Corruption — from birth to death

R.K. Raghavan

Kudos to the Supreme Court of India for its emphatic observation recently on how sternly it viewed corruption in government departments. A three-member bench, which was dealing with the case of a police officer who had been caught red-handed for accepting a bribe way back in 2001, said that it did not believe a corrupt public servant would reform himself and hence he deserved no sympathy. Very harsh words indeed from the highest court of the land. But then this has to be viewed in the context of an abominable decline in standards of probity within the civil service. 

The SC comment makes it clear  that no official appealing against his punishment for a corrupt act can plead for mercy on the ground that he will behave himself in future. This may look stern and unfair and out of tune with the philosophy that penology is blind without the leavening effect of mercy and an opportunity for the criminal to lead a new life. It could also invite a howl of protest from those 'activists' who cite that one object of the penal system is to look out for avenues by which a convict is made to repent and offer to mend himself, and any judicial stand contrary to it was against modern jurisprudence. 

In my view any such dissent from the laudable apex court view on graft  ignores the harsh realities of the current scenario marked by corruption from birth to death. You now have to grease some official's palm for getting either a birth certificate or a death certificate in most parts of the country.   Nothing can be more disgraceful to a country that quotes Mahatma Gandhi times out of number to prove its ethical credentials. The pity is that an overwhelming majority of the 1.2 billion Indians are willing to put up with this nonsense, because no citizen wants to wait for the services to which he is entitled to under the law. Everyone is in a hurry, and if it means greasing a public servant's palm, none of us minds it. 

There are at least two reasons why a public servant indulges in corruption. First, he has paid a huge of sum of money to a minister (read sometimes as Chief Minister) to earn his job. There was a time when I believed that all rumours on the subject were exaggerated. I have since revised this view. Possibly with the exception of the All India Services and Central Services for which the Union Public Service Commission holds a competitive examination, the popular perception is almost every government job has to be ‘bought’ and not earned by merit and selection. 

Till now there are no scandals about the UPSC. This gives me a lot of confidence. How long will this remain so is a matter for conjecture. Every recruit to the government sets about the task of recovering his 'investment', the moment he completes his training and is given independent charge to exercise authority in public interest. This explains most of the misdeeds of junior members of the bureaucracy. It does not, however, account for the lack of integrity of IAS and IPS officers many of whom have unfortunately acquired an unsavoury image, that would make Sardar Patel squirm in his grave.

The second factor is the rapacious demand for money from the political executive. In many states a quota is prescribed for each department for collection every week, if not every day. Meeting this despicable levy is a hard task, and this drives many a lowly government official to indulge in questionable practices. Examples are legion and the situation is mostly the same all over the country. The highest in the bureaucracy are aware of this, but they either wink at it or are themselves not averse to a share in the booty. The few who dare to interfere in this unholy game are either intimidated into silence or are harassed with frequent transfers. This is the miasmic situation that prevails in the government. The evil is less visible at the Centre than in the states. This is, however, no matter for comfort.   

My account of the abysmal levels of integrity in public services may seem negative and crude. Those currently in the bureaucracy may be upset. There is no point in sweeping this under the carpet, especially if we want India to dispel perceptions outside and encourage foreign investment. As in the case of homicides or assaults on women, deterrent penalties may not make much of an impact on the incidence of public servant misconduct. This is why I do not set much score by recent attempts to enhance penalties prescribed by the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. Amendments to the Act proposed by the previous UPA government and accepted by the NDA are no doubt laudable. It will, however, be unrealistic to expect a sea change in the integrity standards of the average government official. A reduction of discretion in responding to basic demands of the public — such as the issue of fundamental documents like passport, driving licence, ration card, birth/ death certificate — will make a slight difference. The introduction of online processes here has already helped in a few states. There is an urgent need to expand this facility to more regions and to extend it to other interactions between a public servant and the common man. What we should aim at is putting an end to cutting-edge corruption rather than big-ticket misdeeds which need a transformation of the politics of the nation. If we achieve even this modest target we can rightly pat ourselves on the back

The writer is a former Director of the CBI