INTRODUCTORY
Human
beings and institutions are generally prone to one or the other form of
corruption. This is a universal truism and only the degree and form of
corruption may vary from society to society and from time to time.
Corruption is thus a plant that grows in every soil. In India of the post-
Independence era, the exhortations of the most charismatic political
leaders and recommendations of the commissions and committees for fighting
the menace of corruption have not made any dent on the situation. Instead,
the malaise of corruption and its gangrenous impact on all segments of
society has aggravated with every passing year.
This
failure can only be attributed to the fact that all the precepts and
practices for containing the corruption have failed to strike at the root
causes of corruption. And it appears it is too late now because the hands
that can strike at the roots are the very hands that have become corrupt.
Was it not one of our illustrious Prime Ministers who tried to explain
away corruption in India by saying it was a ‘global phenomenon’.
A
NEW APPROACH
We
have for long tried and failed to control corruption per se, leave alone
contain
it. Instead of feeling despondent or even defeated, a stage has come when
we should look for a very pragmatic approach towards indirectly tackling
this obstinately unyielding and ever multiplying problem to minimise its
impact on the common man. Our concern in India should not merely
concentrate upon or confine itself to corruption or to the corrupt per se
but focus more on neutralising the evil consequences of corruption. In
other words, in addition to the existing anti-corruption laws and
procedures to control or minimize corruption we should devise ways and
means to minimize the impact of corruption on our daily life.
Today
we have come to a pass where a common Indian in the street treats high
level corruption scandals merely as a subject of gossip but is seriously
concerned about the corruption that directly affects him adversely. A
taxpayer very justifiably feels that he does not get adequate return on
his tax from the Government by way of civic amenities and other basic
facilities. Badly maintained roads, hopelessly inadequate street lights,
totally missing sanitation, inadequate supply and poor quality of food
grains at ration shops, scanty and ill-maintained public facilities arouse
the public ire and are perceived as a related consequence of corruption by
the effected masses. The ever-itching palms that one has to grease for
even getting something legitimate done, or the ease with which something
entirely illegitimate can be got done
with
money power corrupts the public mind. This type of corruption vitiates the
environment in which public comes to believe that nothing can be done
except through money or influence or that anything can be done, howsoever
wrong or illegal, through money. Corruption at micro level effects the
public
mind
much more than the corruption involved in large deals and projects.
The
approach that this paper advocates for dealing with micro level corruption
is that the concerned government and non-government organisations should
devise effective measures to ensure that there is no quality degradation
or service deficiency to the common man as a result of the prevalent
corrupt practices. For example, if a road is to be made or streetlights
are to be maintained, then the road shall be made to the specifications
and streetlights shall be maintained fully irrespective of corruption
involved in doing so. This should have a significant impact on the
prevailing corruption syndrome among the public as corruption has become
the most favorite topic of drawing room discussions or public gossip. More
importantly this approach may obviate or at least minimize the sufferings
of the public due to deficient and sub-standard public services and
utilities. What is inevitable in this approach is that the corrupt
elements may continue to make money (i.e. a project or service will cost
more to the exchequer and ultimately to the taxpayer) but at least the
public will get quality services and facilities. Even if it has an
implication of higher taxes for the taxpayer it is worth trying. After all
consider the prevalent costs of such services which provide inadequate or
no benefits to the user. Corruption costs but degraded facilities and
services cost much more in the long run. Let us pay more (on account of
corruption) and get proper services at least. More taxes do not pinch as
much as the inadequacies or absence of basic services and facilities. In
any case imposition of higher taxes does not ipso facto imply corruption
but inadequate or low class services do. This approach will bring a
healthy effect on the present unhealthy corruption syndrome in the
country.
THE
ACTION PLAN
Question
now arises as to what effective measures can be adopted to obviate or
minimize the ill effects of corruption on the ground. Corruption being a
very vast subject, the main focus here is on micro-level corruption i.e.
corruption in public services adversely affecting the society specially
the common man. The measures proposed below are based on the following
general assumptions:
(a)
Public functionaries have been proved to be highly amenable to
undue and extraneous influences and are highly prone to venal practices
(b)
Elected leaders have lost their credibility and have rarely shown
capacity or willingness to fight corruption among public functionaries. In
fact they are a part of the problem, if not the problem.
The Action Plan adopts the following two pronged approach to devise and
implement measures to eliminate the impact of corruption on delivery of
public services and utilities:
(a)
people’s direct participation right from the stage of project
formulation to implementation in respect of public utilities and services
(b)
devising procedures which leave minimum or no discretion to the
public servants in their public dealings.
