Saturday, February 28, 2009

PROPER SYSTEMS CAN REDUCE CORRUPTION

We have come to accept with equanimity — and therein lies the danger — that we are among the most corrupt countries in the world.

If you have had anything to do with any of our government institutions, whether central, state, regional or provincial, the one unremitting common denominator you find is corruption.

But have you ever wondered why and how institutions like IIMs, IITs and a few other institutions of excellence have remained 100% corruption-free, despite being government institutions? Before you contradict me saying a few years ago there was a leak in the Common Admission Test of IIMs, I may say that the leak, following a HRD ministry-IIMs stand-off, was from a government press and no IIM was involved in the unfortunate leak.

In any case, here, when I say these institutions are ‘corruption-free’ what I is mean that the probability that a student gains admission by means other than the admission criteria laid down is zero — not virtually zero, but zero. It is important to understand how these islands of integrity survive in this ocean of corruption, because that may be our only route to pulling our other institutions from the morass of corruption.

The systems and processes of admissions in these institutions are such that even a corrupt head of the institution wanting to oblige a political heavyweight, cannot influence the process of selection of the students. No one individual, or even a clique of powerful individuals can make a dent in the processes that govern the selection of students in these institutions. Not that undue pressures are not applied from the highest offices in the land to favour the son or daughter of so and so!

Fortunately, even a pliant head of institution, most keen to oblige the powers that be, cannot do so for the simple reason that he is in fact powerless. So when this head of institution tells the powers that be that, sorry, he cannot do anything to ensure the admission of the latter’s ward, he is not just taking a moral posture. He is telling the truth.

Of course, the nice thing is, when you belong to such an institution, the moral posturing comes automatically. Everybody believes in fairness. Everyone knows that his statement of inability to influence is also backed by the system. And that helps enormously.

The systems in these institutions ensure rigid compliance. What is interesting is that these systems are not rigid in the sense that they stymie individual initiatives or do not allow for situational exigencies. They do. And yet, the systems are such that the basic integrity is in no way ever compromised.


For the same reason, we must push for electoral reforms in the form of transparent and tax deductible contributions to political parties.

The ad-hoc system of underhand collections in the name of the party can help politicians line their own nests liberally before their party’s. The parties virtually set ‘targets’ of collections in return for party tickets and positions.

The politicos in turn set targets for those serving under them, they in turn set further targets down the line and the system cascades down all the way to a point where the police sub-inspector or even the constable may have ‘targets’ based on where he is posted. That is the reason politicos stoutly resist electoral reforms.

That is also the reason they resist giving the option “None of the above” to the electorate, so that if enough number of people vote for that option, all the candidates stand disqualified. And these are all the more reasons why, as a people, we must fight for such systemic improvements.

We have seen many other instances where introduction of proper and transparent systems have minimised corruption. For example, introduction of radio cabs with their electronic meters in cities like Hyderabad and Bangalore have eliminated much of the harassment of the passengers by cab drivers. Introduction of e-reservations eliminated much of the corruption on the Railway booking counters.


There is an interesting system of compliance in Israel. In some of the one-way passages, embedded on the road are these steel spikes, curved in one direction, such that a vehicle could move on it in the correct direction; but a vehicle trying to go in the opposite direction will get its tyres punctured — a system we could use in this country!

As the world’s largest democracy, we owe it to ourselves to recognise corruption for the rot that it is, eating away our innards. We need systemic solutions.

The above aricle is inspired by V Raghunathan.

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