.S. O’Malley, London: John Murray, 1931, pp. 9-12.
[4] Percival
Spear, “The Nabobs: A Study of the Social Life of the English in Eighteenth
Century India,” Calcutta, Rupa and Co., 1991, p. 32.
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