Double A registration- A breakthrough
Posted on June 25, 2011
This morning’s newspaper has good news. Karnataka is set to introduce Anytime-Anywhere Registration of property (Double A Registration), by November. My first thought was, what perfect timing, this is one of our main recommendations in the meeting today with the Chief Secretary of Karnataka! Registration of properties is a viciously corrupt process, as the stories on ipaidabribe.com show. The racket is well organised, with set rates, the use of euphemisms such as ‘facilitation charges’ and a set of touts and middlemen operating to put psychological pressure and break down the resistance of anybody who wants to resist corruption. Little wonder that more than 95 percent of the registration related stories on our site speak of abject surrender to the scourge of corruption in the sub-registrar’s offices.
Yet, the government will argue that there is no need for corruption at all. Registration processes have been computerised with the Kaveri software, they will say. There is a citizens’ charter that assures that registration will be completed within two hours and twenty minutes. With the introduction of guidance values, there is no more scope for collusive corruption, they will assert, because one has to pay the stamp duty on that basis. With the introduction of e-stamping, the black marketing of stamp papers (and of course the inevitable Telgi-like scams) has stop.
The government is right – all these reforms have been introduced, but have they reduced corruption? Not at all, if one is to go by the experiences of citizens on ipaidabribe.com. Why has that been so? After all, e-governance is supposed to reduce corruption. A study by Prof. Subhash Bhatnagar of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad is a pointer to the reasons. As long as the procedures have many steps and is complex, internal computerisation of the process does not impact on the incidence of corruption, at least not significantly, is his conclusion.
However, double A Registration can change all that. What does this mean? It means that you can register any sale of property, in any office of the registration department. If citizens have a choice, then if there is information on the levels of corruption in different offices, they will naturally gravitate to that office where they see less corruption and faster and more courteous service. In other words, Double A registration means you can go to the least corrupt registration office to register your property. The Double A approach can destroy the service area monopoly of offices, create an incentive for officials to be honest, because honesty can bring them more business and thus, by giving citizens a choice, corruption can be outcompeted from the market. If it works well, it can amount to saying tata to bribes in the registration department!
Yes, all this is possible; however we must wait and see whether this landmark reform is a success. Citizen experiences on ipaidabribe.com show that many people pay bribes for registration of properties, because their builders’ agents, lawyers and CA tell them to! Instinctively one feels that the corrupt might not change overnight. We all know that every office has a well-oiled network of private touts who manage the bribery market chain now. What will become of them, when Double A kicks in? Will they find a way around it? Will these middlemen, spurred by their principals in the department, continue to spread the misinformation that citizens have no choice to go to any registration office to register properties? Will all the offices cartelise and have standard rates of bribes, thereby negating any advantage of Double A?
Many more downstream tactics are required to ensure that Double A works. First, there must be a campaign to build citizens awareness, that it is their right to have properties registered through the Double A method. Second, this must be coupled with a stern warning on the operation of touts. Groups such as builders must be spoken to and told that their agents cannot indulge in such unscrupulous practices. Third, there must be a crackdown on the corrupt officials in the department. Alongside, we have to put pressure on the professional associations of Lawyers and Chartered Accountants to persuade their members to desist from promoting corruption. I also believe that the focus on private corruption needs to increase. ipaidiabribe.com's consistent stand has been that you cannot control public corruption without taking a hard line on private corruption.
On the positive side, it would be useful to have incentives for stamp duty collection, for each office. This will mean that staff will have an incentive to attract more people to register properties to their offices. However, too much of an incentive can backfire too. We might find reverse corruption, where the incentive money is shared between the officers and touts, to attract more buyers to their offices!
Come to think of it, ipaidabribe.com offers an excellent opportunity to see the change over time. Our data can be divided into 3 time series (a) before Double AA was announced, (b) between the announcement and implementation date, (c) after the implementation date. If data changes over time, we can say that this reform has been effective in reducing corruption. We will make this suggestion today to the Chief Secretary.
The other thought is that if we can have Double A for registration of properties, why not for all other corruption prone services? What about Double A in the Transport department for driving licences? In the BBMP for Khatas? What about ration cards? And of course, for that daunting prospect for any citizen, filing of an FIR with the police? All we need for introducing Double A in any department is to have a common database underlying all offices, which can be accessed by any one of them.
And of course, does it mean we have to continue bribing in registrars offices till Nov, when Double A is introduced? Citizens, be alert! Even now, you need not pay bribes for registering your properties.
-T.R Raghunandan