COMBATING CORRUPTION

COMBATING CORRUPTION By Ravi Valluri PCOM, NCR As I sat down to write this piece for the Vigilance Awareness Week, a few regular features of this annual exercise mushroomed in the alcoves of my mind. The pledge (administered by the head of a government department to officers and staff to maintain probity in life), programmes highlighting corrupt practices and a few plays portraying corruption at various levels are a given. There are laughs, but within a few weeks all is forgotten. It is not they become corrupt overnight, but there is a general apathy about corrupt practices. I also recall the legendary lines of a handsome Prime Minister who once said that only a quarter of every one rupee spent by the government reaches the impoverished, implying that the rest gets pocketed along the way. It is another matter the same gentleman stood accused in an infamous defence deal. So, what does it mean to be corrupt? It is singularly dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power, typically involving bribery. It will be interesting to dissect the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) attributed to different countries. This is an index which is documented and has been published annually by Transparency International since 1995. This document ranks countries “by their perceived levels of public sector corruption, as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys.” The Corruption Perceptions Index invariably defines corruption as “the misuse of public power for personal gratification.” The 2019 CPI, which was published in January of 2020, ranks 180 countries on a scale of 100 (very clean) to 0 (exceedingly dishonest). Not surprisingly Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Singapore and Switzerland are countries which can claim the honesty medals tally as they have consistently emerged as the least corrupt nations in the world, ranking regularly high in the international financial transparency index, while in the bottomless pit and among the most corrupt nations in the world is Somalia, barely managing 8-10 points out of 100 since 2012. India with 41 points is in the heterogenous cluster of countries like Morocco, Ghana, Benin and People’s Republic of China. Corruption in India has been a challenge for the administration since ancient times. Arthashastra, a treatise on administration, governance, politics, economy and corruption has analysed in-depth the administrative set up needed to ensure efficient and effective governance. Chanakya (also known as Kautilya), author of the aforementioned treatise laid great emphasis on management of finances. The erudite scholar had explained as to why corruption occurred, what its impact could be on society and suggested possible remedies. Kautilya had always feared that government servants who enjoyed phenomenal position of power and pelf would invariably embezzle substantial sums from the government treasury for themselves. He was of the opinion that just as it is well-nigh impossible to not taste honey or poison at the tip of tongue, it was virtually impossible for government officials to not eat away a part of the king’s revenue. According to Kautilya (and I would say it holds true even today), basically officials in the position of power give into temptation and avarice. People in general, have an enormous lust to garner luxuries and comforts consequently they get involved in unscrupulous and sometimes even unsavoury practices to gain monetary or material benefits. Lack of appropriate remuneration to government functionaries could also be one of the probable triggers of corruption. Somewhere till the mid eighteenth century, India and China together contributed almost 52% of world GDP and India was generally a prosperous land. However, once we were enslaved, first by the British East India Company and subsequently when we became a colony of the British Empire, the chasm between the rich and the impoverished widened and the pervasive form of corruption assumed monstrous proportions. Corruption in India … a few points to ponder a) Moral and spiritual values have always been given importance in our educational system and society, but have not kept pace with a rapidly changing society. The chimera of easily attainable wealth, power and prestige are constantly flashed and do attract people of all strata. Desperate to acquire material objects, individuals stoop to adopting short cuts. Places of spiritual sanctuary, which could have been an oasis in the midst of the all-round mess, have themselves become hot beds of nefarious activities of amassing wealth, indulging in flesh trade and striking political deals. An innocent believer is intellectually corrupted. The recent feature Ashram, a Bobby Deol starrer and directed by Prakash Jha aptly captures this dark underbelly. b) Salaries paid to government employees, despite various Pay Commissions continue to be low compared to those in the private sector. As a result, they resort to unfair practices to raise their standard of living. c) The extreme delay in administering justice and the humongous number of cases burdening the judiciary have also contributed to the mindset of accepting and indulging in corruption. Penalties imposed on criminals seem not only grossly inadequate but so colossally delayed as to have lost any meaning or worth. People of India do occasionally get awakened from slumber, but with limited resources at their disposal, are trapped in their dreary existence and fear to raise their voice against the rampant corruption. A few steps forward … Some measures towards eradicate or at the least control corruption in the country have been put in place over the decades. a) The Right to Information Act (RTI) provides one all the required information about the government, such as what the government is doing with taxes collected. Under this act, an individual has the right to seek information from the government. There is a Public Information Officer (PIO) appointed in every department who is responsible for collecting information sought by the citizens and providing the same to them on payment of a nominal fee. b) Yet another potent check on corruption is the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC). It was setup by the government to advise and guide Central Government agencies in the realm of vigilance. If there are any cases of corruption or any complaints thereof, then those can be reported to the CVC. Apart from this the CVC also shoulders the responsibility of creating awareness among people regarding the consequences of being a party to corrupt deeds. c) The epochal Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013, commonly known as The Lokpal Act, is an anti-corruption act in India which “seeks to provide for the establishment of the institution of Lokpal to inquire into allegations of corruption against certain important public functionaries which include the Prime Minister, his cabinet, Members of Parliament and Group A officials of the Central Government” and to take deterrent action for any untoward actions. Despite the towering presence of Mahatma Gandhi, Lok Nayak Jai Prakash and more recently Anna Hazare, political leaders have in connivance with big corporate and pusillanimous bureaucrats made society noxious. It is still a long haul for India to rise from an abysmal 80th position on the CPI index. And let us not forget that it is not only financial corruption but also intellectual corruption that needs to be grappled head-on in order to make the country robust. Perhaps it is time to re-align the compass and lay the onus on the individual again, to reconfigure the system rather than wait and hope that the system will correct itself. The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means. - Georges Bernano