The Chimera of Corruption - Can we tackle it?

What Arun Jaitley said over AAP today, While "friendly" media is being given advertisements, media houses which are critical of the AAP government are being denied ad revenue, is in reality an innovative and interesting form of corruption. Though Jaitley never talked about it in terms of corruption, but he certainly meant that they are arm twisting those who oppose them. This simply means that if you toe my line, you will get money from me. Or else,…After all, the money spent by a state is considerable and every news agency surely wants a chunk of that. Call it need, or call it lust, the want for that money may force some fence sitters and the cash strapped to become yesmen for the government.

Another type of corruption we can see is the electoral promises and freebies. Another starkly visible thing in the recent past again comes from AAP – it’s election manifesto for the recent Delhi state elections. Let’s take a sampling from it. I will consider only one promise and try to analyze what the manifesto means.

15 lakh cameras to be installed to improve women's safety.

The cost includes cost to establish, cost to monitor and cost to maintain. Let’s look only at cost to monitor – cost of having people watching the cameras real time. Because, if they are not watching it real time, it’s not going to improve the security whatsoever. At a maximum, a person can monitor no more than 10 cameras. We have got 1.5 lakh employees. Since it is real time, we got 3 shifts and 6 days a week, making it effectively 1.5*3*7/6 = 5.25 lakh employees or .0525 crore employees. Minimum salary in Delhi is Rs 10,000. This makes the salary of people sitting before cameras 525 crores per month. Are we saying that cost of procurement, maintenance, overseeing and everything else adds up to may be 5-10 times of the number making it around 3000 crores per month? In other words, going by the fact that Delhi’s population is 1 crore, is AAP saying that elect us and we will give you Rs 3000 per head? Combining all the promises which include things like free wifi, free water, discount in electricity bills and the likes, are we saying it is going to be Rs 30000 rupees as freebies? Is this not corruption?

Now, the real question is that what is corruption and how do you classify it. Corruption is not just bribing someone. It means that getting things done out of turn or getting things which you don’t deserve. The standard definition of corruption categorizes it into three categories – bribe, use your influence and use the influence of someone who can influence.

What our political setup or our establishment talks is only bribery – transfer of material wealth to the person who bent the rules. It doesn’t account the concept of influence. It’s something like, ‘Don’t worry. My father is a policeman. I will get the issue sorted’ or ‘If you don’t do this, I will get you sacked’.

The real problem with this is that there is no way to quantify the corruption in categories two and three. It is but human nature to help either those in need or those we know. We don’t even think once whether the person beseeching help deserves the help or not. That is assuming, I am not taking the extra buck which in turn, translates it into case one. The real moral rot of the society is not the first type of corruption but the other ones. The first one can be quantified and can be tracked. Some simple ways we can do –

1. All transactions should happen only with PAN.
2. Automated tax deductions
3. Mandatory invoicing in every sort of shop
4.  Motivating people to use electronic cash as against paper currency. This can include ways like

a.    Incentivizing card users

b.    Incentivizing people who use alternate forms of payment like cash coupons etc.

c.    Increasing the card withdrawal limits and card swipe limits

The point is, this is doable. But the real issue comes when it comes to the other areas. Do we have an answer how to tackle it? Can we uproot it? A big no. Can we limit it’s scope? May be. Before trying to identify how to tackle it, it’s better we try to understand what creates corruption. I can only think of three possible answers – lust, habit and need. I have this much and I want more because I am not happy with that. That makes it case one. Well, initially, it was a need, now I became adapted to it. That makes it case two. Case three is interesting. A person is in desperate need for money as in the movie Ghulam-e-Mustafa. What will he do? Will he see that moral angle? Another argument for case three is the imbalance in pay hike and the imbalance in savings-expenses ratio. The percentage salary increase of an MP and an Electricity Department Officer are different. Though their children studied in the same schools, their grand children won’t – the EB Officer doesn’t have the money. What will he do bridge the gap? In this case, will the guilt for corruption takes precedence or will the zeal to provide his family a better life takes a precedence? Need or lust, the thing is, it’s not correct. But, the science behind corruption may help us address the issue of corruption more effectively. Another thing to note is, corruption is never a cause. It’s an effect of something more sinister – discontent with what a person has. Unless that is handled, there is no way corruption can be tackled.

1. All the departments in government should have a same percentage pay hike
2. Clear vetting of the election manifesto. Every party, in public, should explain how it is going to fund it’s election manifesto. After all, it’s completely irresponsible for the party and equally irrational for the people to expect that a freebie manifesto worth more than the state annual budget will be fulfilled, without any extra sources of income.
3. Annual pay hike should be higher than the commodity basket inflation.
4. Removal of identifiers on any vehicles except that of ambulance, police and anyone below the rank of a State Cabinet Minister in precedence.
5. A more robust and effective grievance redressal system. People should have no fear to drop a complaint and people should have confidence that the grievance will be addressed.

Well, these are some things which I can think of on the fly; any suggestions are more than welcome.