Roadless bumps ahead

It was summer in Rajasthan. I was trailing behind some researchers who were walking to a village to check if people working under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme were getting paid.

There was no road leading to this village. We’d walked over an hour when I spotted, in the middle of this dusty, rocky, lonely terrain, a warning sign. It said: “Speed-breaker Ahead. Go Slow.”
It was too hot to curse so we just tittered - clearly, someone was trying to be funny - and walked on. A few minutes later, there it was. A speed-breaker. At least a foot high and six feet across.
Now I think about it, it seems like a little bump of conscience on our highway to corruption. Somebody got hired to create a speed-breaker and by God, he was going to do it - road or no road! Or maybe it was a practical joke. Perhaps the contractor was thumbing his nose at the taxpayer.

Wait. Let me modify that: ‘the corrupt contractor was thumbing his nose at the taxpayer’. Perhaps the PWD officers were corrupt too. But primarily, it was the contractor.

I have been thinking about that speed-breaker ever since I heard about the recent campaign against corruption. The outpouring of support gave me a brief moment of comfort. It felt good to think that everyone feels the same way - that unless we start battling corruption, there will be no real freedom, no real growth.

But that nice warm feeling quickly dissipated when I saw that everyone is basically keen on having something with which to whack politicians and bureaucrats. I’m amazed at how the anti-corruption campaign has got fixated on politicians and how ‘civil society’ is treated as not just superior but also incorruptible.
Just as every living organism needs a certain environment to thrive, so do corrupt politicians and civil servants. They need not just our silence or ignorance. They need us to be corruptible, willing to bend rules for personal gain. They take the lion’s share of a juicy, illegal deal, but they know that they must allow us to lick the bones.

The Election Commission recently ordered the government in Tamil Nadu has to stop distributing television sets. In the 2006 election, the DMK gave away free colour TVs. They were voted into power. Now the government has acquired 1.5 million TV sets, allegedly at a cost of Rs 3500 crore. Bribery has become an integral part of electioneering. Women stampede for free sarees. Others vote for liquor. Big farmers vote for free electricity. Call it a ‘gift’ (as civil servants do when they accept a little something) but the principle remains bribery.

The easy way to combat corruption is to ask for a meaner cop, to substitute an all-powerful Lokpal for the anti-corruption bureau. The hard way is to reject corruption even if it benefits us. We need to stop abusing traffic cops and start paying the thousand rupee fine we deserve. We need to stop making ‘donations’ to schools. We need lists of contractors used by all state departments. We need to look at records of expenditure at panchayat, municipality, state, and central levels.

Perhaps, we need a Lokpal too. Perhaps not. Anyway, the Lokpal Bill exists and may soon become law. Think of it this way. A bump exists. The road may (or may not) get made. But you can help choose the materials so it doesn’t get washed away during the next thunderstorm. Think about how you’d like to (non-violently) tackle corruption. The Joint Drafting Committee is open to ideas. Join the public consultation at http://lokpalbillconsultation.org