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.

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Another common den of corruption is the Railways. Corruption here, is like a 24 hour news channel, its always on. Street knowledge will tell you that if you have no reservation and you still need to travel, it is easier for you to board the train with a simple Platform ticket or even no ticket at all, rather than with a full paid ‘wait-list’ ticket. Why? Because it gives the Ticket Inspector more room to play with. A ticket-less traveler in the reserved compartment travels as the personal guest of the Ticket Inspector. Its a win win for both of them, the traveler pays half the fare , the Ticket Inspector gets his bribe, only the government looses out in between. However the situation is downright frightening in the unreserved class. Passengers are packed like sardines. Peasants and poor people are routinely harassed by the GRP and the Ticket Inspectors.  A number of times such harassment leads to their off loading from running train, often causing severe injuries and sometimes even death. But the extortion carries on throughout the days and especially the nights.

Politics and corruption have almost become synonymous in India. Of all corruptions, political corruption is the most brazen of them all. Politicians easily explain away corruption as political conspiracy and opposition’s move to defame them. The images of Sukhram caught with crores stashed under his bed, Narsimha Rao’s son declaring more than 200 crores in VDIS, Shibu Soren casting his vote in favour of the government in lieu of money found in his bank account, Mayawati declaring to the Income Tax Department, hundreds of crores of rupees, as personal gifts from her poor followers, and the very recent Buta-son act – all have one thing in common – the persons concerned continued in active politics even after being exposed. Politicians use their control over the levers of power to milk the system on a sustained basis. Their need for corruption grows in tandem with their stature as corruption is their primary source of revenue for keeping their political fortunes alive.

If corrupt politcians and officials are the Gods of Corruption, the Judiciary is truly the temple of corruption. Armed with the powers of contempt of court, and the discretionary powers of granting bail and dispensing punishment , Judiciary lords over corruption. Everybody swears by the Judiciary and bows before it. It is difficult not to get corrupted by such power. Corruption has been institutionalised in Judiciary, and everyone partakes. The lawyers, registrars, court orderlies, and the judges all join in to fleece the litigants and the accused. The longer the case meanders, the more chance there is to extort money. From the most minor task of seeking deferral to the grat of bail, and the highest task of deciding the case, everything carries a price tag. The secrecy, the lack of alternatives, the fear of reprisals, everything conspires to keep the judicial corruption under wraps. In the odd cases where it comes to light, progess is slow and ineffective. Not only does the Judiciary brim with corruption, it is also used by the beureucracy to cajole common citizens into submission. The threat of facing a corrupt, inefficent Judiciary soon brings them to their knees. Government after all, is not only the largest litigant in the country by a huge margin, but is also the largest abuser of law to persecute citizens on fabricated or inflated cases.

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Guru Nanak had once famously remarked to his disciples – Tell me which direction there is no God and I will point my feet there. Corruption  too has acquired similar proportions.  There is nowhere to hide from Corruption. It is becoming omnipresent.

The next time you happen to pass by a roadside Traffic Police ‘May I Help You’ booth, on way to your office in the morning, look closely.

You just might see the Traffic Policeman doing puja with ‘Aggarbatti’ (incense sticks) in his hands. No! he is not merely being religious. He is also acknowledging the fact that apart from this being his duty station, it is also his seat of business. He is beginning his workday like any other shopkeeper by propitiating goddess Laxmi.  He then proceeds to be on the lookout for candidates to extort money from. The more entrepreneurial of the lot, even hire an assistant at their cost to receive bribe money on their behalf. This is to protect themselves from getting caught red handed. Is it any secret then, that many of these booths at strategic locations are prized possessions and transfer postings to them take place after considerable sums of money exchange hands.

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Corruption is silently eating into the vitals of our nation like termite. Bit by bit, it is denting our dignity and compromising our soul. Not only does it affect individuals like you and me but alarmingly it affects our nation as a whole. Imagine our nation slowly transforming into a nation of scoundrels and imbeciles. The odds, that next person you meet on the street, having either asked for or having paid a bribe, are getting higher by the day. India’s ranking in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index too has slipped from 72 to 85 in 2008. All this exhibits a problem that is not going anywhere soon and mocks the high moral ground that we aspire to occupy in the international arena.

Corruption has afflicted all the organs of our society including the polity, bureaucracy, judiciary, police, businessmen, and even  public at large. It has rendered our governance apparatus hollow and ineffective. Countless efforts to combat corruption have not made any significant dent into this hydra headed monster. continue reading »

A recent CAG sample survey report stated that only 3.2% of the target households of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme have benefited from the scheme. This means that 96.8% of the corpus spent on this most ambitious social sector scheme launched in Independent India’s history, might be going down the drain. Even though it was only a sample study and its results can not not be uniformly extrapolated, the statistics are still staggering. Decades after the famous confession of the then neophyte Rajiv Gandhi that for every Rupee spent by the government, only 15 paise reaches its intended recipients, things have only gotten worse. Subsequent studies have shown that the average utilisation figure may be still lower at around 6% only. Slowly but surely, the veneer of public good that’s draped around all government schemes is now coming off and the ‘emperor stands exposed with no clothes  on’.  All the rhetoric about caring for the poor is just that – rhetoric. These schemes are nothing but ingenuous machinations of the politicians, by the bureaucrats for their cronies. Government spending in India has become the fountainhead of corruption and any benefits to the needy sections of society is largely cosmetic and unintended.

If things have to improve, more and more technology needs to be brought into the distribution process. Technology can be used to better target subsidies and ensure transparency. continue reading »