Corruption-free society: The choice is ours

The journey to the Muthiya ward in Naroda is dusty and hot. The land is barren and the landscape, brown. This is an area populated by the poor, the labourers who oil the machinery of our city and keep it moving, usually law abiding and certainly tax paying.

The roads in this area are mostly unpaved, and gutter and rainwater cause distress. A small bore well near Devi Cinema seems in adequate for the large number of people living here. This is also the area that has elected long-serving MP Harin Pathak and the dubious doctor, Maya Kodnani, to represent it.

In response to an RTI enquiry about the amount of money spent on Muthiya, Naroda by the MP, MLA and corporators over the last five years, and on checking these records once received, here is what was discovered:

According to the information provided, Rs2.51 lakh was spent on a road through Madhuvan, a housing colony in the vicinity, in 2005-06. No road exists there. None ever has.

In one of the two Chunaravas areas, the records show that the roads were paved in 2007 by Kodnani and another corporator called Bharatbhai. The former claims to have spent around Rs49,000 and the latter, Rs47, 065.However, there is no sign of any paving stones in the Vas.

Rs10 lakh and more is shown as spent on benches. An extended walk of the entire ward clearly indicates that the number of benches can be counted on the tips of your fingers. Were they originally gold plated?

MP Harin Pathak claims to have built a road from Satyam School to Lakshminagar Road at a cost of Rs2,52,636. Needless to say, no such road exists or has ever existed.
And coming back to the bore well near Devi Cinema, the response claims that Rs1.72 lakh was spent on the well. A builder who accompanied the RTI applicant swears that the current bore well could not have cost more than Rs50,000.

There is a clear case of corruption here, and of misuse of funds. The RTI applicant has filed complaints with the anti-corruption bureau and has written personally to the chief minister. The results will pave the way to show us what a clean administration with intent to be transparent and punish the corrupt will do.

As a result of roads examined for their quality based on information received in a Delhi case, the corporator had to admit that the roads were below the stipulated quality and that the cement used was mixed with sand. He has returned the money and is replacing the road.

As a society that publicly rues corruption but privately indulges in it, allegedly as a factor to expedite the delivery of free services, we need to ask ourselves if we really want a corruption-free society. If we do, with the RTI and the follow-up possibilities, the tool is in our hands. Thousands of people, mostly the utterly poor and dejected, are using the tool to bring to book people not delivering to them what is theirs. It is the educated middle class that is lagging behind.

Is this because this is the class that benefits the most from the shortcuts that the corrupt offer? Can we not think in the slightly more long term and see the disease that it has become? Can we not make the tiny effort to see that the money that we pay as taxes does not go to finance the weddings of the offspring of our ministers, and actually comes to us in the form of good roads, clean drinking water, and functioning schools and hospitals? The choice really is ours, yours as much as mine. So let’s make the right choice.