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This article attempts to assess the possibilities of terrorists using chemical and biological weapons. After pointing out the distinct characteristics of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons that are deliberately blurred by the inclusive phrase ‘weapons of mass destruction,’ the first section narrates attempts during the First and Second World Wars to develop and use chemical and biological weapons. The second section deals with a detailed analysis of reported cases of chemical and biological attacks by terrorists covering the period between 1900 and May 1999. Out of 263 reported global cases, there were only 71 incidents in which chemical or biological weapons were used; they caused 123 deaths and 3,774 injuries. The Japanese religious cult Aum Shinrikyo became the first terrorist group that actually used chemical weapons to cause mass casualties. It also unsuccessfully tried to produce and use biological weapons for the same purpose. Hollywood movies, thrillers, popular television serials, and sensational reporting by the US media created mass hysteria leading to a series of anthrax threats or hoaxes between 1997 and 1999. It was open season for the loonies of the world. Anthrax attacks through the US postal service in 2001 led to a search for the anthrax killer who was eventually suspected of being an insider from the US biological weapons programme. The third section deals with the technical hurdles terrorists would face in weaponising chemical or biological agents and devising a suitable delivery system. The next section focuses on attempts by terrorists motivated by religious fanaticism or millenarian prophecy to cause mass deaths. It also analyses why ‘secular’ terrorists have generally preferred conventional explosives and eschewed chemical or biological weapons. The final section mentions recent increases in funding for biodefence research and its possible consequences.
I
One of the most distinctive catch phrases in international security policies since 1995 has been ‘weapons of mass destruction’ (WMD). The American media presented nightmarish scenarios of nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons in the hands of terrorists or ‘rogue’ states posing a threat to international order. These scenarios served as political ‘appetizers’ for swift military action, especially against the demonised Saddam Hussein. They also blurred the distinct characteristics of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.
These three classes of weapons are very diverse in their technical nature and military significance. They differ greatly in their ease of production, in their potential lethality and destructive power, and in the effectiveness of protection and defence against them. Nuclear weapons certainly deserve the appellation ‘weapons of mass destruction.’ Lumping them together into the new inclusive category of WMD elevates the status of biological agents that are difficult to disperse and control and have killed very few people so far, and chemical weapons whose much lower lethality has been demonstrated in combat. Nuclear weapons remain legitimate within certain restrictions, while the Biological and Chemical Weapons Conventions have banned the other two categories of weapons. Non-state actors, of course, are not bothered by these legal restraints. It is assumed that because the essential ingredients for biological and chemical weapons are easily available, their manufacture by terrorists requires nothing more than a connection to the information swamp of the Internet, and access to modern biochemical technology and some scientific expertise.
The historical record suggests that the inclusion of chemical weapons as weapons of mass destruction is highly dubious. German chemist Fritz Haber is infamous for having introduced poison gas in World War I. He threw himself into the task and worked himself to exhaustion organising the manufacture of hundreds of tons of chlorine gas and thousands of gas cylinders; he trained special troops to test them and oversaw their installation in the trenches at the front without worrying about his own safety. Haber prevailed upon Otto Hahn, a future Nobel laureate, to be a participating ‘observer’, and another future Nobel laureate James Franck joined him. At the Ypres front, his special troops dug into the German trenches 5,730 cylinders that could release 150 tons of chlorine gas. The simultaneous opening of these cylinders along 7,000 metres within about ten minutes was a spectacular event. Haber’s son writes about him, "Here was Haber himself, an academic in uniform, paunchy, rarely without a cigar, pockets bulging, surrounded by young acolytes who managed to look respectful, busy, and unadventurous in dress and bearing." One day in 1915, he left the trenches for a short visit to his home; that day his wife Clara, who was disgusted with his total involvement in chemical warfare, shot herself with a pistol. On the same evening, Haber returned to the eastern front. His efforts, however, did not yield substantial results. On the western front, only two to three per cent of those gassed died; in contrast, wounds caused by conventional weapons were 10 to 12 times more fatal. It took a ton of gas to cause a single death. The official British history of World War I is rather dismissive of the effects of chemical weapons; a single footnote asserts that gas "made war uncomfortable...to no purpose."
Haber told his wife that a scientist belonged to the world in times of peace but to his country in times of war. Clara, however, regarded poison gas as perversion of science and a sign of barbarism. He later justified his role in introducing chemical warfare as an attempt to bring the war to a quick conclusion; gas, he maintained, was a more humane weapon than artillery bombardment. Haber was named in the Treaty of Versailles as a war criminal to be handed over for trial before an international court. A few months after the war, however, he was given the Nobel Prize for chemistry in recognition of his prewar discoveries. But the odium of poison gas was by now firmly stuck to his name.
American chemist James Conant emerged from the Great War with the rank of a major for his work in poison-research. Later, as President of Harvard University, he observed that "I did not see in 1917, and do not see in 1968, why tearing a man’s guts out by a high explosive shell is to be preferred to maiming him by attacking his lungs or skin. All war is immoral." Otto Hahn, James Franck, and James Conant played crucial roles in bringing about the nuclear revolution.
Confirmed cases of the use of chemical weapons include: by Germany during World War I, by the Allies during their intervention into the Russian civil war from 1919 to 1921, by Italy against Ethiopia from 1935 to 1936, by Japan against China between 1937 and 1945, by Egypt against Royalist forces in Yemen between 1963 and 1967, and by Iraq against Iran during the 1980s. Chemical weapons were not used in World War II.
Discussions of chemical weapons often stress their ability to cause many casualties - dead and wounded - glossing over the fact that historically most of those incapacitated by such weapons have not actually died. The Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo’s sarin attack in the Tokyo subway caused 12 deaths and 5,000 people were originally reported injured. According to Iranian reports, the Iraqi chemical weapons attack on unprotected Iranians during the Iran-Iraq War resulted in 262 deaths although 27,000 were victims of the attack.
Although Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union had biological weapons programmes during World War II, the Japanese effort was the most extensive. Experiments were conducted on prisoners of war, field trials were arranged in at least 11 Chinese cities, and Unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army attacked villages in Manchuria with crude anthrax, plague, and typhoid in the 1930s and early 1940s. Its creator and leader, General Shiro Ishii, was offered immunity from prosecution by the United States in exchange for information regarding his biological weapons programme.
In a "most secret" memorandum of 25 February 1944, Lord Cherwell, Britain’s chief science adviser, informed Prime Minister Winston Churchill that anthrax could be used to kill people in great numbers and to render places uninhabitable, making it an ideal weapon for use against the Germans. The weapon, he emphasised, had "appalling potentiality". It might even be "more formidable, because infinitely easier to make than ---." Cherwell discreetly left a blank in his memorandum for the atomic bomb. He added: "We should have full information since the use of such material might be valuable after the war for keeping order in the world." Britain’s military planners were even putting together a bombing plan for the use of anthrax against six German cities, including Berlin, Hamburg, Stuttgart, and Frankfurt. It was expected to kill at least half the population by "inhalation," and many more would die later through skin absorption, and the cities "would be contaminated for years," the planners promised. In January 1944, Churchill was advised to place "a comparatively small order of half a million anthrax bombs" from the United States and the first batch of them arrived by May 1944. Fortunately, there were production delays, and Churchill - then pushing strongly gas warfare and intolerant of moral constraints on Britain’s conduct of the war - did not have the option of using anthrax. Churchill believed that public perceptions regarding chemical or biological weapons changed like changes between "long and short skirts for women". He asserted that it was absurd to bring moral consideration on the issue of poison gas. "I want the matter studied," he wrote, "in cold blood by sensible people and not by psalm-singing uninformed defeatists." It is worth noting that Hitler, despite entreaties by some German scientists, had prohibited any work on biological weapons. British research continued and the experiments included unleashing anthrax on the small island of Gruinard, off the Scottish coast; that island is still contaminated and uninhabitable.
