Well, not exactly ZERO, but quite close to it.
Many months have passed since my last post on CWG. Guess what? Since then we have not only successfully completed the games (by the skin of our teeth) but have started proceedings against the perpetrators of the national acts of shame. But we have also eclipsed the CWG shame by bringing to light the mother of all scams - the 2G scam. If the CWG scam was a blot on the execution capabilities of India, 2G is a testament to the brazenness and the ingenuity of the corrupt political system. Let me not get into the details, nor into the defense put up by the PM (coalition dharma etc).
My purpose here is to take a look at what can be done to reduce corruption and take this country back from the corrupt and the criminals. As you will see, it is quite simple.
I recently read an article which described corruption in terms of simple and elegant equation:
C = M+ D -A
C stands for corruption,
M for monopoly
D for discretion and
A is for accountability.
Basically what this means is when you have little or no competition, when the government / bureaucracy enjoys wide discretion and is not held accountable these lacunae singly or in combination breed corruption.
So what do we do?
Simply correct the defects, eliminate the lacunae.
Think of the following 10 steps:
1. Make people aware. Let them know that they need a ration card, where to get it, how to get it and how to proceed if they face hurdles. Knowledge is power they say and we will need to make the people powerful if we are to slay this demon of corruption.
2. Educate the Bureaucracy. We must also let the petty bureaucrats know that they exist to serve the people, how exactly do they issue a ration card, consequences of not doing their job, penalties of not helping those they are required to help, etc etc.
3. Make the services easily accessible. Use technology to make services available to people without them having to queue up for hours and beg and plead the babudom. If a street-corner vendor is smart enough to make a few bucks by booking rail tickets online, so be it. They used to run phone booths before cell-phones became ubiquitous.
4. Remove the monopoly. Let the competition in. With so many airlines these days, prices have crashed, and there is a whole range of prices from the steepest to the cheapest. You can do all of this from the comfort of your home/ office PC.
5. Remove the discretion. Discretion, to paraphrase an old saying, is the mother of corruption. Make the rules simple, make them fewer and make them known and there will be no need for babus to interpret them. This will eliminate the need to petition the babudom for a favourable dispensation. Don't let babudom fool you with the need to be flexible to accommodate the varied citizenry of this country.That's another ruse to keep the discretion which rings the cash registers. Recent high profile cases involving a tax dispute and a takeover both indicate how the discretion is being misused. Couldn't these situations have been foreseen and covered in the respective rules?
6.Give people access to information. RTI. RTI and yet more RTI. RTI is one of the most important measures ever taken in independent India. When people know, they can act. Which is why babudom is fighting to prevent its comments being accessed under RTI.
7.Have a clear law for dealing with corrupt acts. Current laws and their dispensation can take ages to catch the guilty and another eon to punish them. We need quicker dispensation of justice so that the corrupt know they will be dealt with as surely the next day will dawn.
7. Punishments should be confiscatory, swift and punitive. Seize not only the proceeds of corruption, but ALL ASSETS of the corrupt. Unless there is a fear of losing everything, including what your grandfather gave you, there is little incentive to be honest and every incentive to be corrupt. Giver and taker should both be punished.
8. Make everyone accountable. Everyone in government must be made accountable for doing their jobs right, and in a timely manner. They should be accountable for the financial and other implications of their actions. For example if tax laws had a loophole that lost the government money, the concerned officials should go behind bars.
9. Focus the government's role. The governments role is NOT to run airlines & banks, make steel, films, etc etc.Its role is to provide people a safe and secure environment to pursue their dreams and to make the minimum number of laws necessary for that. Government business enterprises serve only one purpose: they serve as tools in the hands of the political class and sometimes the babus.
10.Start with the low-hanging fruits. There is always the dilemma: where do we start in the fight against corruption? Contrary to common wisdom I propose that we START AT THE BOTTOM. The reason is simple; by definition the corrupt at high places are powerful, rich or both and thus can stall any move against them. This is what we have seen the last 60 years. So start with the bottom level, small-time operators. In course of time their anger at being targeted will prod them into naming names and pointing fingers at their bosses. Which will enable us to move a step further up and so on.
Have I over-simplified it? I think not. Start talking about this. We need to raise the volume so high that the powers that be cannot but hear us and cannot but give in.