A.
People’s Direct Participation
1.
Associate small groups of citizens with public projects, civic/
municipal services and other regulatory bodies. People selected should be
willing and have the time and experience to contribute meaningfully.
Active senior citizens, elected members of Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs)
and retired personnel with diverse experience in fields such as Finance,
Science and Technology, Medical and Public Health, Public Administration
and Management should be selected to be members of these groups. Working
people should normally be avoided for obvious reasons. Elected legislators
and corporaters are already associated with various Government Departments
and municipal bodies and would continue to aid and support without
becoming a part of these groups.
2.
The association of these groups with concerned departments and
municipalities should be formalized through a Government notification.
Their role and responsibilities should be specified in detail and would be
in the nature of ongoing monitoring of public services to safeguard the
public interests. To make such Groups effective, they should be given
powers which should resultantly lead to correction of a program or legal
or administrative action against the erring contractors or suppliers.
3.
Apart from monitoring of ongoing functions of the public bodies as
indicated above, these groups will have periodic meetings with nominated
senior officials for reviewing the planned programs in the light of the
concerned public perceptions and needs.
4.
False/wrong complaints/reports by members of these groups should be
treated the same way as filing of false complaint by a citizen before a
public authority (Sec 182 IPC).
5.
Every public service should bring out a citizen’s charter giving
to the public all possible information about its working to facilitate
smooth public dealings. The peoples groups shall monitor the
implementation of the citizens charters and ensure that these do not
remain mere proforma promises. These groups will also be responsible for
review of the citizens charters for rectification, pointing out deviations
between practice and the precept and making citizens charters and the
public services more user friendly. Such charters will enable the public
and the proposed groups to ask for changes in the working procedures to
suit public convenience as also to obviate loopholes leading to
malpractices.
6.
The proposed groups will be associated with inquiries into
complaints against public functionaries as also with the follow up action
on the findings. These groups can take up the quantum, nature and trends
of the complaints as well of the effectiveness of follow up action at the
review meetings with the senior officers.
B. Reducing Discretion of the Public Dealing Officials
It
is a truism that the laws, rules and procedures operating in the
Government and in public services are not in consonance with the changing
times, technological developments and the rising aspirations of the
people/end-users. According to Pai Panandiker, “ Perhaps, the incident
of corruption is high in developing countries because most of them still
persist with some form of Government control which puts discretionary
power in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats. That enables misuse of
public office.” Apart from failing to satisfy the needs of the users,
most rules and procedures leave a lot of loopholes and gaps thereby
opening up avenues of official intervention to make up for the
inadequacies. This prompts people/users to persuade the authorities to
exploit the inadequacies of laws and procedures in their favour and
therein lie the consequent corrupt practices. No doubt discretion breeds
corruption. The following steps are suggested to obviate discretion as an
avenue of malpractices:
1.
Identify and review the existing rules, procedures and practices in
the government departments and public services which are open to misuse or
which impact the common man in everyday life, cause public harassment and
loss to the exchequer. These reviews should be carried out with the
following objectives.
(a)
Revision should bring in utmost transparency in the operating
procedures and provide for regularly updating the public with progress of
ongoing projects, programs, activities and with decisions in regard to
tender and purchase processes, issuance of license / permits/ approvals
etc.
(b)
Obviate executive discretion to the maximum possible extent by
making the procedure cover all possible situations and exceptional
circumstances. There is any number of examples of very simple, clear and
elaborate procedures to follow in the developed countries in the execution
of which there is very little or no scope for any discretion except in the
policy making.
(c)
Rationalisation of rules and procedures is a crying need. Mandatory
attestation of some of the documents by a gazetted officer or a magistrate
not below a certain level and not by a Notary Public is one of the many
examples of such hackneyed rules. Institution of Notary Public Attestation
should be strengthened and tightened rather than officially treating it as
unreliable. It is shocking that some of the foreign missions in India do
not accept documents attested by any authority in India
and insist on furnishing the original documents only. But copies are acceptable if attested
by the equivalent of an Indian Notary Public in that country. Another
example of thoughtless rules is the processing of an application for
marriage certificate in Delhi. The applicant has to produce a witness who
attended the marriage and who is a serving gazetted officer and who should
carry his official stamp/seal with him during his appearance before the
issuing authority. For
obtaining an International Driving Permit (IDP) the rules require
production of valid visa stamped on the passport. There is no specific
provision for dealing with a situation where no visa is
required to visit a foreign country such as Hong Kong.
Many more examples of irrational and
outdated rules and
2.