The US biological weapons programme began in 1942. By the end of World War II, it had about 250 buildings with approximately 3,500 people doing both offensive and defensive work. The production capacity of the plant at Vigo, Indiana, was estimated to be 1,000,000 to 1,500,000 British-designed four-pound anthrax bombs per month. During the 1950s, the United States developed and tested anthrax bombs for possible attack on Soviet cities. The American cities chosen for the experiment were Minneapolis, St. Louis, and Winnipeg because they had the climate, topography, and urban and industrial development similar to that of major Soviet cities. There was also a secret plan to attack Cuba with incapacitating agents in case of an American invasion during the Cuban missile crisis. The decision of the Nixon administration to renounce biological weapons eventually led to the signing of the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972. Professor Matthew Meselson of Harvard University played a crucial role in convincing his former colleague Henry Kissinger that it was in the interests of the United States to get rid of biological weapons.
The Soviet Union, however, continued with its secret biological weapons programme even after the coming into force of the Biological Weapons Convention. During the late 1980s, some 60,000 scientists and technicians in the Soviet Union worked on biological weapons at more than 50 research institutes and production plants around the country. The American renunciation was dismissed as a hoax. A facility at Stepnogorsk, now part of Kazakhstan, was built to produce anthrax bombs; it never produced a stockpile and has now been dismantled. The Soviet military command ordered in the 1970s the creation of a smallpox stockpile of twenty tons.
South Africa also had a biological weapons programme called ‘Project Coast’. Started in 1981, its objective was to terrorise and kill opponents of the apartheid regime. Although it was reported that the programme was dismantled in 1993, former Project Coast scientists secretly retained samples of virulent strains to continue work on vaccines.
II
Soon after the chemical attack in the Tokyo subways in 1995 alarmist scenarios based on the easy access of biological and chemical agents began to appear in the United States. Hollywood movies like The Rock, Executive Decision, Outbreak, and Twelve Monkeys; novels such as Tom Clancey’s Executive Orders and Rainbow Six; and episodes of popular television serials like The X-Files played upon people’s morbid fascination with catastrophic terrorism. Science policy analyst Daniel S. Greenberg criticised "a whiff of hysteria-fanning and budget opportunism in the scary scenarios of the saviors who have stepped forward against the menace of bioterrorism." While a gullible press echoed their frightening warnings, no independent assessments were made of the potential for terrorist attacks or the practicality of the proposed response.
In a volume edited by the director of the Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Project at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, well known experts have analysed 12 cases of attempted chemical or biological terrorism frequently mentioned in the literature on the subject. Three of those 12 cases never happened and the remaining nine do not qualify as serious terrorist attacks. Use of chemical or biological agents resulted in mass casualties in only three cases. One of them is the attack in the Tokyo subways in 1995. In the other two cases, there was no pervasive fright among the victims. A group called Avenging Israel’s Blood wanted to kill German prisoners after World War II. The group poisoned 3,000 loaves of bread with arsenic in a prisoners of war camp. About 2,000 prisoners became ill but none died.
Let us look at the data available on the 263 global terrorist incidents between 1900 and May 1999 involving chemical or biological agents. Out of these incidents, 26 percent were hoaxes, 8 per cent involved an unsuccessful conspiracy, attempts were made to obtain dangerous materials in 4 per cent cases, and in 21 per cent cases a threatened attack never occurred. There were only 71 incidents of the actual use of a chemical or biological agent; 59 of these occurred outside the United States. In 1998, 15 incidents were reported, one-third of them in the United States. Chemical and biological agents used in the 71 attacks included cyanide, rat poison, VX nerve agent, sarin nerve agent, butyric acid, mercury, insecticide, anthrax, botulinum toxin, salmonella bacteria, and the HIV virus.
Religiously motivated groups were responsible for 24, nationalist-separatist groups for 15, and single-issue groups and unknown actors for 12 attacks. These 71 terrorist attacks resulted in only 123 deaths and 3,774 injuries. This includes the death of a single American caused by the use of a cyanide-tipped bullet by the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1973. As for injuries, 1,038 were caused by Aum Shinrikyo’s release of sarin nerve agent in Japanese subways in 1995. Out of a total of 784 injuries in the United States, 751 resulted from the Rajneesh cult’s food poisoning case. This record shows that chemical and biological agents have so far been only weapons of mass disruption rather than of mass destruction.
Revelations of the Iraqi production of some 8.5 tons of concentrated anthrax before 1991 alerted the world community to new dangers. Another event signaled the beginning of a new era of technically sophisticated use of chemical or biological agents. Aum Shinrikyo, a Japanese religious cult, became the first terrorist group to resort to a major chemical attack. Between 1990 and 1994, it attempted six unsuccessful attacks with biological agents. Then, at the height of the morning rush hour on 20 March 1995, cult members placed 11 sarin-filled bags wrapped in newspapers on five Japanese subway trains. The triggering event, however, was trivial; the attack was designed to distract the police from raiding Aum facilities! According to early reports, 12 people were killed and 5,000 injured. It was later revealed that thousands of panicky survivors were not exposed to the chemical.
Only this Japanese group has so far attempted to acquire and use biological agents to kill people on a large scale. It had some 10,000-60,000 members with assets worth about a billion dollars, a sophisticated laboratory, a long period in which to produce biological agents, and a number of dedicated personnel some of whom had scientific training. Its biological weapons programme was the largest and costliest ever conducted by a terrorist group. Members of the cult even went to Zaire to collect samples of the Ebola virus. Their efforts were not impressive. Neighbours complained about a foul stench coming out of the laboratory; they also noticed ‘strange materials’ resembling jellyfish on the streets. Between 1990 and 1994, the group attempted to kill a large number of people in six unsuccessful attacks with biological agents. No one was killed or injured. In one of these attacks directed at members of the Japanese royal family during the wedding of Prince Naruhito, leader of the cult Shoko Asahara himself participated. It was a bizarre scene. While his followers were spraying their way across Tokyo, Asahara panicked because the toxin was seeping into his car. He jumped out and his mission failed. The main cause of the cult’s failure was inability to culture the right anthrax and to weaponise it.
In 1984, members of the Rajneesh cult contaminated salad served in a restaurant in Oregon with Salmonella typhimurium bacteria; 751 people came down with salmonella poisoning under conditions devoid of terror. The victims merely suffered diarrhoeal illness. At first, the illness was attributed to poor sanitary conditions. A year passed before it was established that the outbreak was not natural when Rajneesh himself called for a government investigation. The perpetrators, however, were not interested in inducing terror; they simply wanted to test the technique as a possible way to disable voters at a future municipal election! This incident, however, is cited as a bioterrorist attack in the literature on terrorism!
ANTHRAX HOAXES
Bioterrorism was not a subject of serious concern within the US government until 1995. The Pentagon then began to lump nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons into an inclusive category of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) reportedly being developed by a new category of ‘rogue’ states. It was also suggested that nuclear weapons might have to be used to deter any chemical or biological attack by a ‘rogue’ state. Nuclear weapons, in such contingencies, would obviously not be viewed as weapons of mass destruction! A spokesman of the Defence Intelligence Agency, however, told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on 22 February 1996 that the agency knew of no terrorist organisations that were actually "developing chemical, biological or radiological weapons." The FBI was also unaware of any bioterrorist threat from any foreign or domestic group.
