Reporter's Notebook Comments

• In India corruption is so deep and pervasive, and its ramifications are so wide and varied that it would be facile to capture the problem through some anecdotal information as attempted in the Reporter's Notebook. A qualitative counterpart to the quantitative scoreboard should mean at least dissecting samples from every aspect, which the scoreboard covers. This may not be possible without a compendium of corruption reports, which in any case is not available. Though the Reporter's Notebook is on the whole correct, some elaboration of the issues is in order.
  
  As Delhi is India's political capital and its capital of sleaze, it is possible to pick up some cases from Delhi. But that may provide a good idea of the magnitude of the problem, considering that India is too large a country in terms of its population, geography, social, economic, political, commercial and cultural diversity. And, Delhi is only a tiny part of the country.
  
  To restate the perception of some lay persons, in India corruption is rampant and appears in different forms with different intensities and degrees of salience.
  
  One problem of describing corruption in India is that the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) is concerned only with corruption relating to Government of India institutions and its auxiliaries or undertakings. As each state has its own anti-corruption agency, the Vigilance and Anti-corruption Bureau, what it does is very important. As the CVC is high-profile, it is in the media. This is not the case with the state bureaus, and there is a lot of corruption in all Indian states.
  
  Another problem is a citizen who has to get her work done has to deal with central and/or state bureaucracy at different levels, depending on what she has to get done. If a person has to get her driver's license, she has to deal with a state agency; if she has to buy or sell land or related items such as buildings and apartments, she again has to deal with a state agency; if she approaches a government hospital for treatment, she has to deal with a state agency. In all these and similar agencies, there is corruption in one form or another. But it is generally accepted that of all state agencies, corruption is highest in the revenue department, which deals with land and related registration issues. Often citizens may not even be aware that they are paying bribe for getting their work done as they work through intermediaries.
  
  In understanding the complexity of the problem of corruption in India there is a need to group citizens and institutions into different categories. Though occasionally some high-profile case is reported in the media, often corruption in high places and in high cases goes unnoticed. What is noticed and booked under corruption laws are small cases.
  
  For example, when the Madras High Court dismissed an anti-corruption case against former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, J. Jayalalithaa, there were rumours that the concerned judge had accepted a bribe. The reason the judge dismissed the case – by comparing the market value of land (the case involved a land scam) to the market value of onions – as reported in the media, appeared ludicrous.
  
  If one were to categorize professionals, probably the most corrupt and corruptible class is politicians. There have been exposes here and there after one sting operation or another. But there is hardly any report of anyone getting punished or imprisoned because of corrupt activities.
  
  Another class which is highly corrupt is the legal class, involving both the bar and the bench. Most lawyers insist on getting their fees in cash and do not give a receipt. The fee is not standardized or rationalized by the state or the judiciary. It is only to be presumed that the lawyers fudge their income tax returns. Judges, starting from the lowest level of magistrates, are also corrupt. But the legal class has never been a media target.
  
  A third class which is highly corrupt is doctors, particularly those in private practice. There is hardly any report on corruption involving doctors. A recent expose, after a sting operation by the CNN-IBN TV channel, detailed doctors in north India the amputating legs and arms of healthy people as part of a thriving "beggar industry" made news for a couple of days. There are cases of kidney sales in which doctors make a fortune, that too in government hospitals. But the cases have only news value. The state is not known to act persistently.
  
  The Indian health and education sector (besides, of course, the revenue department) are generally perceived as highly corrupt. Both are also highly neglected state sectors.
  
  India has an extremely weak and sloppy public health system, and those who can afford to pay will never go to a government health center or hospital. This makes the private medical profession lucrative and totally unaccountable and arbitrary in what it does, and gives a lot of scope for corruption in the private sector also. I have not come across any doctor issuing a receipt for fees collected.
  
  The neglect of the education sector by the state, combined with the ongoing globalization and entry of private agencies has made the education sector highly corrupt. This is seldom reported in the media. An engineering seat in a deemed university or private college is sold for Rs. 5 to 10 lakhs. The cost of a medical seat is about Rs. 25 to 40 lakhs. Only those who take hefty bribes can afford to pay such hefty sums, and having paid, after completion of the course the first aim of the person and those who invested in her is to recover the money. So corruption breeds corruption and India is a fertile ground for it.
  
  The reference in the Reporter's Notebook on police is correct but needs elaboration. The police department in India is probably the most dreaded organization of the state, as far as ordinary citizens are concerned. Generally, people are scared of going near a police station; leave alone lodge a complaint with it.
  
  I have had my own experiences with police. To cite only one, when the treasurer of an apartments owners welfare association was threatened by the builder of the apartments, as secretary I wanted to lodge a police complaint. But the treasurer refused to have anything to do with the police. When he was threatened again and the builder's brother trespassed into his flat, I prevailed on the office-bearers to go with me to the police station and lodge a complaint. Since the builder's brother and I share the same name, the police turned the table on me and began phoning, stating that there is a case filed against me. A sub-inspector even went to my office from where he telephoned my residence. I sent a copy of the complaint to the commissioner of police. Nothing happened. I sent him a reminder and sent a copy of it to the home secretary with my visiting card attached to it. The police commissioner did not act. But the home secretary, known for her efficiency, and who presumably also knew me through my writing in the press, overreached the police commissioner and directed the deputy commissioner of police of the concerned city zone to submit a report within a week. After this, the president of the association and I received a series of phone calls from the assistant commissioner of police to get an appointment with us and settle the matter. The police inaction and indifference in the matter was mainly because of the money bags of the builder was circulation among all the agencies concerned with his real estate business. Ideally, the controversial demolition drive going on in Delhi should have taken place in Chennai long ago. But it may not happen at all, as the Madras High Court is highly politicized, and in Chennai the nexus between the builders and the City Corporation, Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority and Revenue Department, is very strong, and the judiciary, as elsewhere in India, is lackadaisical.
  
