"In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of
In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of"
Confucius
The deepening interest on Jan Lokpal (Citizen's ombudsman Bill) has no doubt captivated the Indian masses. A society burdened with a corrupt administrative heritage is now seeking redress. While differences continue to persist between the government and civil society, there is much awaited expectation among the general public that longs to put an end to corruption.
The government would obviously like to closely guard its citadels of power and keep its key officials ‘immune’ to any prosecution process. The Jan Lokpal on the other hand likes to see strong powers in its hands to take action against erring officials, bureaucrats, judiciary and politicians. But where this debate on exposing government officials to punitive measures would lead to is a bit uncertain. Let’s assume for a while that the Jan Lokpal, as proposed by the civil society, gets accepted and takes a formal structure. Will it be sufficient to put an end to corruption? What would be the ultimate outcome? In other words, what do we want to achieve by putting corruption to an end?
Well, an obvious answer would be – putting an end to corruption would make people happy. They can get work done without bribe, delay and fear.
While many of us would like to believe this to be true but there is much more to be done beyond implementing Jan Lokpal.
Jan Lokpal addresses only part of the problem, i.e. ‘people’ who manage various public interfaces. It assumes that ‘corrupt people’ are the culprits and need to be comprehensively punished. And by doing so would cleanse the system that would work efficiently. It does not address organizational issues that need to be looked into in order to make public organizations serve people fairly.
This issue is more at the core of the problems being faced by public. Just take a look at the archaic and long winding procedures followed by public utilities, lack of transparency, inefficient practices, difficulty in accessing and availing services and lack of speedy redress. These organizations have historically been ‘people’ driven rather than being ‘system’ driven. Unless and until these outdated modes of working do not change, Lokpal even in its pristine version would not be of any help.
Let’s make another assumption - that most of the corrupt officials either get caught and subsequently removed through Lokpal or mend their behavior under fear of getting reprimanded. Then, what would change? Not much, the processes that are the crux of the problem would continue torturing people with more vengeance than ever before. So who would lose out in this battle? Obviously you and me.
There is absolutely no doubt that a strong Jan Lokpal is needed. But at the same time administrative reforms are needed to complement the presence of Jan Lokpal. At times, we know how much difficult it gets to get a small work done through government departments. The slow pace, the multiple procedures, repeated visits, absence of deadlines (work seems to carry on till eternity) and little or no assurance speaks volumes on how much organizational anarchy is dominant within such organizations.
The strict reverence to procedures leads to ignorance of logic and reasoning. It is well known that government institutions are the slowest to change. This has led to severe lack of responsiveness to peoples’ needs.
Lack of Timeliness: In today’s fast changing world, timeliness is much desired but this does not seem to figure at majority of government organizations. In fact, getting sarkari babus to do work on time is a major source of corruption. Instead of demanding services within a time frame, gullible people choose to fall prey to the “set-up” and end up paying bribes. In fact, one of the provisions in Lokpal focuses exclusively on providing a timeline to deliver basic services at grass root levels.
Complex Procedures: People do not want to get hassled but official procedures are still based on old and outdated guidance. People promote corruption as they do not want to get into the complexities of procedures. They happily pay bribe at the drop of the hat to circumvent the odd process. In fact, it is considered a smart move.
Multiplicity of Procedures: Different departments do not interact with each other. At times it is like as if the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. People have to go through several procedures multiple times in order to get work done. This water-tight compartmentalization is a deliberate effort to multiply corruption opportunities.
Corrupt people are only a manifestation of this deep rooted malaise. In fact there are so many carefully and creatively crafted procedures that have actually molded ‘erstwhile’ good intentions of public organizational systems to ‘malafide’ intentions. This negates the very reason why such organizations were defined to exist and leads to inefficiencies and makes the organizations ineffective. Corruption breeds on such inefficiencies and these need to rooted out to make way for more responsive, transparent and efficient systems. It also needs to be stressed here that if systems are robust, the occurrences of corruption go down and consequently the need to punish corruption.
A strong Lokpal is still needed to keep creative tricksters at bay and also to keep the fear of the stick alive. Though, it is necessary but not sufficient.
(Readers who wish to share their comments or detailed thoughts are welcome. Please drop a mail with your write up. Do not forget to attach your profile photo)