The first anthrax threat in the United States was made on 24 April 1997 in Washington, D.C. The area was cordoned off and residents quarantined. Although it was found to be a hoax, the next month the threat of WMD in the hands of terrorist groups was officially elevated to "one of the gravest threats to the United States." The New York Times reported that President Clinton was alarmed by the depiction of a bioterrorist attack in the novel The Cobra Event. Secretary of Defence William Cohen appeared on television holding a bag containing five pounds of sugar, warning that an equal amount of anthrax, dispersed properly, could wipe out half the population of Washington D.C. The catch was in the phrase ‘dispersed properly’ because it is extremely difficult to do so. Cohen, talking about attacks with WMD, declared: "The question is no longer if this will happen, but when." In 1998, Congress gave the Department of Defence’s Advanced Research Projects Agency $2 billion to sponsor ‘wild and crazy’ science projects whose funding requests in the past would not have even been entertained.
Stories about the threat of bioterrorism, often mentioning anthrax, began to appear with greater frequency and, through a process of ‘incestuous inter-quote’, amplified the scare. Responding to the peoples’ craving to be horrified, imaginative novelists, television networks, and sensationalist journalists cashed in on the spreading fear. The New York Times published 27 stories in its "Biological and Chemical Warfare" category in 1994; but by 1998 the number had increased to 278.
Then began a flood of anthrax threats/hoaxes in the United States. Between 30 October and 23 December 1998, came seven major threats, some of them warning that anthrax had been placed in ventilation systems at health clinics and other buildings in Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, and California. About 1,800 potential victims were told to take protective measures. There was, however, no evidence of anthrax contamination. When a department store in California received a telephonic threat on Christmas Eve, two hundred people were made to strip and take a shower in a makeshift outdoor facility. A similar threat was made to a nightclub a few days later that resulted in the evacuation and quarantining of 800 people for four hours. Five more threats were delivered on 9 February 1999. Letters claiming to contain anthrax reached the Washington Post and a federal building in Washington, a post office in Columbus, and an NBC office in Atlanta. And between 18 and 22 February, 35 more threats led to the setting up of outdoor showers for potential victims. By March 1999, an FBI investigator complained: "Not a day goes by without us hearing from somewhere in the United States about an anthrax threat." Such threats averaged more than one a day and disrupted the lives of more than 10,000 potential victims. Some of the perpetrators were just having fun at others’ expense. A man from Los Angeles telephoned an anthrax threat simply to avoid appearing in a bankruptcy court! There was a flurry of anthrax hoaxes after the September 11 attacks. In the words of a commentator, it was an "open season for the loonies of the world". One-third of more than 80 hoaxes in 1999 were directed at women or other clinics. Excessive publicity encouraged hoaxes. In 1997, the FBI recorded one anthrax hoax; the number swelled to 150 in 1998. President Clinton warned in January 1999 that the enemies of peace were working on "new forms of assault", including chemical and biological weapons. Responding to this hypothetical threat, the Clinton administration proposed nearly $1.4 billion for fiscal year 2000, thereby more than doubling the amount sanctioned for fiscal year 1999.
Five letters containing a highly lethal preparation of anthrax spores were sent through the US postal system shortly after the September 11 attacks, killing five persons, injuring 18 others, and forcing tens of thousands of people to take antibiotics. Two of these letters were sent to Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and Senator Patrick Leahy. Large sections of the US Senate buildings and newspaper offices were contaminated. Initially, it was assumed that Al-Qaeda members had sent the letters; some commentators later portrayed Iraq as the culprit. The purity and high concentration of the anthrax spores and the fact that they aerosolised, however, indicated that they were from a military biological weapons programme. The American biodefence programme had secretly produced weapons-grade anthrax in order to test its detection equipment; this raised the suspicion that the perpetrator of the anthrax letters was an insider from the biodefence outfit.
Professor Barbara Hatch Rosenburg of the Federation of American Scientists charged that the perpetrator of the anthrax letters was an American scientist working in the US biological defence programme. She made her claim public during her address as an NGO representative to the Fifth Review Conference of the States Parties to the Biological Weapons Convention in November 2001. Professor Rosenberg, who had been in close touch with US scientists engaged in such work for many years, said that they were ‘gungho’ for pursuing new lines of research but concerned about lack of funds. A number of anthrax hoaxes before September 11, she said, were in the nature of wakeup calls; a message was being conveyed to the US government. With billions of dollars sanctioned by Congress, she thought the message had been received. The terrible conclusion is that at least in the case of anthrax, the enemy was within the United States.
HUNT FOR THE ANTHRAX KILLER
American defence labs have samples of anthrax spores from British, Soviet, and Iraqi efforts. Checks of those samples led to the shocking conclusion that the sender was at the heart of U.S biodefence programme. The needle of suspicion pointed towards Dr. Steven J. Hatfill. For years, Hatfill had loudly complained the United States wasn’t doing enough to prepare for a potential bioterrorist attack. Early in August 2002, FBI agents on the trail for last year’s anthrax attacker used bloodhounds with "scent packs" lifted from anthrax-tainted letters to the two senators. When the agents approached the apartment of Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, a scientist who had worked in one of the army’s top bioweapons research laboratories, the bloodhounds ‘went crazy’. The FBI agents believed they were finally on the verge of a breakthrough. Attorney General John Ashcroft then announced that Hatfill was a ‘person of interest’ in the investigation of anthrax attacks. Other American bioscientists were also investigated. Hatfill steadfastly maintained his innocence and cooperated with the investigators.
Hatfill appeared on CNN and blasted Ashcroft for anthrax ‘innuendo’. His voice shaking with emotion, he said "this assassination of my character appears to be part of a government effort to show the American people that it is proceeding vigorously and successfully with the anthrax investigations." He lambasted the Justice Department for leaking details of his personal life and asserted: "I want to look my fellow Americans directly in the eye and declare to them, ‘I am not the anthrax killer; I know nothing about the anthrax attacks; I had nothing to do with this terrible crime.’" It was later revealed that Hatfill had helped design a covert American training version of a mobile germ factory. Even after the FBI began investigating him, the Pentagon continued to draw on his expertise. The perpetrator of the mailings of anthrax spores still remains unknown.
III
If using chemical and biological weapons by terrorists were as easy as the alarmist scenarios have suggested, why do conventional explosives continue to remain the preferred terrorist weapons, even in instances where the intention had been to inflict mass casualties? The answer lies partly in the technical hurdles terrorist groups would face in weaponising chemical and biological agents and devising a suitable delivery system. There are major problems like obtaining access to specialised chemical ingredients or virulent microbial strains and acquiring equipment and technique for their production and dispersal. Chemical weapons are not easy to keep safely in stable conditions, and their dispersal depends on climatic factors. It is difficult to use them on a large scale unless it is done in a confined space. The quantity of the agent employed and the means of dissemination would determine their impact. According to Mathhew Messelson, "it would take a ton of nerve gas or five tons of mustard gas to produce heavy casualties among unprotected people in an open area of one kilometer."
Biological weapons combine easy availability with maximum destructiveness, and a relatively low cost of production with the capability to infect large numbers of people over a wide area. According to an old U.N. document, the cost of causing one civilian casualty per square kilometer was about $2,000 with conventional weapons, $800 with nuclear weapons, $600 with chemical weapons, and only $1 with biological weapons. Many biological agents are especially useful for covert delivery because of their long incubation periods and the time lag needed before their effects are noticed. Deranged groups, especially if they have the backing of a state, can conceal their involvement and avoid reprisals.
