The Many Colors of Indian Corruption

For a long time I have been arguing that there is no terrorism problem in the world. there is only " pakistan problem" exactly teh same word used by british PM. At last some one is listening and shows the importance of ideas. from jang of today.

Need to solve Pakistan problem: Gordon Brown

Monday, January 05, 2009

News Desk

LODNON: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Sunday that solving the “Pakistan problem� was crucial to an Afghan strategy.

Asked if more troops were needed in Afghanistan, Brown told BBC in an interview: “We [Britain] have already got more troops there but we need to solve the Pakistan problem. We need to ensure that there’s an economic stake in the country in Afghanistan and we’ve got to back up the Afghan army — at some point they’ve got to take control of their own affairs.�

No one doubts for a minute that India is indeed very corrupt. If it weren't, we could have probably overtaken China and if not that, at least provide a reasonable standard of living for all our citizens.

That said, Transparency International, the body that surveys and rates countries based on corruption levels, rates India at 84 and Pakistan at 135 from among 180-odd countries. I think Denmark (or some other Scandinavian country) is ranked 1 and considered the least corrupt country. And Pakis here are shouting their lungs off pointing at corruption here. The fact that Mr.10%, Zardari is the President should tell you guys something.

Re: # 49

You are so right Dost

But I re emphasise that it is in the coils of the bureaucratic regulations itself that corruption thrives.

Take the example of the Indian customs department that had been one of the most corrupt arms of the government with draconian punishments for even quite trivial imports until it was substantially liberalised just three years (or so) ago under WTO pressures. Today almost anything can be quite freely imported and customs have very few teeth to harass importers big or small.

Industrial licencing had similarly been very slow and corrupt until the giant octopus of DGTD (Directorate General of Technical Development) was disbanded and made a part of Industrial development. But many regulations in new forms continue to persist.

If regulations were reduced by 90% with a corresponding reduction of the babus needed to control them how quickly our poor sub continent would develop. It would be cheaper to pension off the babus than to allow them to so seriously disrupt our lives.

You mention Lee Quan Yew. In Singapore, I believe it is an order that all applications have to be cleared within 7 days and that all departments have to be competent to pass orders at all times and no delay can be allowed for the absence (on leave or other duty) of a competent officer. The next senior takes over, regardless of rank, on the basis that "the king is dead (or absent) long live the king".

If we had fewer regulations, fewer regulators and time limits for action taken, corruption would wither and progress would be much faster.

This continuing sanctitity of laws also begs the question of why we need legislators at all. Most of the laws concerning social, moral, commercial or cultural issues are already in place and the enactment of new laws really only add to the confusion. Perhaps the time has come to disband all Parliaments and local legistative bodies and have one universal system of laws with just a small appendix to cover the religious, cultural and social issues of a particular country or region.

PS:

Masadi miaN, I am on record that I consider being a jamadar an honorable job (and of far more practical value than you, or I, can accomplish on this website).

Re: # 56

Masadi miaN, I am sorry to disappoint you but it was not I who redflagged that specific post of yours. (Aap ke chahney waale hazaaroN aur haiN!) Have a good day. :)

Have a nice day and take it easy,

TNITC masadi

Bj thank you for redflagging the previous post like a goddamned jamadar.This one needs to be flagged as well you miserable chimpanzee....


TNITC masadi

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Well, here is a summary of what I said earlier, in case anybody did not get it fully.

(1) The line between what is corruption and what is not is simple – what is against the written law is corruption.

(2) Breaking the law (of any kind) is not a grey area – it is a knowing violation of clearly defined laws. MOST people would not do it (the first time) if they can help it.

(3) However, ONCE they do (and nothing happens to them and nothing happens to many others like them all around) the chances are they will be prone to do it more and more for less and less of a “cause�.

The steps to address corruption must accordingly be multi-pronged:

(1) Reduce the conditions that facilitate corruption: (a) Reduce the work-force size to only what is absolutely necessary so there will be more “legitimate� work to do and less “made up� work, (b) Pay better to the workers who are doing “legitimate� work and reward them for performing well, (c) Improve clarity of laws on what constitutes corruption (so there is no confusion on the part of individuals who are breaking the law), (d) remove archaic laws which provide an opportunity for corruption.

(2) Better enforcement: (a) Punish the errant employees seriously; (b) Reward the good employees more.

Even the above will not remove corruption completely but will reduce its overall prevalence and its being accepted as the norm.

We imbibed the devilish skill of creating weird currents in our physical brain looking at the marking on a piece of paper. We got addicted to these jumble of currents. We call them thoughts. It has nothing to do with Vichar, which has potential to turn into Vivek. Thoughts because of alien book reading leads to more talk and mostly devilish actions such as Paki Kasab. For vichar to happen one needs preparation ...preparation for dissolution of sense of "I" or mind. That is why our sages emphasized not writing the Upanishads and teaching Bramha Dnyan to prepared ones. The minds which lived Tatwa Ma Asi ie "You are that," were capable of developing script, paper and pen.

We need to recapture our human-hood by scientifically recreating consciousness of our sages. It's high time India change its course.

Re #41, bjkumar

Thanks for your post. I see your point, I don't deny it one bit. But my point is: that's only half the story - especially in today's context (let's not talk about Kautilya's time or the 1960s). I would be indeed happy if government servants were better paid. However, I agree with Murad Baig's post (#44) that better wages alone will not cause corruption to go down.

There is a limit to which you can increase wages. And most people want more.

I have nothing against a person's legitimate desire to earn more to keep himself and his family comfortable. I myself need to take care of my family and save for our future. But there's a very thin line between this and greed. What I see in India today is that this line is getting rubbed off, there's a gradually growing culture that unconsciously considers greed a virtue (justifying it by saying it provides for their families).

