No season for corruption

Corruption, or sleaze if you like, has no season. It is the subject of TV debates every day, with news channels flashing reports of sensational raids and arrests as breaking news. When the message of the ‘India Against Corruption’ movement reverberated across the country in 2011–12, one had a lurking hope that, after all, the Indian society was all set to fight this evil. But alas! The movement petered out, and it was business as usual.

Janaagraha Centre for Citizen and Democracy, an NGO in Bengaluru, hosted an online platform, ’Ipaidabribe.com’, aimed at tackling corruption by harnessing the collective energy of citizens. The reported bribery cases related to what citizens experienced on a day-to-day basis to avail public services. Since its launch in August 2010 until 2016, the website received 12 million visits and over 75,000 reports from across 639 Indian cities. This crowdsourced information revealed telltale perspectives about transactional corruption. To cite just one example, 14 per cent of all complaints on the website against the police pertained to passport verification. Another interesting nugget: in 1149 reported cases between 2010 and 2014, more than Rs 38 lakh were transacted in bribe money.

I have heard from my seniors in the service that corruption was the exception rather than the rule during the halcyon days of 1951–75. Politicians and government officials indulged in corruption stealthily, and they did feel a modicum of shame when caught and exposed. The bureaucracy had not burgeoned like today. Politicians still had some morality. The media was not all pervasive. That generation perhaps still drew inspiration from the likes of Sir M Visvesvaraya, an icon and a byword for integrity in public life.

Fast forward to 1976–2000. We saw the corrupt becoming more audacious and accepting bribe money openly in offices. They were less remorseful or ashamed when arraigned before the courts, though some would put on an air of injured innocence and wounded pride. Despite that, stigma was still attached to corrupt elements both in society and government circles. Crusaders? Well, they were fast becoming an endangered species. Senior but honest bureaucrats, by and large rather spineless, plugged their nostrils as the stench of corruption permeated the corridors of power and chose to look the other way. That was the formula for survival and success.

In the last quarter century, however, there has been a precipitous fall, and competitive corruption has spiralled through the roof. The cash and goods seized along with property-related documents, reached astronomical proportions. It was daylight robbery! Some of the corrupt government servants were never brought to book but rewarded with lucrative positions during their service and after retirement. Those that were caught brazened it out and cocked a snook at the establishment, confident of support from political bosses and senior bureaucrats. They even dared to question anti-corruption agencies and came up with conspiracy theories. The fact that the chief of one such agency in Karnataka himself faced the ignominy of corruption charges ensured the demolition of institutional credibility. The fence was indeed grazing the crop!

Adverse publicity by the main stream and social media hardly made an impact. In fact, the shame quotient of the corrupt elements was inversely proportional to the 24*7 adverse publicity in electronic and print media. Like the Indian cheetah, the crusader had become extinct, while corruption had become well entrenched.

Transparency International (TI), in its 2022 Corruption Perception Index report, ranked India 85th out of 180 countries surveyed. The CEO of TI, Daniel Eriksson, said in the report, “Leaders can fight corruption and promote peace all at once... Include the public in decision-making.”

Corruption, governance, and internal security are interlinked. India faces the serious challenge of cross-border corruption. Corruption and conflict fuel each other. Even as India assumes the presidency of and hosts the G20, can one hope that it gets a grip on ‘deep seated grand corruption’ in our system so that the economic benefits reach every citizen without having to grease the palms of politicians and officials?

(The writer is a former DG and Inspector General of Police, Karnataka.)