  Far from reducing, globalization seems to be increasing corruption in India, though it is not yet highly visible. One has to compare the salary and perks paid in MNCs with those paid in the state sector. The choice is for employees of the state sector to join MNCs, or offset their "loss" with bribes. As most of them are either misfits in MNCs or are reluctant to leave their permanent jobs in government, they prefer to remain low paid and corrupt.
  
  What Gunnar Myrdal characterized as the "folklore of corruption" in Indian context is still very relevant. What one may have to add is in that in developed countries corruption is "institutionalized" through incentives built into the salary, whereas in India it is "institutionalized" through illegitimate speed-money.
  
  The Right to Information Act and introduction of e-governance, etc., are expected to add to good governance, transparency, efficiency in delivery mechanisms and reduce corruption. But often these innovative efforts end up as appendages of the government. Only some agencies like the media and NGO activists are able to use them, but not the ordinary citizens.
  
  To conclude, India persists with its old politician-bureaucrat-middle-man-fixer-criminal nexus in breeding corruption. Corruption in India a vicious nexus and a vicious circle. How to break this nexus and circle is the big challenge.
  
  
• The notebook conveys a fair and credible impressionistic account of the culture of corruption in India. Most readers would tend to agree with the overall sentiment expressed here. In recent times, judicial activism, civil society lobbying and media exposes have forced the government to clean up its Augean stables – the right to information bill is one shining example – but corruption as a way of life continues to rule Indian society, as suggested in the report.
  
  However, the report fails to capture the complexity of the beast. By confining it in the monetary straitjacket, the writer runs the risk of sounding banal and uninsightful. It also overlooks the nuance and hierarchy of corruption across classes. For instance, the fact that urban poor pay more for drinking water than the rich is a kind of corruption that is built into government policies. The fact that the Supreme Court approves of the demolition of slums in the name of urban renewal while allowing a huge mall to be built in clear violation of environmental laws is also a form of corruption. The writer's obsession with urban corruption betrays a middle-class background. Corruption in the name of rural poor is equally, if not more, massive and deserves more than a mere mention. The author, like many others, focuses almost exclusively on corruption in the government, while there is enough evidence to suggest that corruption in the private sector, which is booming at the moment, is also rampant, especially in deals between corporations and state governments. The ongoing agitation over sale of farmland to developers of Special Economic Zones is a case in point.
  
  
• The Reporter's Notebook vividly portrays the omnipresence of corruption in everyday life. Despite sustained efforts by the state to control corruption, the reporter shows that the disconnect between rules and reality are all too glaring.
  
  The Notebook could have underscored that the other side of corruption is responsible for its ubiquity: the people's grudging acceptance of illicit payoffs as a compulsion. For all the outrage it evokes, ordinary Indians, like their counterparts in much of the world, recognize that bribes do work.
  
  Property disputes, such as the one the reporter cites, could be stuck in court for years. With some extra "investment," litigants know they can save much time and money. Traffic violations often entail hefty fines and can mar one's record. Arguments with the police officer are likely to trigger harsher punitive sanctions. Settling the matter through mutually acceptable financial considerations becomes a more prudent course.
  
  A newly assertive civil society, acting on decades of public frustration, has built considerable momentum for positive change in recent years. The creation and empowerment of the Central Vigilance Commission is a major structural initiative.
  
  Yet public apathy also stems from the source of anti-corruption initiatives: the political sector.
  
  The Indian media energetically uncover allegations of political corruption. Faced with public outrage, the accused are forced to resign their political positions or are expelled by the organizations and institutions eager to dissociate themselves from such tarnished individuals. Yet such accused individuals are sometimes re-elected. Their tendency to interpret their renewed popular mandate as an act of total exoneration before the legal process has run its course often goes unchallenged.
  
  For ordinary Indians, the realities of life are harsh and deeply entrenched. No matter how simple the complaint-filing process becomes, anti-corruption organizations must follow an exhaustive process that requires cooperation from other government departments. Even with the best of intentions, bureaucratic collaboration takes time.
  
  Once a case is built, the legal process moves at its own disappointing pace. The delay in redressing grievances batters much more than the aggrieved party. The intended deterrent effect of anti-corruption initiatives can be diluted to the point of irrelevance. Worse, this inadequacy could embolden would-be offenders.
  
  Bribery, like other market transactions, functions on the law of demand and supply. Anti-corruption measures would require much more than stringent rules and resolute officials ready to enforce them. They must begin with a more candid acknowledgement of the people's reluctant acceptance of corruption as a fact of life.
  
  
• I agee with the observations. The court trials of Jessica lall and Priyadarshini Mattoo's killers support the observation that justice delayed may be justice denied!
  
  
• I think the write-up does a great job of presenting how people who are not directly involved with corruption do not remain untouched by it. I particularly like the first example where the close family friend is unable to resolve the problem through bribery, This shows that bribery is often a one-shot, idiosyncratic attempt at solving a problem. Consequences sometimes remain uncertain despite large bribes.
  
  Based on my reading, I think the author classifies corruption has being of two types a) grass-roots corruption and b) top-level corruption. The author hints at the fact that the first is unique to developing countries such as India and is not such a severe problem as it would be in a developed country, and may be a cost of trying to set up institutions in an environment in which lower level "monitors" (police and judges) may be inadequately remunerated in comparison to equally qualified people in other sectors of the economy.
  
  I enjoyed the short summary of the legislative debates and the possible changes in information. An example of how the RTI bill has been used (like the initial examples) would have given readers a flavor of what having the bill in place really means. However, I think the author does a good job of "expressing the mood of the people affected by" corruption in India.