Maybe it's just that the definition of greed has changed. My definition of greed is simple: it's when you commit a wrong to cross the line that separates necessity from luxury. Now, everyone has a different opinion on what is luxury and what is necessity.

Going by your logic, the govt officials who have earned well enough through corruption to live in luxury, should have stopped taking bribes, because it is no longer a necessity and it would start pricking their conscience. But that is not the case... most often, it is they who land the biggest underhand deals. Their focus shifts from the small fish to the big ones.

The example of IT employees filing false claims was meant to point out exactly that - they enjoy relatively high salaries and I don't see the need for them to "cross the line" to earn an extra 5000/- to help themselves or their families survive!! It would have probably helped buy a fancier mobile phone... and many people think that is a necessity rather than a luxury. That's the difference (in the perception of greed) I am talking about.

My stress on good parenting and education continues. After all, corruption is about (lack of) ethics. Ethics begins at home. Cinema and TV projecting bad values will result in rotten ethics when allowed to influence a growing child's mind. I am in no two minds about that.

In summary - yes, better wages for govtt officials will discourage bribe-taking and could reduce the overall corruption level by 5%. But if you expect it to catapult India from number 85 on the World Corruption Index to the top 30, I think you are mistaken. But if Indians did their parenting well for the next 25 years, we have the potential to be in the top ten.

I also agree with some of Murad Baig's recommendations. But who will bell the cat?

Thanks
kcs

Murarilal G,

The civilization which lived "we are spiritual being in human garb" has reached to this nadir of corruption because of onslaught of Abrahmic Gan..giri. It is pure darbari ga..giri underneath even if you put on "wordy" garb of re-legion, egalitarian emancipation, marxism, market capitalism and so on. That is the mother of all corruptions. Pl note it's "being" and not "beings" in "we are spiritual being in human garb."

Before we had Dashrath putting langoticlad Vishwamitra on the throne, and washing his feet with his own hand. In seventeenth century Ch. Shivaji offered his kingdom to another langoticlad guru Ramdas. Today we are putting Shankaracharyas who build temples in Harijan-wadas with harijan priests in jails, on fake murder charges.

When we do nothing when our Gurus such as Teg Bahadurjis are tortured to death for spreading the truth conveyed by "we are spiritual being in human garb," we are paving the path to hell of corruption.

We need to spread Gandhi's attitude of "Money is the trust given by the society and so needs to be used judiciously."

Corruption is the foundation of our Macaulay education system. We teach corruption in our education. Our education is anti community building. It's a factory designed for producing darbari ga..dus.

Except few exceptions such as Gandhi, Arobindo, Malviya, Savarkar and Patel most of our leaders of 20th century were corrupt in thought, attitude and action. Todays Lallooes and Pawars are mere symptoms of the disease.

Murarilal G, you coming here and corrupting young minds with your lies about Hinduism and other dharmik panths is the biggest corruption. Tum ye corruption band karne ko kya loge? Cadbury's Bournvita?

#46
Simply ji,
You are right. But you know we have other history books here written to link us with our real roots. So I am hopeful for a better understanding in upcoming generations as well.

Never give up, right? :)

Baig Saheb:

The credit for most of India's problems as well as some achievements goes to India's "karn-adhaar", Jawahar Lal Nehru.

As you noted, the problem of bribery was implicit even in the concept of 'nazraana'. [Digression, a maharashtrian once remarded that the problem was less serious in the south where the mughal concept of nazrana did not operate]. The concept of 'oopar ki amdani' was well established even during the British rule. India's struggle for independence was fought by principled people driven by a lot of idealism. It should have been easy to reduce this evil if our leaders after independence, especially Nehru who had unchallenged moral and political authority, had given importance to it. Unfortunately, Nehru was more interested in the airy-fairy 'trysts with destiny' than in the nuts and bolts of governance. Because corruption at that time was largely confined at the babu-thana level, he presumed, wrongly of course, that bribery was a symptom of poverty and will disappear once the country was developed. Unfortunately, instead of disappearing, it travelled upwards as bribe takers went unpunished and reached upper level administrators, politicians and judiciary which had earlier not faced this problem.

Lee Kuan Yiew pointed out that 450 ICS officers in 1950s in India ran the country much more efficiently than several times larger number in the 70s. Our leaders unfortunately went on a binge of expanding bureaucracy instead of making it more efficient. A theoretical solution would be to cut down inefficient 75% of the bureaucracy and give their salaries to the remaining 25% efficient and honest government workers.

Re: # 43 jayp...you nugget...are you on your own driven nuts by some sort of a compulsive disorder about Pakistan or are you just one name but many agents of RAW on a Rs. 500/month job of cut and paste, because so much obsession and so much work by just a single mad man even devoted to some shrine is not possible...whatever instead of wasting your energies and banging your head against a mountain, why don't you try to do something good where you can make a difference...in the midst of your own ugly community...your first homework could be to work on stopping human sacrifices in the appeasement of Kali in your mother land...once you report success on that you could move on to homework number two...then three and so on...this way you could slowly work on bringing your brain back to as near as possible to normality.

Re: # 46; simply61
[[Maybe in another 50-70 years when things have turned borderless again the history books might look back at the present era as one marked by futile hostilties and hatreds]]

Amen to that! ... it needs a level of maturity and a genuine lack of insecurity though ... it takes time for nations to attain that level of maturity; the Brits left in a hurry ... maybe if they'd hung around for another 50 years or so, things would have been different ... one can only speculate and extrapolate from other examples I suppose