An un-civil society and its journey to civilisation
Guest writer Srikanth Vishwanathan examines the different categories and circumstances that bribes fall into and wonders if we should tar them with the same brush. He also looks at pointing the finger at ourselves as well for perhaps perpetuating them.
Some of the responses to Dr Kaushik Basu’s suggestion on de-criminalising harassment bribes were vitriolic, though your website’s own response of 9 August was measured and mature. While one may not prima facie agree with Dr Basu’s theory, I have come to realise that the distinction he has drawn between harassment bribes and the rest merits lot more attention in cracking the corruption code and more importantly in visualising corruption on a larger canvas which I would christen Rule of Law.
Individually and severally, our cognisance of and respect for the Rule of Law is anachronistic. It is almost as if the near two hundred year British rule has left us with this after-taste of breaking laws as if the law and law-makers are still alien and our fight for freedom is playing on. Anna’s use of `Niraahara Satyagraha’ with the Government in this day and age only abets this case of colonial hangover. In the arena of Indian public life, Prevention of Anti-Corruption Act is not the only gladiator that is dealt a fatal blow to the resounding cheer of the crowds. Laws and Rules, big and small are broken with impunity and don’t really feature in the individual or collective conscious before we embark on any action.
My hypothesis therefore is that the lack of our collective understanding of and respect for the Rule of Law is at the core and Corruption is a manifestation. It is here that Dr Basu’s delineation is pertinent in seeking different solutions for harassment bribes and the rest.
When you absolve a bribe giver who indulges in the act for claiming his due under Law, you uphold the Rule of Law in more than one way. You ensure that a citizen is dispensed his right with the administrative process functioning expeditiously for his benefit and you ensure that someone who does not have a deliberate intent to run afoul of the Law is not punished. Examples of such situations include a bribe to receive income tax refunds that are due or police clearance for passport. The causes of bribes of this nature are the expectation of a bribe working with or without information asymmetry or secondly, plain inefficiency resulting in the need for an additional incentive.
The solutions for this would comprise service level guarantees from the state to its citizens including compensation for undue delays, displaying simple step-wise process maps at every point of interaction between citizens and the Government and punishing the bribe taker. However, there are three other categories of bribes that are driven by pernicious intent and therefore have different causes and solutions.
These are bribes for violating the law, bribes for escaping the consequences of violation (could be a subset of the former) and bribes for out of turn allocations of benefits. The last could well be considered as violation of law but merits a separate mention to bring out the fact that payments for jumping the queue, even if the citizen has eligibility, does not qualify under the first category of bribes.
Examples of these include bribes for smuggling, for violation of traffic rules, for tax evasion, for a favourable judgement from a court, for getting away with murder and so on. In such cases, bribes not only conceal the actions that violate the Rule of Law and thereby greatly diminish its lustre, but also distract the law from its vigil against dangerous crimes with far-reaching implications.
This distinction between an intent to claim what is due and an intent to break the law is critical because most deleterious fall-outs of corruption arise from the latter. More interesting patterns emerge- bribes to claim what is due are point-of-transaction bribes which can be tackled with a set of simple measures at specific locations/offices or through process reengineering. However the malevolent bribes being pre meditated in their nature are more omniscient; those that are in violation of law or seek out of turn favours such as smuggling or tax evasion or bribe for promotions or transfers are likely to happen prior to the transaction and at any location/without location (i.e. electronic transfers) and sometimes when discovered and those that are for escaping the consequences of law, happen after an unlawful act has been committed. Such patterns facilitate a nuanced and deliberate approach to corruption whose efficacy and correlation to crime can be substantiated with data.
I am by no means justifying the act of paying a bribe or undermining the moral argument against corruption, only that bribes need to be broken down based on intent and root-causes and not painted with the same brush.
Before I conclude, I wish to make the most compelling observation yet- point-of-transaction bribes which are more innocent of the two arise due to expectation of bribes by Government officials or by sheer Government apathy. So clearly the Government’s fault. But the more malignant kind arise from the Citizen’s side, inducing Government officials not to uphold the Rule of Law or worse still, abet a crime. Isn’t the citizen more guilty of the two?
It is time to call the bluff of civil society in blaming the Government beyond reason. The Government merely reflects a cross section of our un-civil society, struggling to rediscover the path to civilisation, which itself many believe was cradled in a land called Bharatvarsha.
-Srikanth Vishwanathan
Srikanth Viswanathan is a Chartered Accountant with over eight years’ experience in the private sector spanning audit and banking. His current sphere of interest and experience in the social sector is performance reporting and management by urban service providers, against a backdrop of municipal finance and service delivery.
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