India Bribing! In Search of Anti Corruption’s Holy Grail

Posted on: January 28 2008 | Author: Gopathampi | Comments:0

“... Let me give you a tip. Only one power in this damn country is strong enough to stand up against those gods.... You know what it is?. I’ll tell you what it is. Corruption. You get me?..... Jolly old damn fine bribery and grease.....V. Miranda’s definition of democracy: one man one bribe.” (Salman Rushdie, The Moor’s Last Sigh, Pantheon Books, 1995).

by Gopakumar Thampi 

In an era where buzzwords and mantras have a shockingly short shelf life, Corruption has shown a remarkable longevity in hogging the spotlights for well over a decade now. Thanks to the never ending cascade of scams and exposes, the C-word has monopolized our lexicon on politics and governance. The long arm of corruption has left virtually no institution untouched – right from the obvious (politics) to the sublime (religion) and from Bollywood to Cricket.

Amidst the “feel good” factors of economic upswings and the Pentium powered resurgence of the great Indian middle class, there lurks a sordid tale of India Bribing – a saga of never ending cascades of scams and scandals and half-hearted attempts to tame the beast of corruption. And as a rainbow coalition at the Centre ushered in by a fractured verdict struggles to appease incompatible bedmates, corruption thrives, multiplies, adapts and mutates with immunity. Can anything be done at all to tame the beast of corruption?

The first and in many ways, the much needed task is to reflect a strong confidence that India need not be doomed to wallow in a mire of corruption forever and that it is possible – as shown by other countries – to roll back and contain corruption. Here are some essential building blocks to frame an effective anti corruption strategy:

a. Reform of the Political Process: Politics - the most sensitive but the most fundamental root of corruption – rightly termed as the “fountain head” of corruption in India. It also happens to be an area where all political parties across the spectrum have admirably failed to usher in standards of probity and transparency. Though the UPA government made some promising noises in the beginning, nothing much has transpired. The reform of the political process should cover the following critical themes:

- Immediate enactment of the “Election and other related laws (Amendment) Bill, 2002. The Bill provides for party accounts disclosure and public auditing, full tax exemptions for political contributions, public funding in kind and allocation of air-time in government and private electronic media. Disclosures should be mandatorily made public and stringent penalties need to be drafted to check defaulters. All political donations by companies should be made subject to approval at the shareholder’s meetings of companies and all such donations should be made public through the annual reports of the companies.
- Enact a law for regulating the functioning of political parties. The law should require political parties to (a) hold regular organizational elections to various levels; (b) maintain prompt and systematic accounts and submit audited accounts to the prescribed authority (for e.g., the Election Commission) and (c) strictly comply with income tax regulations and guidelines. The Election Commission should be given the authority to derecognize political parties if they fail to observe the proposed law.
- A Code of Conduct should be adopted by the Parliament and an Ethics Committee should be created to monitor observance of the code and decide on actions to be taken in case of violations. An excellent model has been drafted by the late Mrs. Durgabhai Deshmukh, but was never acted upon.
- Check mass defections and horse trading by strengthening the existing Anti Defection Act along the following lines: (a) specifying a “cooling-off” time between leaving one party and joining another and (b) a ban on taking office for at least one year, after defection to the ruling party.

b. Reorienting Public Services: The major task of the public service is to implement the policies of the government of the day. However, a public service of competence and integrity is a distant dream for many in India. In most cases, public services have become a home for needy cronies or posts that have been literally purchased (thereby fuelling a need for “returns on investments”). Reforms to reorient the public services should take cognizance of the following red zones:
- The ambit of the regulatory functions of the government should be reviewed to reduce the incentives and opportunities for corruption. Deregulation and Debureaucratisation are the key strategies here. Focus should be on more corruption-prone public agencies having a high degree of interaction with people. Clear guidelines for public seeking services and approvals, stricter supervisions, decision making in open forums and access to information on such decisions will go a long way in ushering in a culture of transparency and openness.
- Creating an Independent Anti Corruption Agency. Experiences from Hong Kong and South Korea clearly point to the potency of an independent anti corruption agency to control corruption. However, to ensure the effective functioning of such agencies, certain basic conditions have to be met: (a) concepts of prevention and prosecution must go hand in hand; (b) committed political backing at the highest levels of government; (c) adequate resources to carry out it’s operations; (d) political and operational independence to investigate even the highest levels of government; (e) adequate powers of access to documentation and for the questioning of witnesses and (f) agency to be headed by persons of highest integrity.
- Drafting a unified public procurement code. Few activities create greater temptations or offer more opportunities for corruption than public sector procurement. It is estimated that bribes account for almost 30% of the total procurement cost in many cases. Specific aspects in this regard could include: rules of public procurement laid down in documents and made accessible to public, making procurement decisions public, availability of procedures to review procurement decisions, independent audits of project performance as against original cost estimates and independent mechanisms in the procurement process to ensure compliance.

c. Reiterating the commitment to support public actions against corruption: Public action is paramount to render public policy effective. Reform of political processes and reorientation of government machineries need to be complemented by systematic efforts to inform citizens about their rights and entitlements, and to enable them to monitor and challenge abuses. Urgent steps required in this direction are:
- Enactment of laws that mandate public authorities to disseminate and display essential information about their services and indicate remedies available to the public when the assured standards of services are not met.
- Enact a “Whistleblower Protection” Legislation. As the tragic cases of Satyendra Kumar Dubey and Shanmugham Manjunath prove, revealing corruption can cost one’s life. It is essential that people come out in the open and report cases of corruption without the fear of intimidation or reprisal.

End Note

“Who is more to blame,
though either should do wrong?
She who sins for pay
or he who pays to sin?”
- Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1649-1695), Mexican Nun, Poet and Writer

Therapeutic Nihilism was an idea that was immensely popular in the intellectual life of late 18th Century Europe. Put very simply, it was a contention that curing people, or societies, of their ills by treatment is impossible. However, many brave and innovative souls rebelled against this nihilistic belief and provided us with spectacular advancements in science, medicine and social sciences. To a large extent, the fight against corruption today is a battle against mindsets. The challenge is break the culture of silence and energize the collective spirit of the world’s largest democracy into taking assertive steps to stem the rot of corruption.