Re: Fw: article on corruption in India

["Manish Gupta" <ml_gupta@hotmail.com>]

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>Manish:
>
>That is the fundamental mistake when you say:
> >For none of the problems I feel the politician are directly responsible,
>
>Fact: There is nothing like 'direct' responsibility. In our system
>everything is indirect. Politicians only sign on note-sheets. In upto 95%
>of the cases you point out, these 'petty' officials were appointed by
>political favours and corruption. In 90% of these cases, transfers and
>postings, to be done by IAS/IPS/central govt. service officers are done at
>the behest of politicians (on note sheets). IAS officers themselves are
>kicked around like footballs - with an average tenure of six months in most
>positions in the states, now. The moment any IAS officer tries to break the
>'chain' of corruption he is transferred. Even where an IAS officer is
>corrupt, he is fully supported by political leaders, despite others in the
>service destesting him.
>
>In at least 80% of the cases of bad systems, IAS officials have proposed
>(on file) detailed and better alternatives and they have been turned down
>repeatedly. In 80% of the cases, IAS officers, permanently kicked about,
>have given up thinking and offering better suggestions by the time they are
>40. I have not seen a more cynical bunch of people than senior IAS
>officers. Policy thinking is almost NEVER done by any political leader, but
>'blockage' of good policy often is. Even rules are deliberately framed
>(modified by political leaders) to allow greater corruption and lack of
>transparency. I can illustrate my statements with ample number of examples
>from my personal career. But I am quiet on that due to to various
>prohibitory 'rules'.
>
>Show me ANY corruption or even inefficiency: behind 90% of this corruption,
>I can clearly trace it to the source in a political payoff system.
>
>I do admit that IAS officers - many of them sparklingly honest, have got
>used to taking the 'blame' for politicians through their silence, mandated
>under the Conduct rules. Hence the public is happily unaware of the
>intricate web of corruption that is woven by our political masters - who do
>it because WE the citizens refuse to look into their costs and incentives.
>
>But on IPI I think we should look behind appearances. Take the blame on
>yourself as a citizen for this corruption.
>

I definitely don't deny the blame of not electing a good public
representative (be it on the local level to the national level), as you must
be remembering the way student representative used to get elected in the
college level, till now I am not able to understand what was the role of
student Union representative against what they used to do, and even in such
small population of people we were not able to elect proper representative.
(This was the precise reason some people (including myself) in this forum
suggested just before the last Loksabha election to run a campaign to elect
the representative carefully on behalf of IPI)

In our country, the only way a citizen can influence the governance is by
voting, and that vote also is only applicable for his/her own constituency,
or by running for the office himself/herself, or become a career civil
servant (which you can't do when you are over 28).

So in this kind of system the career civil servant has sweeping power, this
I can illustrate with some observations I made :

i) While I was in Jamshedpur (Bihar) in 1996, the SP of that place resigned
(he had a repution of being honest and strict) to take up career with TELCO,
a new SP was appointed, the first thing he did after taking charge was  to
make use of Helmet compulsory for two wheeler users  and all the vehicles to
get "pollution under control" certificate within 45 days. Now most of the
people in this forum would agree to this kind of action (including me),
however I have a problem with this as it doesn't have approval of any
publicly elected body, and modus operendi of implementation of such scheme
was such bad that there was only one place where you could get PUC
certification in the whole city (to clarify some things over here,
Jamshedpur is one of the better administered cities in India).

ii) Similarly in Nagpur and Nanded, there used to be some areas where
eateries used to be opened 24 hours a day, all of a sudden sometime in 1990
they were given orders to close down at around 10:00 pm, and apparantly this
directives were coming from Police commissioner without any approval form
the local Government (may be?).

Now lets take a look at the way an elected representative can make impact on
governance :

i) He can't fire/suspend a civil servant if he/she has made a big blunder.
ii) Only way to punish civil servant is to transfer him/her (which I
completely agree that is being misused).

Now if you talk about politicians are not allowed to even transfer civil
servants, then you are effectively making them (civil servants) immune from
any punishment, and they can do whatever they want (which is definitely not
undemocratic).

Now to remind you ours is a democratic country (even though it is not
perfect one), so in our system civil servant's will have to work under
elected politicians (whether or not they like it).

I think the better solution would be to have police chief to be elected as
instead of having an IPS officer as police chief of the city. Let Mayor be
the chief executive of the city instead of an IAS. Some time ago I also
asked about how our public prosecutors are appointed (what are all the
implications to have this post elected).

Now to accomplish the above mentioned task once again we need representative
who are interested in passing the laws to this effect (so its a vicious
circle).

So we in IPI at best can try to spread awareness among public to elect there
representatives carfully (as Mr. Seshan once said "Elect you representatives
as if you are choosing a groom for your daughter").

I hope once again that I making some sense (at least to some people).

Manish
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