Biological agents, however, are not as easily weaponised as often imagined, nor are their effects predictable. Their storage and dispersal is extremely difficult while the risk of contamination for those handling them is high. There are few other lethal agents as accessible and as stable in the environment as anthrax spores. If inhaled, they can penetrate to the depths of the lungs. It is, however, estimated that approximately 8,000-10,000 anthrax spores must be inhaled to cause illness. The capability to disperse anthrax over a wide area as an inhalable aerosol to cause mass casualties requires a sophisticated delivery system beyond the technical competence of most terrorist groups. Moreover, effective dispersal of biological agents can be disrupted by environmental and meteorological conditions. Wind speed and direction, humidity, atmospheric stability, and the presence of sunlight can influence the performance of a biological weapon. Maintaining the virulence of biological agents during storage, delivery, and dissemination thus is not easy. A former Soviet expert on biological weapons has explained the problems encountered in producing biological weapons: "The most virulent culture in a test tube is useless as an offensive weapon until it has been put through a process that gives it stability and predictability. The manufacturing technique is, in a sense, the real weapon, and it is harder to develop than individual agents." The scary scenario involving poisoning the water supply of a major city does not appear to be feasible, not only because of the large quantities of the agent that would be required but also because of the filtering or purification measures normally in operation.
IV
There has certainly been an increase in the frequency and lethality of terrorist violence. For terrorists motivated by religious fanaticism or millenarian prophecy, violence assumes a transcendental dimension and is geared to take revenge for real or perceived injustices. Because of the apocalyptic orientation of some religious fanatics, terrorism can assume a transcendental dimension. Despising the social order, these religiously motivated terrorists want to give a push to history. The constraints and considerations normally associated with ‘conventional’ or ‘secular’ terrorism, undertaken for social or political ends, seem to be no longer applicable in the era of catastrophic terrorism. Millenarian cults seek supernatural intervention through their violent acts. Living in a world of delusion, they are not guided by the rational calculus of cost and benefit. In 1972, an ecoterrorist group in Chicago planned to disperse eight microbial agents by air all over the world so that they could wipe out the entire human race; they could then have the satisfaction of repopulating the world with their own genes. Faced with difficulties in implementing such an ambitious plan, they scaled it down to killing residents of the five states around Chicago by contaminating urban water supply. Some members of the group, however, informed the FBI about the plot before it could be carried out. Christian white supremacists in the United States vilify Jews and nonwhites as ‘the literal children of Satan’. Members of the Christian Identity Movement believe that Jesus Christ was not a Jew but an Aryan; that the Lost Tribes of Israel are composed not of the Jews but of ‘blue-eyed Aryans’; that white Anglo-Saxons and not the Jews are the ‘Chosen People’; and that the United States is the Promised Land. A white supremacist Christian Identity group known as the Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord sought in 1986 to overthrow the US government and hasten the return of the Messiah by poisoning water supplies with 30 gallons of potassium cyanide. They believed that God would direct the poison to kill only non-believers, Jews, and blacks living in major cities. Before they could act, however, the FBI penetrated the group and arrested its leaders. In 1994, 54 members of the Canadian Order of the Solar Temple committed mass suicide believing in an imminent ecological disaster.
On 10 April 2003, a 62-year-old white supremacist William Joseph Krar was arrested in a small town of Texas with a homemade hydrogen cyanide bomb. According to the investigators, the blueprint and formula for Krar’s weapon were in the form of a computer printout and handwritten notes. According to Margaret Kosal, an analyst of biological and chemical weapons at Stanford University, Krar could produce enough hydrogen cyanide gas to kill more than 6,000 people under optimum conditions. For terrorists with limited resources, the device could be an attractive one. This disturbing case, however, did not get the kind of publicity in the United States that it deserved. A month before the arrest of Krar, a 26-year-old anarcho-terrorist Jose ZX\ph Konopka was arrested on account of possession of a chemical weapon.
The Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo’s doctrine is an amalgam of Hinayana and Mahayana Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, yoga, and so on. The cult’s leader Shoko Asahara claimed that he had experienced the awakening of kundalini in 1981. In 1989, he published his pessimistic work Doomsday. He and 24 of his followers stood for election to the Japanese Diet in 1990; they received only 11,783 votes. Asahara’s other book was entitled Disaster Is Approaching the Land of the Rising Sun. According to the cult’s doctrine, murder could help both victims and murderers to salvation. Asahara was sentenced to death; the ruling came at the end of a trial lasting nearly eight years. Legal proceedings, however, are expected to continue for another decade.
The Al-Qaeda network did try to develop a biological and chemical capability. The eleventh volume of Al-Qaeda’s 5,000-page Encyclopedia of Jihad is devoted entirely to methods to build chemical and biological weapons. Western intelligence agencies have documented Al-Qaeda’s unsuccessful efforts to use chemical weapons. Captured training videos from Afghanistan, however, did not reveal evidence of mustard agent, or sarin; its amateur chemists could only produce cyanide sufficiently potent to kill a few dogs.
Moving beyond the calculus of access and capabilities, political objectives of terrorist groups must also be taken into consideration. Most terrorists appeal through their violent acts to a constituency composed of actual and potential sympathisers. Their image of themselves is that of martyrs for a noble cause; their message of violence is designed to reorient social and political structures. They have both tangible political objectives and expectations from the response of the intended audience beyond the victims. They may be called ‘secular’ terrorists in order to distinguish them from religious fanatics with an apocalyptic orientation. Neither crazy nor stupid, they want to derive political benefits from their activities. As a professor of Hebrew University of Jerusalem put it, even groups like Hamas, Hizbullah, and Islamic Jihad "also want to survive and prosper politically". Chemical or biological agents, in contrast to the ‘propaganda of the deed’ through conventional explosions, do their job silently and insidiously. Terrorists have so far generally eschewed these weapons primarily because of the difficulties in mastering relevant technologies, and the moral revulsion against their use. Additional constraints have been the hazards and unpredictability of consequences. Fear of reprisals is also a great deterrent. They have preferred conventional explosive materials and devices that are easily available, relatively safe to use, and have predictable consequences. Suicide bombings, for instance, have caused considerable havoc in recent years. Since the 1980s, 18 terrorist organisations in 15 countries have resorted to suicide bombings against their adversaries. Even before the 9/11 attacks, there had occurred more than 300 suicide incidents in various parts of the world. It is reported that the Al-Qaeda shelved a plan to attack an American nuclear power station because of the fear that things could ‘get out of control.’ Moreover, technological innovations in all key weapons characteristics - accuracy, lethality, range, portability, ruggedness, ease of use, and affordability - have made the task of terrorists much easier. Given the vulnerabilities of modern societies and the lethal potential of conventional explosives, terrorist gangs can slaughter innocent people indiscriminately without recourse to chemical or biological weapons. And some ‘conventional weapons’ can certainly be called weapons of mass destruction.
V
Unlike the Chemical Weapons Convention that has an elaborate verification regime in place, the Biological Weapons Convention did not have any mechanism for verifying implementation of its provisions. The 144 states party to it began discussions in 1995 on a draft protocol containing verification procedures. A draft protocol to the Convention was almost ready when the United States delegate not only rejected it in July 2001 but also declared that his government was "forced to conclude that the mechanisms envisioned for the protocol would not achieve their objectives, that no modification of them would allow them to achieve their objectives, and that trying to do more would simply raise the risk to legitimate United States activities." A week before the 9/11 attacks came the revelation of the existence of three secret American biodefence projects. The US government later confirmed that it had completed two clandestine bioweapons projects and was planning a third one. Mary Elizabeth Holnkes, a former counsel for the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, commented: "You see a room full of people manufacturing bombs, and they say: ‘I’m only doing this for defensive purposes and I have no intention of ever doing it for real because my heart is pure!’" Some observers suspect that the United States rejected the draft protocol in order to avoid international scrutiny of its clandestine programme.
