Corruption: A conversation topic

Everybody has their own opinion on the subject, but there is a lot more to corruption than most people see

Mohan Guruswamy Delhi

Corruption is India's favorite conversation topic. We love discussing it and bemoan its all pervasiveness. Whenever two or more Indians meet the conversation inevitably moves to corruption. Sometimes I wonder what we would say to each other if there were no corruption about? We are all near experts at it and have all experienced it at in some form or the other and at all levels. Yet with so much collective experience it is an elusive topic to write about. Like our gods it takes so many myriad forms. It defies a simple definition. But we all know what it is. What Justice Potter Stewart of the US Supreme Court said in the context of obscenity — "I know it when I see it"— seems equally applicable to corruption. And given the plight of a majority of our people it is even more obscene than obscenity, which we of course know when we see it. Corruption is customary and we know what it is.

Economists prefer to bandy about a different term when referring to corruption. They call it "economic rent". According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) "it is the extra amount paid (over what would have been paid for the best alternative use) to somebody or for something useful whose supply is limited either by nature or through human ingenuity." Quite clearly this definition excludes the moral dimension. But then our problems get even more compounded when we realise that morality itself is very elastic and varies depending on time, place and context.

Take for instance the case of prime minister, Manmohan Singh. He is one of the few prime ministers we have had whose personal integrity seems above question. But as far as the rajya sabha is concerned, he is a tenant of Ms Hiteshwar Saikia and is a resident of Guwahati in Assam. We know that is not true and that he has been ordinarily resident in New Delhi from ever since we came to know of him. The leader of the opposition,

LK Advani, has been just as peripatetic. At one time he declared he was a resident of Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh for the sake of a rajya sabha seat. And of course, Anil Ambani is a resident of Uttar Pradesh and Vijay Mallya is a resident of Karnataka even after officially becoming non-resident Indian . But if you and I were as cavalier and flexible with facts as this in declaring our place of residence, say for the purpose of obtaining a passport, we could end up in prison.

Economic rent takes other forms, which tax the common good much more. High import duties, for instance, meant to restrain imports actually serve to increase prices and profits for domestic manufacturers. The Hindustan Ambassador, that immortal symbol of a mindless and rapacious bureaucracy, actually gave its manufacturer and employees as much joy as it gave sorrow to those who owned or drove those cars. Did you notice how all car tyres or batteries cost about the same? Or how all similar sized air-conditioners and refrigerators cost about the same? Or till recently how all air tickets cost the same and an arm and a leg at the same time? Adam Smith explained it best by noting that "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public."