Induction of technology, specially information technology (IT), has
greatly helped prevent and detect corrupt practices through obviating use
of discretion at lower levels. Electronically operated entrance and exit
doors through smart cards in factories has proved its efficacy in
preventing fake attendance (improving effective attendance) and payment of
wages strictly as per attendance with no scope for discretion. Similarly,
integration of IT with the working procedures of an organization
especially with its monitoring and control functions at all levels can
prove to be an effective deterrent to the corrupt elements. Extensive
computerisation of railway passenger reservation services has
significantly reduced widely prevalent corrupt practices and obliterated
the notoriety from which the Indian Railway was suffering in this respect.
Computerisation of land records (in vernacular), adopted in a few states,
has vast potentialities of plugging the loopholes in maintenance and
updation of land revenue records and dissemination of information to the
users. This is another area where corruption has been rampant of old
because of vast scope of manipulation in records in a system shrouded in
secrecy and discretion. Registration of FIRs at police stations (in urban
areas for a start) could be
made an automatic process through single function specially designed
(simple and cheap) computers for this purpose. These are but a few
examples of doing away with avoidable manual interventions and
discretion and discouraging consequent malpractices.
3.
Corrupt practices related to recruitment, transfers and promotions
in the public services is a major cause of the spread and perpetuation of
corruption. The ever- increasing litigation in regard to these matters in
courts of law is a measure of deteriorating situation. Effective steps
have been taken by the Union and some State Public Service Commissions to
reduce the personality and capability evaluation to the minimum possible
limit leaving a very nominal margin for discretion for evaluation in the
interview. Guidelines provided by law courts have also prompted this
effort. However personnel management not falling within the purview of
public service commissions is still shrouded in mystery and deeply stuck
in the quagmire of varying corrupt practices. It is not surprising that
courts and administrative tribunals are flooded with litigation. Even a
rightful action is viewed suspiciously by the employees because of lack of
transparency and openness. The following measures are suggested:
(a)
Quantification techniques should be extensively adopted in the
procedures for evaluation of educational and professional qualifications,
domain knowledge and experience of the candidates. Avery minimal scope
(largely inconsequential) should be kept for discretionary credits
primarily to offset any hardship caused by technicalities or rigidities of
the quantification. This should apply to all stages of recruitment,
promotions and selection for professional training or special assignments.
(b)
Despite vastly prevalent and publicly known malpractices in the
matter of transfers to highly lucrative posts/positions, surprisingly
there are no guidelines or criteria laid down for posting employees to
such posts. System of job description for each sensitive post and the
conditions of eligibility for posting thereto is not in vogue at all and
therefore the whole process is totally and unabashedly open to discretion
and subjectivity of the powers that be. No wonder there is wholesale
political interference and massive corruption in the matter of postings
and transfers. It is time we lay down well thought out, scientific and
transparent procedures governing this aspect of personnel management. Long
time back there was a procedure in the Commonwealth of Australia (and may
still be there) that all Government orders of transfer/ promotion were
issued and implemented on provisional basis for a period of three months.
During this period a government servant could represent against such
orders before a designated committee. The orders were confirmed or
rescinded in the light of the merits of the representations received. This
gave a chance to the employees to point out violation of procedures and
seek justice. But when there are no procedures, there is no violation and
hence no accountability.
CONCLUSION
Even
after five and a half decades of independence, our country is still rated
as one amongst the top most countries in terms of corruption indices. Laws
can at best punish the corrupt but can not prevent corruption. More
stringent laws and rules mean a higher rate for the corrupt because of
higher levels of risk involved. As stated in the beginning, efforts have
been made in all directions to overcome the menace of corruption with only
one result: corruption has been on the increase, regardless. What has been
lacking and not cogently tried is creation of strong public opinion
against corruption. To quote Srivatsa Krishna, “Combating corruption in
India must be done keeping in view the (prevailing) peculiar societal
conditions. While on the one hand we boast of being a robust, functioning
democracy, on the other, low level of public consciousness, literacy,
civic awareness and the relative impotency of strong institutional public
movements to voice causes which are otherwise forgotten, present a curious
social fabric.”
It
is towards the goal of generating public awareness and inculcating a
spirit to fight against corruption rather than acquiesce in it that
association of proposed public groups with the planners and implementers
has been suggested here. Ultimately, there has to be a sustained program
of mass movements against corruption and the corrupt at various levels.
The public groups advocated here will be the harbingers of the mass
movement against corruption and would voice the concerns of the public at
the right place and at the right time. The Action Plan is not the end of
the problem but just a beginning of a solution.
~ E N D ~