Funding for biodefence has risen exponentially in the United States. If US Congress approves the Bush administration’s request of $7.45 billion for fiscal year 2005, the increase in funding over fiscal year 2001 will be nearly 1,500 per cent. Terrorist groups are credited with possessing advanced technological capabilities that they obviously do not have nor are likely to acquire in the near future. It is feared that rapid advances in biotechnology could produce more lethal agents that have environmental stability and resistance to vaccines and drugs. In response to this possibility, "science-based threat assessment" is pushing laboratory development of offensive biological capabilities. Research is moving forward not only against anthrax and plague, but also against novel genetically engineered pathogens. The stimulating scent of increased funding led many agencies to expand their research facilities. By June 2004, more than 300 facilities and 11,000 individuals were engaged in work on ‘select agents’. In allowing the fevered imaginations of defence planners to dictate research, asked Princeton University’s Frank von Hippel, must the United States conduct a biological weapons arms race with itself? Apart from undermining the ban on offensive development enshrined in the Biological Weapons Convention, the danger is that the pathogens and information generated by science-based threat assessment could leak out to terrorist groups. It is also reported that some of the biodefence research has been shifted to the nuclear weapons laboratories. Professor Barbara Hatch Rosenberg has criticised this commingling of nuclear weapons and biodefence. "This makes it possible," she says, "for the government to say we can’t allow any kind of inspection or visits from outside the government because nuclear security depends on it."
Despite a multitude of bioterrorist threats, the most catastrophic scenarios involving mass casualties, though possible, are not likely to occur. The key issue is thus to devise and execute balanced policies. The most appropriate response to such threats is improvement in the public health systems that would be of immense benefit to the public even if no attack ever occurs. There are about 1,500 state-owned and commercial culture collections the world over that exchange and sell samples of microbes and toxins for scientific and biological research. It would be easier for terrorist groups to steal or purchase well-defined strains from these collections or from research facilities, commercial suppliers, or state-owned culture collections under false pretences. Apart from improvements in disease surveillance, tightened security at microbiological laboratories would reduce possibilities of hazardous biological materials falling into the hands of terrorists.
Notes and References
Richard L. Garwin and Georges Charpak, Megawatts and Megatons: A Turning Point in the Nuclear Age? New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001, p. 323. See Matin Zuberi, "Nuclear Terrorism: High Risk, Low Probability," Aakrosh, vol. 6, no. 18, January 2003, pp. 15-36. Wolgang K.H. Panofsky, "Dismantling the Concept of ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction,’" Arms Control Today, April 1999, p. 3. Cited in M. F. Perutz, "The Cabinet of Dr. Haber," The New York Review of Books, 29 June 1996, pp. 31-36. R.W.Reid, Tongues of Conscience, London: Constable, 1969, p. 37. Cited in John Mueller & Karl Mueller, "Sanctions of Mass Destruction," Foreign Affairs, vol. 78, no. 3, May/June 1999, p.47. See Rob Evans, Gassed: British Chemical Warfare Experiments on Humans at Porton Down, Shicago: House of Stratus, 2000. Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986, p. 95. Gordon A. Craig, "The End of the Golden Age," The New York Review of Books, 4 November 1999, p.14. Op cit, n.5, p. 45. James B. Conant, My Several Lives, New York: Harper & Row, 1970, p. 49. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, The Problem of Chemical and Biological Warfare, vol. I: The Rise of CB Weapons, New York: Humanities Press, 1971, pp. 125-161. John Mueller & Karl Mueller, "Sanctions of Mass Destruction," n.6, p. 47. See Peter Williams and David Wallace, Unit 731: Japan’s Secret Biological Warfare in World War II, New York: Free Press, 1989; Yuki Tanaka, Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II, Boulder CO: Westview Press, 1996 and Sheldon H. Harris, Factories of Death: Japan’s Biological Warfare 1932-1945 and American Coverup, New York: Routledge, 1994. Barton J. Bernstein, "Churchill’s secret biological weapons," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January/February 1987, pp. 46-50; Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxman, A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret History of Chemical and Biological Warfare, New York: Hill & Wang, 2002 edition, p. 103. For the history of British biological weapons programme, see Brian Balmer, Britain and Biological Warfare: Expert Advice and Science Policy, 1930-65, Palgrave, 2001. Matthew Meselson, "Bioterror: What Can Be Done?" The New York Review of Books, 20 December 2001, pp.38-39. For more details see Judith Miller, Steven Engelberg, and William J. Broad, Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001. Jonathan B. Tucker, "A Farewell to Germs: The US Renunciation of Biological and Toxic Warfare, 1969-70," International Security, vol. 27, no. 1, Summer 2002, pp. 107-148. See Freeman Dyson, "The Future Needs Us," The New York Review of Books, 11 February 2003, p. 12. Jonathan B. Tucker, "Preventing the Misuse of Pathogens: The Need for Global Biosecurity Standards," Arms Control Today, June 2003, p. 6. Matthew Meselson, "Bioterror: What Can Be Done?" n.15, p.40. Jonathan B. Tucker, "Preventing the Misuse of Pathogens: The Need for Global Biosecurity Standards," n.16, pp. 3-10. Jonathan B. Tucker & Amy Sands, "An unlikely threat," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, July/August 1999, p. 47. Jonathan B. Tucker, ed., Toxic Terror: Assessing Terrorist Use of Chemical and Biological Weapons, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000; see also Leonard Cole, "CBW terrorism deconstructed," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, November/December 2000, pp. 58-59. ,/li>
Op cit, n.21, pp. 47-49. Raymond A. Zilinskas, "Iraq’s Biological Weapons: The Past as Future," in Joshua Lederberg, ed., Biological Weapons: Limiting the Threat, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999, pp. 137-158. Leonard A. Cole, "CBW terrorism deconstructed," n.22, p. 58; D.E. Kaplan, "Aum Shinrikyo" in Jonathan B. Tucker, ed., Toxic Terror: Assessing Terrorist Use of Chemical and Biological Weapons, n.22, pp.207-226. William Rosenau, "Aum Shinrikiyo’s Biological Weapons Programme: Why Did it Fail? - Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, vol. 24, no. 4, July-August 2001, pp. 289-301; Christopher F. Chyba, "Toward Biological Security," Foreign Affairs, vol. 81, no. 3 (May/June 2000), p. 127; M. Leitenberg, "The Experience of the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo Group and Biological Agents," in B. Roberts, ed., Hype or Reality: The ‘New Terrorism’ and Mass Casualty Attacks, Alexandria, VA: CBACI, 2001, pp.159-172. Leitenberg has emphasised exaggeration of Aum’s biological weapons capabilities. W.S. Carus, "The Rajneeshees," in Jonathan. B. Tucker, Toxic Terror, n.22, pp. 115-138. Leonard A. Cole, "Anthrax hoaxes: Hot new hobby?" Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, July/August 1999, p. 8. Laurie Garrett, "The Nightmare of Bioterrorism," Foreign Affairs, vol. 80, no. 1, January/February 2001, p. 83. Op cit, n.28, pp. 7-9. Michael Flynn, "Any white powder will do," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January/February 2004, pp. 6-7. G. Cameron, J. Plate, D. McCanley, and L. DeFazio, "1999 WMD Terrorism Chronology: Incidents Involving Sub-National Actors and Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Materials," The Nonproliferation Review, vol. 7, no. 2, Summer 2000, pp. 157-174. Jonathan B. Tucker, "Introduction" in Jonathan B. Tucker, ed., Toxic Terror, n.22, pp.1-14. Op cit,- n.21, p. 46. Michael Barletta, Amy Sands & Jonathan B. Tucker, "Keeping track of anthrax," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May/June 2002, pp. 57-59. SIPRI Yearbook 2002: Armaments, Disarmament and International Security Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 703. Summary of a BBC documentary shown on September 7, 2002. Mark Miller and Daniel Klaidman, "The Hunt for the Anthrax Killer," Newsweek, 12 August 2002, pp. 34-39. "Scientist blasts Ashcroft for anthrax ‘innuendo’."; see also Laura Rozen, "Who is Steven Hatfill?". William J. Broad, David Johnston, and Judith Miller, "Investigated anthrax scientist played role in secret project," International Herald Tribune, 3 July 2003. John Mueller & Karl Mueller, "Sanctions of Mass Destruction", n.6, p. 46. United Nations Secretary General, Chemical and Bacteriological (Biological) Weapons and the Effects of Their Possible Use, Geneva: United Nations, 1969, p. 40. William Rosenau, "Aum Shinrikyo’s Biological Weapons Programme: Why Did it Fail?" n.26, pp. 294-95. Ken Alibek with Stephen Handelman, Biohazard: The Chilling Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Programme in the World (New York: Random House, 1999), p. 97. "CBRN Terrorism: How Real Is the Threat?" Military History, vol. XXVI, no. 8, 2002, p. 8. This article is based on an unclassified report prepared by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. See David C. Rapoport, "Fear and Trembling: Terrorism in Three Religious Traditions," American Political Science Review, vol. 78, no. 3, September 1984, p. 674. Ashton Carter, John Deutch, and Philip Zelikov, "Catastrophic Terrorism: Tackling the New Danger," Foreign Affairs, vol. 77, no. 6, November/December 1998, pp. 80-94. Jonathan B. Tucker and Amy Sands, "An unlikely threat," n.21, p. 49; Bruce Hoffman, "’Holy Terror’: The Implications of Terrorism Motivated by a Religious Imperative," Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, vol. 18, no. 4, 1995, pp. 271-64. Canadian Security Intelligence Service, "Doomsday Religious Movements," Terrorism and Political Violence, vol. 14, no. 1, Spring 2002, p. 58; Daniel S. Gressang IV, "Terrorism in the 21st Century: Reassessing the Emerging Threat," Small Wars and Insurgencies, vol. 11, no 2, Autumn 2000, p. 82. Michael Reynolds, "Homegrown terror," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, November/December 2004, pp. 48-57. See Manabu Watanabe, "Religion and Violence in Japan Today: A Chronological and Doctrinal Analysis of Aum Shinrikyo," Terrorism and Political Violence, vol. 10, no. 4, winter 1998, pp. 80-100. "Cult leader sentenced to death," The Hindu, 28 February 1994. Jonathan Spyer, "The al-Qa’ida Network and Weapons of Mass Destruction," Middle East Review of International Affairs, vol.8, no.3, September 2004. See also Ahmed S. Hashim, "The world according to Usama bin Laden," Naval War College Review, vol. LIV, no. 4, pp. 11-36. Joby Warrick, "An Easier, but Less Deadly Recipe for Terror," Washington Post, 31 December 2004. See Daniel S. Gressang IV, "Audience and Message: Assessing Terrorist WMD Potential," Terrorism and Political Violence, vol.13, no.3, Autumn 2001, pp. 83-106. Ehud Sprinzak, "The Great Superterrorism Scare," Foreign Policy, Fall 1998, p. 115. Arpad Palfy, "Weapon System Selection and Mass-Casualty Outcomes," Terrorism and Political Violence, vol. 15, no. 2, Summer 2003, pp. 81-95. Adam Dolnik, "Die and Let Die: Exploring Links between Suicide Terrorism and Terrorist Use of Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Weapons," Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, vol. 26, no. 1, January-February 2003, pp. 17-35. Oliver Meier, "Neither trust nor verify, says US" Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, November/December 2001, pp. 19-21. Jonathan B. Tucker, "Biological Threat Assessment: Is the Cure Worse Than the Disease?" Arms Control Today, October 2004, pp. 13-19; Susan Wright, "Taking Biodefence Too Far," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, November/December 2004, pp. 58-64. Marylia Kelley & Jay Coughlan, "Mixing bugs and bombs," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September/October 2003, pp.25-31. Christopher F. Chyba, "Biological Terrorism and Public Health," Survival, vol. 43, no. 1, Spring 2001, pp. 93-106. Jonathan B. Tucker, "Preventing the Misuse of Pathogens: The Need for Global Biosecurity Standards," Arms Control Today, June 2003, pp. 4-6; see also Mark Wheelis, "Will the ‘New Biology’ Lead to New Weapons?" Arms Control Today, July/August 2004, pp. 6-13.
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It is beyond doubt that corruption is a cancer corroding the vitals of Indian polity, along with the erosion of the traditional value system and the spread of violence. It would seem that parents, teachers and leaders of recent generations have failed in their duty to pass on to the next generations the values that made our civilisation great in earlier times.
A former Prime Minister reminded us that corruption is a global phenomenon, implying that we need not be too concerned with corruption being prevalent in India. The present Prime Minister is hailed for having heralded the globalisation of the Indian economy Our President has shared with us his glorious vision of India as a superpower by 2020. All the same, is it necessary to let our efforts at globalisation and our race to superpower status manifest themselves first in the realm of corruption? Even with the awareness that corruption is a sociological fact, powered by natural human greed, there is no need for India to be amongst the leaders in this field.
It has to be recognised that corruption is no longer restricted to the government bureaucracy, as it was in the colonial era. It has become all-pervasive and is encountered also in the political arena (at almost all levels), public/private/co-operative sector enterprises, corporate governance, financial institutions, NGOs etc. The most unfortunate thing is that people seem to accept corruption and the lack of accountability as inescapable parts of modern life.
Broad Categorisation
Corruption could be broadly categorised as being of two types, i.e. routine and specific. Routine corruption could be defined as what is indulged in by a person in authority (in any sphere) for doing what he is required and is paid to do. It is a form of double taxation, the citizen paying again for a service which he has already paid for through taxes or fees. Specific corruption would be taking bribes to take decisions in a specific manner in matters in which discretionary power is vested (essentially for the effective performance of his duties) in any person in authority, Though I have not come across any reliable figures relating to the proportions of these two categories, it would be safe to assume that routine corruption forms a large majority of the total in terms of number of instances (involving a small proportion of the money), while specific corruption (in discretionary matters) forms a smaller proportion of instances but involves the major portion of the money involved.
In routine corruption, the most felt and noticed are instances in essential services and/or affecting persons in difficulty and seeking help, i.e. like in the Police or in hospitals. Specific corruption often goes unnoticed as neither the benefactor or the beneficiary would talk about it. However, it leads to wrong and biased decisions relating to national defence/security, industrial and welfare projects, degradation of specifications of roads, bridges, buildings and other public projects etc. Thus it causes more lasting damage to the society than routine corruption. In recent years, more light is shed on al types of corruption by the gradual development of a vigilant media and public-spirited NGOs.
Causes
Greed
Gandhiji had been quoted as having said that India has adequate resources to meet everyone’s needs, but not anyone’s greed. Lord Bertrand Russel had once calculated that everyone can meet his family’s basic needs by working only two hours a day, i.e. people are working four times as much as required to meet their basic needs. In a realistic sense, these can only be taken as philosophical thoughts. It is almost impossible to quantify "basic needs", as what is a basic need for one (like, say, an air-conditioned car for a person who is used to it and can afford it) may be beyond even the most greedy fantasy for many others. The basic fact is that most human beings are "greedy" in the sense that they want to earn (at least) marginally more than what is needed to meet their needs (by their standards). It is impractical to call for a total reformation of the human mind so as to eliminate greed. What is practicable is to try and ensure that greed is restricted to ambitions and aspirations; and does not lead to offences against society.
