Stainless Steal

Corruption is back in focus with the cash-for-query, MP Local Development Fund scandal and Volcker report. Hawala, Bofors and the fodder scam very soon found their place in the archive alongside scandals rocking the British East India Company in the eighteenth century. India is still struggling to improve its standing in the world corruption index

Sanjay Kapoor Delhi

A survey conducted by an organisation of women panchayat heads in Karnataka and Kerala came up with interesting findings. Contrary to the dominant view that women panchayat heads fight corruption and improve delivery of government programmes, the survey found them equally venal. In fact they were no different from their male counterparts.

This study proves the hypothesis peddled aggressively when women's organisations were demanding a 33 per cent reservation in parliament: that corruption does not come down when women are at the helm of affairs.

It surely did not need a survey of villages in south India (considered to be morally more upright than their counterparts in the north) to prove this. Women leaders like Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa and Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati (both mired in corruption scandals) bear ample testimony that women leaders love lucre as much as men do.

We Indians bribe for everything. It is speed money to deliver goodies that otherwise would be denied to us in a Kafk-aesque situation. The bureaucracy and the judiciary take advantage of labyrinthine laws and so the common people are forced to pay for everything. From getting birth and death certificates to getting a seat in an overcrowded train, Indians contribute substantially to the global bribery amount of $ 1 trillion. For a billion odd people fighting for a little share in a small pie, the scarcity mindset comes into play. People need to pay to survive. These needs acquire a different meaning when it involves corruption in high places and pertain to mega defence and aviation deals. For people in politics, bribery and corruption provide the necessary cash to carry on with the business of looking after their constituents and most importantly, fighting elections. With the breakdown of ideology, elections are an expensive enterprise. By a rough estimate, each parliamentary elections cost a lot more than the election commission stipulated limit of Rs 20 lakh. Rough estimates show that the costs could be in excess of Rs 5 crore. Any wonder where these MPs are getting their funds from?

During the investigation of the Jain Hawala scandal, which rocked the country in the 1990s, one of the recipients — an extremely wealthy man — when asked why he settled for a measly amount of payoff, replied, "In politics, one needs money all the time for all kinds of things." What compounds the misery of many professional politicians is that many of them have no transparent source of income. Save for some top-flight lawyers, most politicians have done nothing except "politics". It will be difficult for many politicians to explain their riches even in their disclosure forms submitted to the election commission before the elections. Many of the disclosures should have invited some close questioning from the income tax department.

Why blame politicians alone? Those who bribe public servants, many of them icons of the new India, zip around in designer business jets and in BMWs, have a dark past. They have bent the laws of the land to their advantage, do not believe in paying taxes and many of them are cronies who have taken advantage of the business of economic reforms. They have shown little stomach for foreign competition and they are the first ones to pack up when the going gets tough.

In such an environment, where nearly everything is either unauthorised or illegally acquired, there is little respect for those who play by the rules. When law-abiding citizens find that habitual offenders are prospering, they too succumb to the pressure. It's no surprise that a large part of India is unauthorised! So when the bulldozers began to selectively demolish some unauthorised buildings, there was a sense of outrage. "We paid MCD officials, pay our power and water bills. We never thought we were doing anything wrong", has been the usual refrain of some of the unfortunate sufferers. They wonder why the government and the courts have been reluctant to demolish politicians' residences in Sainik Farms — equally unauthorised and illegal.

This action in Delhi could be the beginning of a larger exercise to fight corruption, if the government introspects to make the laws of the land simpler. The Right to Information Act could make a good beginning if the bureaucrats who head the Central Information Commission (CIC) can shake off their past and their oath to the Official Secrecy Act and allow people to know what is going on in the government. The government would also have to ensure that people with high integrity occupy important positions to ensure that there is a trickle-down effect. By meting out exemplary punishment, it would also convey a message to the crony capitalists and public servants that corruption is not a low-risk, high-investment enterprise. India's decision to be a signatory to the UN Convention on Corruption and its resolve to make its laws in line with it would start showing its impact in the coming days. The decision of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to work towards funding the elections is an important starting point. Even the decision of the parliament to expel MPs trapped by sting journalists — extraordinary by our amoral standards —  an example of what lies in store for those who undermine the credibility of the parliament. A new global order, which recognises corruption as a transnational crime and empowers national governments to chase companies that have pillaged their economies or grabbed contracts by bribing, could help in changing the way we look at corruption. Once ordinary work — like getting a driving license or clearance for building plans — begins to happen on their own people would start realising that

they do not need to pay to get their work done. Till that happens — ordinary people would pay because they have to survive.