Corruption – Ways to fight it!!
Corruption is a universal phenomenon which is predominant at different levels in various countries. People encounter many corrupt officers in bureaucratic hierarchy and have to bribe them in one or the other stage in their life. There is no end to it and common man succumbs to it to get his/her work done.
Recently I came across this article by Shaffi Mather
As informed by Shaffi, every year people pay around 3 trillion USD in the form of bribes – which is, believe it or not equivalent to Indian’s GDP.
In India corruption is prevalent and common people abide by it as they want their work done. It is observed mostly in all the organizations and departments where one has to avail common services for example city municipal corporation, passport office, electricity department, telecommunication department, income tax, admission in schools and colleges, post office et all. Well, I have been through this numerous occasions and I know that even if me and my family didn’t want to pay bribe but corrupt officers didn’t leave any option. Eventually we have paid bribes under the table to get the work done.
A very good example of corruption in India was exemplified in this movie – Well Done Abba
In this movie Shyam Benegal has shown how much bribe a common man pays to construct one Well in his farm. It has been shown very subtly how he has to pay bribe to everyone in the ladder to get his Well constructed and that’s what actually happens in many departments in India.
As Shaffi pointed out there are number of ways that we can fight this corruption and I have jotted down few which can help to back foot corrupt officers -
1) Use Right to Information act wherever you feel someone is not providing enough information and asking for bribe.
2) Video tape or take a picture of the officer and warn him/her that if he/she does not perform his/her duty you will go public with this information.
3) Use Audio Recording which will serve as a hard evidence of the conversation where corrupt officer is shamelessly asking for bribe.
4) Use peer pressure against corrupt officer.
I am thinking that following can also be done to further this cause -
A web based application should be created where users can enter all the details about the case ( incidence of officer asking bribe to provide a service which is either free or on top of the prescribed fee) This will be categorized on the basis of country, city and department. This will enable to obtain the statistics of a particular country, city and department where all the corrupt officers have asked for the bribe for providing the service.
This can be later used to complain against the person and department to the higher authority. Also this can be used to get justice to the people, bring the identities of corrupt officers in public and eventually help to eradicate corruption. For this to work higher authorities should work on impartial basis and again if they don’t then post data about them as well. Further above four methods can be used to provide evidence of corruption in this web application. With the latest UID project in the offing this kind of system will be very useful to fight corruption at the grass root level. This kind of application will help us to fight corruption and it will be a genuine effort on our part to make our country prosper in the coming decades.
I know it won’t be a very easy task but it will be one in the right direction which will help to make this world a better place to live.