Erosion of Values
It is disingenuous to distinguish political virtue from moral virtue. Prof. W. B. Allen, Professor of Political Science in Michigan State University (in his lecture to The Philadelphia Society in November 2000), argued that they are, in fact, inseparable if not identical. Democracy is not necessarily a compromise between merit and good faith. George Washington had been convinced that "private morality" is the "foundation of national happiness". In a lament that applies equally to our society, Fareed Zakaria (in his book "The Future of Freedom") refers to the erosion in USA of guides and barriers, checks and balances of the now-eclipsed old structures of power and control. Some decades ago people who published books, produced news, ran law firms and headed hospitals viewed themselves as concerned partly with profit and partly with public service. Doctors have now become just business owners, lawyers cannot afford public work and professional bodies have ceased being watchdogs and have become lapdogs. Schools emphasise achievement, not necessarily character. We now expect very little of those in positions of power and they rarely disappoint us. The erosion of societal values, accompanied by an emphasis on materialism, is the malady that needs to be treated.
We see the continuing erosion of values; values like respecting the minority, serving the public good, being intellectually and financially honest etc. A successful democracy requires emphasis on genuine economic development and the building of effective political institutions. However, the mere existence of political and economic institutions that are relatively free of intense populist pressures does not guarantee a successful liberal democracy unless those manning them and those in politics practise such values. Dysfunction of democracy leads to aberrations like popular autocrats, the use of law as a political weapon (thus subverting the idea of equality under law), the skilful use of the majority to adopt wrong ways etc.
Lack of Social Stigma
When persons of my generation were in school and college nearly sixty years ago, there was a certain social stigma attached to corruption and a person merely accused of corruption faced some form of social ostracisation. Now we find that many persons making the victory sign when arrested on a charge of corruption, when released on bail, whenever attending the court and when finally acquitted!
Lack of Respect for the Law
There had been a progressive erosion in the respect and regard for the law, leading to increasingly lawless behaviour. This is often caused by discriminatory (or iniquitous) and non-enforceable laws. The enforcement of the former and non-enforcement of the latter, coupled with inefficient (and ineffective) criminal justice systems, leads to disrespect for laws and loss of faith in the lawful processes. The result is the tendency to take the law into one's own hands and to behave in one's own selfish interests without regard to the effects on the society as a whole.
Lack of Effective Deterrence
Many offences against society can and are controlled/reduced by the existence of effective deterrence. I believe that corruption is one such. In the prevailing situation in India, most current forms of corruption are not defined as substantive offences and the offenders have to be proceeded against under different sections of laws dealing with amassing disproportionate wealth, misappropriation, breach of trust etc. and some may even escape criminal prosecution and face only a civil suit. Further, our criminal justice system, which is heavily biased in favour of the accused persons, is almost customised for the influential person accused of corruption to escape punishment during his/her lifetime. As if to add insult to injury, most of them get to keep a major part of the ill-gotten wealth. In effect, most forms of corruption enjoy considerable immunity under our present legal framework, criminal investigation and judicial processes.
Willingness to Pay
As a corollary or as an adjunct to the lack of social stigma, there is willingness and readiness on the part of large sections of our society (not just the business people) to pay bribes to get speedy service or some "special treatment" in discretionary matters. It is well to remember that corruption (like clapping) needs two hands to materialise. In reality, we have developed a society that not only tolerates corruption but also actively engages in it. How often does one hear an otherwise law abiding citizen "boast" about how he got a job done by paying a bribe, because that was the only way to get it done? Bureaucrats, business executives and politicians are all products of this society and they reflect this trend.
Inadequate Remuneration
One of the justifications often heard for routine bureaucratic corruption (whether in the government or elsewhere) is "inadequate remuneration". This was to a large extent valid in an era when the ruler expected his viceroys, governors and other representatives (and every major non-governmental employer expected his procurement agents and other employees) to "live off the land"; and paid them a salary only as if to "certify" their employment - as an integral part of the feudal system. The role of the government has changed from an absolute ruler to a representative of the people entrusted with the responsibility for ensuring an orderly society. Government servants are now called "public servants". They are paid a better-than-living wage. However, the mind-set of many in and outside the government is such that they still think that routine corruption is a rightful supplement to the salaries.
Lack of Civic Interest in Politics
Michael Schudson, author of 'A History of American Civic Life' (published by Harvard University Press) and 'The Good Citizen', has said that when the USA reached the point of having a well-organised party system and high voter turnout (after the Civil War of 1861-65), the character of American politics was overwhelmingly that of a battle over money, jobs, and power, with little or no public-interest component. High-minded and educated people hated politics and fought to limit the power of politicians through means like the establishment of the civil service. An honest, efficient and depoliticised government, in which experts had disproportionate influence, became triumphant in the late 19th century; but as the government got depoliticised, politics mattered less and the natural outcome was that most people became less interested and involved in it. The basic set of present day civic ideals - like good governance, an objective and reform-oriented press, a powerful and benevolent government, and an idealistically engaged citizenry - originated with reformers who thought of them as antidotes to the then current ills of politics. Ironically, the growth of mass engagement in American politics and public affairs in the twentieth century has led the public to become apathetic and cynical about politics. Conventional wisdom holds that if people do not vote or otherwise engage themselves in public affairs, it is because they have become disgusted with politics; and that if we could only eliminate the money and the spoils and create a political system based on calm reason, they would come back. I am in agreement with Schudson’s argument that good citizenship is fundamentally an act of politics. Hence the best way to promote it is to make politics as broad, open, responsive and consequential as possible.
High Cost of Politics
When we look at the political scene, we see that the cost of acquiring and retaining power has escalated exponentially in the last six decades. Naturally, exact figures are not available, but it would not be wrong to say that the election expenses of a party in an assembly constituency now is far in excess of what that party would have spent in an entire province or even in the entire country in 1937 or 1946. There have, of course, been expensive technological "developments" in campaigning techniques. Beyond these, there are much higher "anticipated returns" and the emergence of previously-unknown items of significant expenditure by individual candidates and political parties. Some of these are :
- General contributions to the party’s finances.
- Payments to other contenders within the party, to persuade them not to contest.
- Payments to the party (and its leadership, in some cases) for being nominated.
- Payments to valid candidates to persuade them to withdraw.
- Payments to elements providing the "muscle power".
- Payments to "professional" campaigners.
- Payments to "helpful officials" during elections.
- Illegal payments to entice voters.
- Payments for the "purchase" of legislators, to put together a majority.
- Payments for the retention of loyalties of wavering supporters.
Politician-Bureaucrat Nexus
Politicians and bureaucrats have to work in close collaboration for the benefit of the public, but when such collaboration extends to corrupt practices, the society suffers. The fact is that high politicisation is by far the most damaging of all the adverse images of the bureaucracy. It is a chicken-and egg situation as to whether the bureaucracy taught corruption to the politicians or the latter compels the former to be corrupt in certain ways. I have spoken to many bureaucrats and politicians over the last fifty years and each class blames the other. By the very nature of their work, many influential government officials come in close contact with political personalities and, because of their all-pervasive presence and intrusive capacity in society, they are often "used" by the political parties. While all "help" sought by the political parties are not necessarily illegal or against public interest, there is a widely held view that many bureaucrats volunteer to be helpful (not always by lawful means) to different political parties in their quest for personal benefits and career advancement. A very senior political leader told me nearly fifty years ago that if even one-third of the bureaucrats would insist on being correct and not succumb to the blandishments and threats of politicians, they would be beyond being "used". In another interesting conversation about forty years ago, a senior politician, who was well-known for his corrupt-but-efficient administration, claimed that the wide-spread corruption of his government was in the nature of the "usual 15% administrative charge levied by prime contractors in major projects", and that the bureaucrats who were the collecting agents got their fair commission.