Many months have passed since my last post on CWG. Guess what? Since then we have not only successfully completed the games (by the skin of our teeth) but have started proceedings against the perpetrators of the national acts of shame. But we have also eclipsed the CWG shame by bringing to light the mother of all scams - the 2G scam. If the CWG scam was a blot on the execution capabilities of India, 2G is a testament to the brazenness and the ingenuity of the corrupt political system. Let me not get into the details, nor into the defense put up by the PM (coalition dharma etc).
My purpose here is to take a look at what can be done to reduce corruption and take this country back from the corrupt and the criminals. As you will see, it is quite simple.
I recently read an article which described corruption in terms of simple and elegant equation:
C = M+ D -A
C stands for corruption,
M for monopoly
D for discretion and
A is for accountability.
Basically what this means is when you have little or no competition, when the government / bureaucracy enjoys wide discretion and is not held accountable these lacunae singly or in combination breed corruption.
So what do we do?
Simply correct the defects, eliminate the lacunae.
Think of the following 10 steps:
1. Make people aware. Let them know that they need a ration card, where to get it, how to get it and how to proceed if they face hurdles. Knowledge is power they say and we will need to make the people powerful if we are to slay this demon of corruption.
2. Educate the Bureaucracy. We must also let the petty bureaucrats know that they exist to serve the people, how exactly do they issue a ration card, consequences of not doing their job, penalties of not helping those they are required to help, etc etc.
3. Make the services easily accessible. Use technology to make services available to people without them having to queue up for hours and beg and plead the babudom. If a street-corner vendor is smart enough to make a few bucks by booking rail tickets online, so be it. They used to run phone booths before cell-phones became ubiquitous.
4. Remove the monopoly. Let the competition in. With so many airlines these days, prices have crashed, and there is a whole range of prices from the steepest to the cheapest. You can do all of this from the comfort of your home/ office PC.
5. Remove the discretion. Discretion, to paraphrase an old saying, is the mother of corruption. Make the rules simple, make them fewer and make them known and there will be no need for babus to interpret them. This will eliminate the need to petition the babudom for a favourable dispensation. Don't let babudom fool you with the need to be flexible to accommodate the varied citizenry of this country.That's another ruse to keep the discretion which rings the cash registers. Recent high profile cases involving a tax dispute and a takeover both indicate how the discretion is being misused. Couldn't these situations have been foreseen and covered in the respective rules?
6.Give people access to information. RTI. RTI and yet more RTI. RTI is one of the most important measures ever taken in independent India. When people know, they can act. Which is why babudom is fighting to prevent its comments being accessed under RTI.
7.Have a clear law for dealing with corrupt acts. Current laws and their dispensation can take ages to catch the guilty and another eon to punish them. We need quicker dispensation of justice so that the corrupt know they will be dealt with as surely the next day will dawn.
7. Punishments should be confiscatory, swift and punitive. Seize not only the proceeds of corruption, but ALL ASSETS of the corrupt. Unless there is a fear of losing everything, including what your grandfather gave you, there is little incentive to be honest and every incentive to be corrupt. Giver and taker should both be punished.
8. Make everyone accountable. Everyone in government must be made accountable for doing their jobs right, and in a timely manner. They should be accountable for the financial and other implications of their actions. For example if tax laws had a loophole that lost the government money, the concerned officials should go behind bars.
9. Focus the government's role. The governments role is NOT to run airlines & banks, make steel, films, etc etc.Its role is to provide people a safe and secure environment to pursue their dreams and to make the minimum number of laws necessary for that. Government business enterprises serve only one purpose: they serve as tools in the hands of the political class and sometimes the babus.
10.Start with the low-hanging fruits. There is always the dilemma: where do we start in the fight against corruption? Contrary to common wisdom I propose that we START AT THE BOTTOM. The reason is simple; by definition the corrupt at high places are powerful, rich or both and thus can stall any move against them. This is what we have seen the last 60 years. So start with the bottom level, small-time operators. In course of time their anger at being targeted will prod them into naming names and pointing fingers at their bosses. Which will enable us to move a step further up and so on.
Have I over-simplified it? I think not. Start talking about this. We need to raise the volume so high that the powers that be cannot but hear us and cannot but give in.
