While searching for information on the scale of Corruption in India, one is struck by the amazing dearth of any credible information.
There are a whole host of scales and indexes for everything under the sun including the esoteric Business Confidence index, Human Development index, Happiness index to the more mundane such as Inflation, GDP, Government Approval ratings etc.
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Its not for nothing that Customs is the most sought after cadre behind IAS & IPS in Civil Services Examination. The department reeks of Corruption. Its has got an ever flowing stream of ‘liquid cash’ that beckons new recruits. Estimated average daily bribe collected by Customs officials range from Rs 50,000 to Rs 2 lakh as per graft investigators. Three recent HT stories give us a glimpse of the rot with in the department.
I was forced to mull on this question by the runway popularity of a recent post by Fumiko Nagano on the World Bank blog regarding the efforts of 5th Pillar to fight Corruption in India with Zero Rupee Notes. Since then, it has taken the digital world by storm with several hundred twitterattis including @ShashiTharoor and @Gulpanag retweeting its link and several prominent websites including The Economist, CNN, Boing Boing featuring related posts. 5th Pillar is Chennai based, grass roots organisation that has been working against Corruption using RTI and Zero Rupee Notes. It encourages people to use Zero Rupee Notes distributed by them to counter requests for bribe. This is akin to ‘Gandhigiri’ as it tries to shame the Corrupt officials into giving up Corruption instead of using punitive measures. For the uninitiated, the concept of Gandhigiri was introduced by a 2006 Hindi film, Lage Raho Munna Bhai. It consists of confronting the tormentor with moral force, kindness and non-violence in true Gandhian tradition. Since the release of the movie, strikers, protesters and activists have begun to distribute roses or flowers to draw attention to their cause. Even powerful Politicians & Police have sometimes resorted to Gandhigiri in an attempt to educate the public and convey their message.
| Department/ Designation | Service | Location | Rate | Reference |
| Income Tax | Refund (Manual IT Return) | India | up to 10% of Refund Amount | @NoBribe |
| Police | FIR – Stolen Car | Noida | Rs. 5,000/- | @Akshay_Khanna |
| Police | Passport Police Verification | India | Rs. 200 – 500/- | @NoBribe |
| Police | Passport Police Verification | Bangalore | Rs. 100/- | msubbudu |
| Police | Traffic Violation | Bangalore | Rs. 100/- | msubbudu |
| Railways | Ticket-less Travel | India | upto 50% of Ticket Price | @NoBribe |
| BDO/ Mukhiya/ Gram Sevak | BPL Card | Bihar | Rs. 5,000/- | Hindustan Times – Patna, 30.04.2010 |
| District Registrar | Marriage Registration | Noida | Rs. 1,100/- | @Naina |
| Karnataka Electricity Board | Repairing Main line from Pole | Bangalore | Rs. 75/- per person | msubbudu |
| TNEB | Allocation of Transformer/ Cable to an area | Tamilnadu | Rs. 5,000/- | TOI |
| TNEB | 3 Phase, 50/100 Amps Meter | Tamilnadu | Rs. 3,000 – 5,000/- | TOI |
| TNEB | Replace burnt Meter | Tamilnadu | Rs. 2,000/- | TOI |
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Out of the many advices that Gandhiji gave to the nation, none has been turned on its head more completely than his three monkeys sermon. His three monkeys symbolised the purity of inner self with ‘See No Evil, Hear No Evil and Speak No Evil’ . The bureaucrats and the politicians have conveniently taken two of his three advices to their hearts - See No Evil and Hear No Evil. That is what prevents them from seeing any corruption or hearing about any either.
Governments routinely go about their work with blinkers on, paying scant attention to the rampant corruption all around them. While government can’t find corruption, people can’t seem to lose it. A common man meets corruption everywhere. To him, government itself has become the fountainhead of corruption. Wherever citizens come in contact with government, corruption potentially happens. The incidence of corruption is so pervasive in the day to day life that it is ironical that government vigilance departments have to work so hard to nail corruption. When corruption is present everywhere, all one needs is the determination to confront it. Yet the charade of catching and releasing culprits goes on, while the malady of corruption festers and grows by the day.
If the government is serious about confronting corruption, first of all, it needs to get its head out of the sand and boldly acknowledge the existence of the problem. Any solution can only emanate from there. The government can then begin its war on corruption by holding ‘Anti Corruption Weeks’ for promoting awareness and informing about future corruption control methods. This should be followed by ‘Corruption Audits’ of departments for both the people as well as the processes. The aim of these audits should be to locate those departments that can be easily rid of corruption and used as models for the rest of the departments. The audits should review official documentation and the procedures that are being followed, especially with respect to common citizens. It should also review the financial status of the officials to match their known sources of income. Most importantly public comments should be invited to gauge the perception about the department. Wherever feasible social media should be used for the purpose. The audits should certify certain departments as ‘Corruption Free’ based on their findings. The rest of the departments should be asked to draw a migration plan for being certified ‘corruption free’ after repeat future audits.Once certified, the departments should be subject to even higher standards of accountability and any transgressions should be severely punished. All this may seem like a fairy tale but a driven person like T. N. Sheshan or A. P. J. Kalam, as our ‘Corruption Czar’ can quickly turn fairy tales into reality.
