<p>“Show me your wealth, I will show you a crime!” What a perfect description of India. Whether it is a cinema star who has evaded paying income tax for years or a liquor baron who has painted the skies red with his trademark airline, corruption has become part of the Indian psyche.<br /><br /></p>.<p>Corruption is also linked with the rich and the famous. It is a land where prime ministers and chief ministers can get away with crimes that challenge one’s imagination. It is also a land where corruption does not see the culprits end up in prison. Instead, they arrive on Page 3 of popular newspapers. <br /><br />It is veritably a land of “thieves and knaves” as quoted by Churchill whom we may have disliked but who spoke the truth in this respect. Strange that a country which gave birth to a Harishchandra, a Gautama Buddha and more recently, to a Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi should also have spawned ace swindlers, fraudulent politicians and bogus god men who have taken the gullible public for a cool ride. <br /><br />Whether it is an infamous first family or a petty clerk in a government department, the act of corruption seems to come naturally. One may have swindled the nation for generations and the other cheated a poor petitioner of his pension – the act of corruption has the same characteristics. It is duping the innocent and the gullible. That is sleaze at official levels. <br /><br />Next, we have the syndrome of unaccounted wealth. Studies are said to have revealed that 50% of the national GDP consists of black money! This “black economy” may run into billions of dollars annually. Corruption of this magnitude could stall the country’s development in all spheres. <br /><br />Sadly, it hurts only the beneficiaries of such development programmes in whose name funds are released by governments – both at the Centre and the states. An example that comes to mind is the much touted Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme that is meant to benefit children. The Unicef launched this largest ever global initiative in India three decades ago. <br /><br />The Central government has ploughed large funds into this programme which has been launched in all the states through the social welfare departments. The name “anganwadi” became a symbol of succour and comfort to infants, new born babies and their mothers. <br /><br />But, in reality, how many children or mothers have truly benefited is the million dollar question. Did the bread and milk and medicines really reach them all? Did the lactating mothers get their daily quota of nourishment? How much was siphoned away by the middlemen, the distributors, the trustees of this precious programme? <br /><br />It is the easiest thing to launch a project. To keep it going the right way is another matter. We may draft bills in Parliament, confirm them into an Act which gets legal and official recognition. But how far have these Acts of Parliament or state legislatures translated themselves into feasible programmes? How much have they benefited the people for whom they were meant in the first place? <br /><br />Failed RTE<br />Take the Right to Education (RTE) which promised millions of deprived children a free and fair education in a good school. Private educational institutions were told to admit a fixed percentage of these first generation learners under the scheme. Ev-erything was fine on paper. The reality is shockingly different. <br /><br />As more and more instances of bullying, cheating and bribery come to light, with educational authorities themselves colluding with schools to extort money from families who have pawned away their resources to educate their sons and daughters in a good English medium school, one can see the pointlessness of such government initiatives. <br />In other words, much of the country’s wealth gets frittered away on futile government schemes where the real beneficiaries are the middlemen operating the scheme. <br /><br />The World Bank studies may have shown that bribery and corruption prevail all over the world, and more so in South Asian countries. But that is no consolation. Just because there are scandals in our neighbouring countries, can we condone the scams in our own? It does not matter whether it is the fodder scam or 2G spectrum scam or the coal mining scam. <br /><br />They involved mind boggling sums of money and revealed corruption at the highest levels with elected representatives of the people working hand in hand with senior government officials. When such things can happen at the highest levels, why blame the petrol pump vendor or the owner of a hotel or a clerk in a government office for shortchanging his customer or adulterating the food he serves or demanding a price for retrieving an old file? <br /><br />Until we put proper mechanisms in place to revive a culture of honesty in public life, there is no hope for a country which can only boast of a 4,000 year old culture. True culture is to follow rules of honesty and discipline when no one is looking.<br /></p>
<p>“Show me your wealth, I will show you a crime!” What a perfect description of India. Whether it is a cinema star who has evaded paying income tax for years or a liquor baron who has painted the skies red with his trademark airline, corruption has become part of the Indian psyche.<br /><br /></p>.<p>Corruption is also linked with the rich and the famous. It is a land where prime ministers and chief ministers can get away with crimes that challenge one’s imagination. It is also a land where corruption does not see the culprits end up in prison. Instead, they arrive on Page 3 of popular newspapers. <br /><br />It is veritably a land of “thieves and knaves” as quoted by Churchill whom we may have disliked but who spoke the truth in this respect. Strange that a country which gave birth to a Harishchandra, a Gautama Buddha and more recently, to a Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi should also have spawned ace swindlers, fraudulent politicians and bogus god men who have taken the gullible public for a cool ride. <br /><br />Whether it is an infamous first family or a petty clerk in a government department, the act of corruption seems to come naturally. One may have swindled the nation for generations and the other cheated a poor petitioner of his pension – the act of corruption has the same characteristics. It is duping the innocent and the gullible. That is sleaze at official levels. <br /><br />Next, we have the syndrome of unaccounted wealth. Studies are said to have revealed that 50% of the national GDP consists of black money! This “black economy” may run into billions of dollars annually. Corruption of this magnitude could stall the country’s development in all spheres. <br /><br />Sadly, it hurts only the beneficiaries of such development programmes in whose name funds are released by governments – both at the Centre and the states. An example that comes to mind is the much touted Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme that is meant to benefit children. The Unicef launched this largest ever global initiative in India three decades ago. <br /><br />The Central government has ploughed large funds into this programme which has been launched in all the states through the social welfare departments. The name “anganwadi” became a symbol of succour and comfort to infants, new born babies and their mothers. <br /><br />But, in reality, how many children or mothers have truly benefited is the million dollar question. Did the bread and milk and medicines really reach them all? Did the lactating mothers get their daily quota of nourishment? How much was siphoned away by the middlemen, the distributors, the trustees of this precious programme? <br /><br />It is the easiest thing to launch a project. To keep it going the right way is another matter. We may draft bills in Parliament, confirm them into an Act which gets legal and official recognition. But how far have these Acts of Parliament or state legislatures translated themselves into feasible programmes? How much have they benefited the people for whom they were meant in the first place? <br /><br />Failed RTE<br />Take the Right to Education (RTE) which promised millions of deprived children a free and fair education in a good school. Private educational institutions were told to admit a fixed percentage of these first generation learners under the scheme. Ev-erything was fine on paper. The reality is shockingly different. <br /><br />As more and more instances of bullying, cheating and bribery come to light, with educational authorities themselves colluding with schools to extort money from families who have pawned away their resources to educate their sons and daughters in a good English medium school, one can see the pointlessness of such government initiatives. <br />In other words, much of the country’s wealth gets frittered away on futile government schemes where the real beneficiaries are the middlemen operating the scheme. <br /><br />The World Bank studies may have shown that bribery and corruption prevail all over the world, and more so in South Asian countries. But that is no consolation. Just because there are scandals in our neighbouring countries, can we condone the scams in our own? It does not matter whether it is the fodder scam or 2G spectrum scam or the coal mining scam. <br /><br />They involved mind boggling sums of money and revealed corruption at the highest levels with elected representatives of the people working hand in hand with senior government officials. When such things can happen at the highest levels, why blame the petrol pump vendor or the owner of a hotel or a clerk in a government office for shortchanging his customer or adulterating the food he serves or demanding a price for retrieving an old file? <br /><br />Until we put proper mechanisms in place to revive a culture of honesty in public life, there is no hope for a country which can only boast of a 4,000 year old culture. True culture is to follow rules of honesty and discipline when no one is looking.<br /></p>
