SSB Awareness Series: Deep rooted CORRUPTION in India

PM Modi during a debate in Rajya Sabha said "There is no reason to believe the fight against corruption and black money is a political fight.” It is not to single out any particular political party. I fully support him for his statement as Corruption is one of the biggest threats to the well-being of our society or from a broader angle our Nation.

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This degrades the quality of the services and also ruins the life of the common man. According to Corruption Perceptions Index, for 2016 No country gets close to a perfect score in the Corruption Perceptions Index. Over two-thirds of the 176 countries and territories in this year's index fall below the midpoint of our scale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean). The global average score is a paltry 43, indicating endemic corruption in a country's public sector. The most corrupted countries are Somalia (score:10), South Sudan (Score:11) and North Korea (Score: 12). The least corrupted countries are Denmark (Score: 90), New Zealand (Score: 90) and Finland (Score: 89).

Our India is in 79^th position with score of 40 out of 176 countries. Corruption is primarily seen in instances like jobs, businesses, promotions, election campaigns, sports etc. Let’s know the main causes of corruption in our country:

• ·      Low Pay scales/ Wages: Most of the employees in government sector are paid low wages and salaries. Hence some employees revert to corruption for more financial benefits. Average salary of a Mechanical engineer in government sector is 4.6L per annum, data entry is 1.2 L per annum.
• ·    Low Job opportunities. This is another cause of corruption. Due to lack of job opportunities at will, there are many people who like to go for corruption mode to get the job offer. They will be ready to pay lump sum amounts for the job offer to the higher officials or politicians.
• ·       Lack of Strict and fast punishments: Even if someone is found guilty or even caught red-handed by the anti-corruption officials or media, the convicts get less punishment. First they will be suspended for few months or weeks and then re-posted to another location with same Job grade and pay. So this means the official who did the corrupt practice is given a free license to continue his practice.If the government is so strict that any such corrupt incidents will lead to permanent removal from job and also punishment like several years’imprisonment, then the corruption will come down to a large extent.
• ·       The US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) is the most widely enforced anti-corruption law in the world. The Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Act, 1988 prohibits benami transactions. The Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 penalizes public servants for the offence of money laundering. India is also a signatory (not ratified) to the UN Convention against Corruption since 2005.
• ·  Lack of ill fame: If a person is found to be corrupt or has done some unacceptable misconduct, he or she has to be avoided and not be respected. But in India those with corruption and other offense related history are given prominent positions like the member of parliament or even higher posts. Instead of being disrespected they are respected. 31% ministers of PM Modi cabinet have been declared corrupted and with criminal charges.Arunachal Pradesh, Punjab and Puducherry are the states with all ministers being millionaires.
• ·         Lack of Unity in public: Public openly criticize corruption but interestingly there is no unity among the public to stop corruption. If a person wants to get his done his work, he gets it done by corruption means if possible and then later criticizes the corrupt official. If the public stands united against corruption in such a way that no one is ready to offer bribes to get their work done, then the corrupt officials will have no other option but to work in corruption free manner. During election, politicians try to lure the people by offering money and other things. If these politicians win and get power, they try to regain 10 to 100 times the amount spent for their elections.48% bribery complaints against government officials lodged by people aged below 35 years.
• ·         Lack of transparency in affairs and deals: Many seat selection processes like in education, contracts for job, employee income reports (wealth possession), etc. lack transparency. For this purpose, there is a new act namely RTI: right to information, but the act is not strong enough to prevent malpractices.
• ·         Lack of Independent detective agency: India has no independent detective agency which can investigate with full power and freedom to expose the corrupt individuals. The existing agencies like Central Bureau of investigation are named by the highest court of Indian judicial system as a parrot which indicates how free these investigating agencies to work. Hence anyone who commits offense will not be so afraid of the investigation as they can escape from it by taking help of ruling political party.

• ·     Option of many political parties: In India anyone can establish a political party. So there are many political parties in India. If the political party wins, then the members in it will desire to expand the party to all over the country. To do so, they need enough financial reserves. For this, once they come into power, they opt for corrupt means to make the wealth needed to expand the party.
• ·         Lack of accountability: In government there is a big trend of corruption. This is because of lack of accountability. The employees on government offices do not perform to their par excellence. If they receive 100 files to be cleared in a week they may not even clear 50 of them in that week. They tend to post-pone the clearance of the files. So those who are in urgency of the clearance have to get them done by rewarding the officials involved in the clearance office. This lack of accountability in government offices is chief cause of corruption. If there is a mandate that all the files or at-least 95% of files received by government offices for clearance are cleared in the said period than corruption can be minimized to a large extent.
• ·         Encouragement of unhealthy competition: Competition in business is a good sign for quality of service to be delivered. But in India there is encouragement of unhealthy competition. When there is a tender, you can notice that only few companies bid for it. This is because the companies having political relations have higher chances of winning while others do not. So, companies with no political influence will not bid for the tender in-spite of being a good company. That is here the number of bidders for a tender will be low due to political interference.

We need to remove corruption from our society and country in order to get real freedom from the slavery. We all need to be loyal towards our responsibilities and strict for any type of greediness.

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  About the Author: Tanmoy is from West Bengal currently doing private job in Manesar, Haryana. He did his Graduation in B.E. Production Engineering from PEC University of Technology, Chandigarh. His aim is to become an officer in Indian Army. His hobbies are gym and teaching and he wants to help the aspirants across the nation through this.