Multi-dimensional approach critical to eradicate corruption
Tracing the extent of bribery and movements agitating against it in the country, N. Vittal presents an account exploring the institutional space and scope for eradication of the malaise of corruption in India.
The publication of N Vittal’s book ‘Ending Corruption: How to Clean Up India’ could not have been better timed. The book, written by an ‘insider’, who held the responsibility of dealing with corruption by government officials, as India’s first Chief Vigilance Commissioner, provides a valuable insight into the political, official, commercial dimensions of corruption. Every right thinking Indian agrees that corruption is today eating into the moral fibre of the country’s body politic and society. The book, authored by Vittal, is appropriately dedicated by the author to ‘all my fellow Indians, who want to free our dear country from the disease of corruption’. Mr. Vittal would perhaps have been more accurate if he described corruption as a ‘cancer’ and not just a ‘disease’!
Vittal’s revelations will come as no surprise for those millions in India who are subject to corruption, which is a day to day feature, ranging from bribing police officials to even register a citizen’s complaint, or getting an entitled ration card, to the travails of the well heeled businessman who finds that he gets his sanctions to run and expand his business activities only after he greases the palms of officials and politicians. Corruption pervades and perverts virtually every aspect of national life of India. A study done by Transparency International (TI) in India found a few years ago that more than 50 percent of the people had firsthand experience of paying a bribe or peddling influence to get a job done in a public office. Vittal has looked at the growth of this cancerous tumour through his long years as a civil servant, culminating in his tenure as Chief Vigilance Commissioner. He has written and spoken extensively, even after his retirement in 1996, as an activist highlighting the causes and remedies for corruption.
Vittal draws attention to the many and diverse factors that cause corruption to erode the moral fibre of Indian society. He does not offer any simplistic cures to address the malady. He rightly attributes corruption to “the lack of integrity–whether intellectual, moral or financial”, adding that “when integrity fails, society collapses”. The very first chapter titled ”Multiple Organ Failure” spells out estimates of bribes paid in virtually every sphere of government activity, including hospitals, school education, electricity, employment guarantee schemes for the poor, land records, housing, banking and police. Subsequent chapters, which diagnose the malady, dwell at great length on the linkages between the electoral system and the funding of elections by “black money” on the one hand, to the rise of criminalisation of growing sections of the political class on the other, make interesting reading. Many Indians, however, instinctively know of and have firsthand knowledge of these maladies, from their own day to day experiences. Vittal rightly notes that despite measures taken by successive Chief Election Commissioners, the pernicious role of “money power” in elections and political life in India is all pervasive. There has also been resistance from the “political class” to moves that would disqualify those charged by a court of criminal offences, from participating in elections. An estimated 120 members of the Lok Sabha faced criminal charges in 2008.
Subsequent chapters of the book deal with how the functioning of the bureaucracy, judiciary, media and corporate sector has contributed to the growth of corruption. Moreover, collusion between different sections of society and the State apparatus has increasingly fostered corruption. Vittal explains the travails of honest civil servants, who refuse to fall in line with existing practices of corruption by their superiors and political leaders, resulting from arbitrary and frequent transfers and their replacement by “pliant” colleagues, all too ready to join the corruption bandwagon. Recommendations by several Reforms Commissions to address this malady have been deliberately overlooked and not implemented.
Figures in the very first chapter show the huge extent of bribery in the police. But, a judgement by the Supreme Court, which would effectively make the functioning of the police force outside the realm of political interference, has been defied and not implemented by any State in the country. The political class appears to be prepared to defy constitutional norms to retain its control of the police force, as coercive police powers are routinely and often used, to daunt and deter those who raise inconvenient questions about the country’s rulers.
The rise of movements like social activist Anna Hazare’s “India against Corruption” is a clear sign that India’s growing and influential middle class is getting increasingly restive at the prevailing maladies in India’s body politic. The last two years have seen the focus of increasing media attention on what are now described as mega-scams, starting with the scandals that plagued the poorly organized Commonwealth Games in the Capital last year. Since then activism by the Supreme Court led to the exposure of the scandal in allocation of spectrum by the Telecommunications Ministry and the arrest of then Communications Minister A Raja. This has been followed by revelations of gross improprieties in the allocation of coal mines.
Sadly, neither the ruling dispensation, nor the principal opposition party have added to their credibility, when their leaders or those close to their leaders, have been faced with charges of corruption, which are seen as credible, by the public at large. What does, therefore, worry the individual Indian voter is whether the choice for them during the next parliamentary elections will be one between the “Devil and the Deep Blue Sea,” as far as corruption is concerned!!
While the civil society led “India against Corruption” has focused on the establishment of a “Lok Pal” as the antidote to overcome the phenomenon of all pervasive corruption in the country, Vittal rightly asserts that while the Lok Pal may deal with political corruption if loopholes in the legislation on its powers and responsibilities are plugged, the problem is just too complex to lend itself to easy or one-dimensional solutions.
He pertinently notes: “Unless a method is found to make each of the organisations of governance free from political interference, there can be no long-term solution”. The question which naturally arises is whether the ruling political elite, long accustomed to the use of police machinery for coercion and “flexibility” in enforcing the rule of law, together with an administrative structure that “accommodates” political diktats in violation of the norms of good governance will so easily give up “discretionary powers”. Moreover, if procedures for trial and punishment of those charged with corruption are so time consuming, do we not require a total overhaul of our judicial system? Justice delayed is, after all, justice denied.
A columnist and author, G Parthasarathy is a career Indian Foreign Service officer who retired in 2000. Presently, he is a visiting professor at the Centre for Policy Research and a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in New Delhi.
This review was originally published by the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances’ Governance Knowledge Centre, here, and is republished with permission from the author.
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