|| Satyameva Jayate ||

Dedicated to Bharat and Dharma

End big-time corruption? I dont think so…

by · January 1, 2007

Stumbled across this a few days back: “End big time corruption, PM tells Indians“.

I find it hard to agree. The major problem is “small time” corruption: the licenses, the permits, the restrictions, the delays, the reality of “kuch de ke karva lijiye” (pay and get it done).

Big time corruption is a problem even in developed countries and we are certainly not the only ones (See one of my articles on this issue: “Corruption in Public Life – Are we the only ones?“) but it is small-time babu-giri that hinders productivity, de-motivates, creates unnecessary barriers and saps our energy.

You may also like...

No Responses

  1. The use of IT in governance says:
    April 25, 2008 at 11:17 pm

    One of the biggest tool to be used to abolish small time corruption is IT (information technology). It is ironical that India may be the software hub of the world but are laggards in using the technology in our own governance (while IT in the private sector in India is at par with international standards). One of the only biggest use of IT I have seen in the public sector domain, and I am talking big implementation at a national level, is the railway ticket booking system – virtually eliminating black marketing of railway tickets.

    The areas where I can see “efficient” computerization and “centralized” & web enabled database can make a big dent in governance are :-

    – land records
    – Income tax (PAN), property tax & bank accounts linkage
    – national driving license database linked to challans, court cases
    – criminal database
    – national vehicle registration numbers
    – postal address standardization & usage of the standard address fields in all computer records
    – voter cards

    All the efforts that have gone into computerizing the above have gone waste in India due to either one or more of the following root causes that I can think of –

    – below average competency of government officials implementing them
    – no incentive to complete a project – no targets / deadlines
    – no hire and fire (tenured IAS promotions is the worst enemy of our country)
    – vested interests not wanting these projects completed (classic example is: land records)

    All of the above problems would be taken care of if the 1500 crack team of FTI members take over the country. See this website.

    http://www.freedom.sabhlokcity.com/

    regards,

    Sanjay