Politician-Criminal Nexus
A lot has been said and written about the unholy nexus between some politicians and criminal elements, but very little has been done to tackle this. It may be because such combinations are found by different political parties to be useful at different times. The need for "muscle power" and unaccounted money could be more easily met by friendly criminals. In due course, as we have already seen in many instances, criminals may become politicians and start "using" other politicians.
Remedies
In mathematics, there is no figure as infinity; it is a concept and a figure can only "tend towards infinity". Similarly, it would be unrealistic to expect that we can completely eradicate corruption from India or any other country, but we can and should strive to proceed towards a corruption-free India. The remedies we seek have to be at many levels, because of the varied causes for and varied forms of corruption. We need to look for long-term social engineering and also immediate measures; and we may one’s have to devise methods separately to tackle routine and specific forms of corruption. We should treat the symptoms immediately and the root causes with more patience. In effect, we should be prepared for drastic surgery, judiciously mixed with slow homeopathic treatment.
Long Term Measures
History teaches us that we cannot bring about changes in human behaviour by legislation or in a short period; it has to be done in a gradual and non-disruptive manner. We have to sensitise children and students in schools/colleges to values like honesty, goodwill and consideration for others, tolerance, harmony and non-violence. From as early a stage as possible in their upbringing, they should be goaded into developing a loathing for disruptive and destructive tendencies; and to realise the importance of playing their role as responsible citizens. We should try and restore to corruption the social stigma that it deserves and it once had. Even while the civil society continues its efforts to make the ruling elite more accountable and more responsive, we can and should try to educate and train the children in schools and colleges to demand, when they grow up, that the elite should recognise and accept that with their privileges come certain responsibilities. The efforts to restore honesty, transparency and equity in public life should be made from the ground up. The provision of good and correct inputs in their formative years should be the primary aim of value based education. A scheme envisaged by the Gandhi Smriti of Delhi, for the establishment of Gandhi Kendras in schools, could be one of the models that could be studied.
Role of Media
It is the duty of the media to inform, educate and entertain the public. Yet, how many episodes are we able to see on TV without scenes of domestic or mass violence or corruption or fraud or other kinds of mindless criminality? It is difficult to say whether media items spawn misdemeanours and felonies or if the media only represent what is actually happening in the society. Many sociological studies have clearly brought out that fact does imitate fiction and that youth tend to learn criminal ways from media items. How many crimes do we have to prove as directly copying movies or TV shows before the media would exercise their social responsibility and stop glorifying violence and other lawless behaviour, type-casting corrupt politicians and officials etc. One oft-repeated plea is that the viewers like such content and that their preference is what determines the advertisement revenue, the staple of commercial media activities. It would therefore seem essential to convince the media and the public that, even while looking for escapist entertainment, they should provide a value base in social dramas and in the reporting, if the efforts at the gradual and necessary social engineering are to meet with any success.
Civic Society
It is impractical to expect voluntary or total conversion of the power elite. The vested interests in the political and bureaucratic establishments have shown that they will not voluntarily deliver good governance unless demanded and insisted upon. After all, the basics of good governance, i.e. transparency, right to information, absence (or minimal level) of corruption, responsiveness and accountability are against the entrenched personal stakes of those establishments. However, good citizens can demand and get good governance. Good governance would have to be earned by good and well-informed citizens, before unruly elements seek the change through not-necessarily-legal means.
Changes in Law & Judicial Process
The harm caused by corruption to the national economy, pride and welfare is not any less than the harm caused to national security and well-being by terrorism. There is not much doubt or difference of opinion about the need for new definitions and procedures to tackle terrorism. Similarly, significant changes in the law and the judicial process are required to deal with corruption.
All persons in authority (in government, business or politics) should be covered by anti-corruption legislation. Demand, offer, acceptance and payment of bribe should all be made substantive and cognisable offences. The definition of bribe should include all unauthorised payments for performing one’s duty in the prescribed manner or for using one’s official discretion in a specified manner.
There must be a mandate for timely investigations and speedy trials (as in the military court-martials), so that the benefits of repeated adjournments and appeals at every step are not available to the accused. The present provisions for the denial of access to ill-gotten wealth during the trial process and for the ultimate confiscation of such wealth should be strengthened in favour of the society, probably by making them mandatory (or possible) even in cases where the accused is acquitted on "technical" grounds. The deterrent effect would be felt only if there is a reasonable fear that the trial would be quick (while being fair), sentence would be prompt and that the proceeds of corruption would be forfeited.
A special constitutional provision needs to be considered for corrupt officials, similar to that enabling the summary dismissal of officials in the interest of national security.
Government and corporate entities should actively engage themselves in open campaigns to discourage the public from offering or paying "routine" bribes, with the co-operation of civic-minded NGOs. Protection should be provided, through appropriate internal mechanisms, from retributary vengeance by those in authority.
These and other similar measures could reduce the incidence of routine corruption to the level of rarity (as in many other societies) from the present "fact of life" levels. Investigative and judicial agencies could then stop spending disproportionate efforts and time on routine cases and concentrate on the more pernicious cases of specific corruption.
Gudelines for Discretion
Efficient administration requires the delegation of considerable discretion to the authorities at different levels. At the same time, unfettered discretion can (and is often) misused to foster corruption. A delicate balance has to be achieved between the needs of efficiency and of honesty. Efforts need to be made to prescribe guidelines about how discretion should be exercised in various predictable situations; and a requirement should be mandated that the reasons for exercising the discretion in a certain manner should be recorded.
The best guarantee of the honest (even if occasionally wrong) exercise of discretion is to make the decision-making process totally transparent and accessible to all interested parties, as far as possible. This should always be so in purchase and contracting procedures.
Election Laws
The Election Commission of India, in informal consultation with many NGOs, has made many salutary recommendations to the government. The government, presumably because of pressure from many political parties, has not yet taken many decisions. In particular, the temporary disqualification of persons against whom charges (relating to specified types of offences carrying imprisonment for specified periods) are framed in a competent court needs to be acted upon quickly, to strike at the politician-criminal nexus. The list of "heinous" offences should include all corruption-related offences. Such a person, if already a member of a legislature/cabinet, should also be subject to suspension till the case is finally decided. This would transfer the onus for a speedy disposal onto the accused persons.
Regulation of Political Parties
Political parties have become arguably the most unaccountable bodies in Indian public life. Most of them do not practise any real form of inner party democracy and do not open their finances to any kind of public scrutiny. Often, their methods of selecting candidates for contesting in various elections are non-transparent. The government and the Election Commission should exercise their existing powers (and seek additional powers, if necessary) to make the political parties more accountable to the public and to their own membership. The parties would also find it in their long-term interests to co-operate in such efforts to improve their credibility.
Conclusion
A liberal democracy would be effective in serving the people only if traditional values of public service are restored, if there is a conscious effort to inform and educate the people about important issues and there is transparency in decision-making to make it more difficult to be corrupt. Modernity and scientific and economic progress need not be at the cost of established values that have sustained our society for millennia. There should be no embarrassment in restating good societal values. They do not flow from any one religion, as most religions praise and teach them. The acceptance and practice of these values by increasingly large numbers of young people could not but lead to the development of a secular and vibrant civil society that is not a votary of violence or a supporter of corruption. Such a society will have less criminality and fewer causes for violent mass action. To paraphrase what our President has said in his book "India 2020 - A Vision for the New Millennium", our country needs punyatmas (those who sacrifice their own comforts to pursue nation-building activities), punyadhikaris (able persons in administration who facilitate this process) and punyanetas (who will provide self-less and honest leadership). This may just be a dream, but some dreams materialise some times. Let this be one of those times.
[The author, R.Swaminathan, is a retired member of the Indian Police Service and a former Secretary, DG (Security), Government of India.]
Courtesy - Vigilance Profession Magazine, Chennai
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