India: History of Corruption

[Preface: This article is for mature and thinking readers. All those who seek entertainment or fun can skip this.]

I was going through Corruption Percentage Index (CPI) published by Transparency International and as ever found all the five Nordic countries in the top 10 countries with least corruption. But where is India? My pursuit of finding India's rank in honesty again faced a setback when India ended up at 84th place. The only solace is that it is out of 182 countries :-)

The wise APJ Abdul Kalam's famous speech suggests that India is corrupt because general public don't do anything about it. 100% right. But what can an average Indian do ?

When a goon troubles a common man, he will go to police for protection. But most of the times cops abet goons. If the cop is honest, he will get pressure from a local politician who patronizes the goon. And as everybody knows politicians are invincible. If the person lodges a case on the goon or the cop or the politician, he has to deal with the judiciary which is equally corrupt. No outlaw will be behind the bars for more than few hours. So there ends the matter. Hence its so easy to get rid of one goon by going to a more powerful law breaker than following the books.

When a person wants to officially get things done by a Govt officer, he is expected to pay bribe in cash or kind. If he doesn't, he faces world of hurdles and positively never gets his job done. If he escalates to higher authority, he learns that officers in the whole hierarchy are partners in crime. What else can he do ? If he goes to media, he finds himself in a state of shock as he learns that media-house owner is a accomplice in the trap he finds himself in.

When a person wants to honestly start a business, he is never given licenses by Govt. If anybody wants to be an entrepreneur, he has to be a relative or partner of the licensing authority who in-turn is affiliated to some political party which is funded by some corporate house. So everything is already fixed.

Criminals have support of police who have support of officers who have support of politicians who have support of judiciary, media and/or powerful businessmen. It is a powerful criminal network or a mafia with a long 50 years of history.

If a cop is honest, politician transfers him. If a politician is honest, criminals murder him, judiciary victimizes him with a fabricated case or self indulgent media maligns him with propaganda. If the political party is honest, businessmen don't fund them. If the media reporter is honest, the chief editor stops him.

To avoid all these issues, an average and common India condescends to bribing. Hence I would be the last person to agree that a country gets corrupt because of the general public who resort to bribing. If the authorities and the system is impregnated with corruption, the public is left with no alternative.

Flashback: Lets make a quick analysis as how did the corruption take its birth in India.

After independence, the great Pandit Nehru, in a bid to emulate Soviet Russia formulated a socialist policy which supported License Raj. It means no ordinary citizen can do business without Government's license and Govt is the only capitalist and the general public faces communism. Indira Gandhi revolutionized this with nationalization of financial institutions.

But sadly Govt failed to increase the economic growth, per capita income and mean standard of living with all the infallible plans on paper. Figures speak that economic growth was 1.5% from 1950 to 1990. A phenomenal shame and failure.Poverty began to rise its hood and so did desperation which is a natural mother of crime. The famous gap between haves and have-nots developed into an abysmal gorge.

Talented businessmen started lobbying with Govt for "licenses" and favors. Those who are close to bureaucrats and politicians started getting licenses, contracts for businesses and hence established firms. Now the omnipresent Tatas, Birlas, Ambanis enjoyed a "very good" relationship with all politicians across political parties and more remarkably the great Nehru-Gandhi family who were in power for 95% of the time during license raj.

This politician-businessmen nexus raised the curtain for bending the rules, corporates started competing among themselves with their money power which gave birth to muscle power, nepotism, corruption among all levels of supreme powers of the country namely legislature, executive and judiciary. Corporate world's currency, bureaucrats' greed, politicians' privileges, have-not's desperation proved to be an flammable combo. Struggle for the fittest was the mantra of the day and everybody raped the system to be the fittest and nobody was made accountable. This is the system which turned into quagmire and a breeding ground for corruption.

Things started improving, thanks to economic liberalization and breakthrough reforms upheld by PV Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh. Corporate-politician nexus eased a bit and rate of corruption decreased significantly. India became the 3rd largest economy in the world after US and Japan. With better economy came better standard of living, awareness, consciousness. But thats not sufficient.

The Roadmap:

The common man should be made aware of the "right to information act" to arrest the corruption. Ombudsmen, whistleblowers are working hard to improve the situation further but should be accessible to the common man. Anti-corruption bureaus should be unadulterated, public servants should be made accountable and answerable to public through transparent media. Putting this to implementation is not impractical but results don't appear overnight. Awareness and knowledge among the masses is the key.

May be in years to come, we see India cruising up in the index by Transparency International. Country has come a long way but has to go a longer way to heal the bruise inflicted by 50 years of mismanagement and bad direction.