By: Tushar Desai
tushardesai@msn.com
December 05, 2003

Corruption is nothing new to India. Although I`m not sure if we invented it, I`m confident that we have perfected it. Barely, a week goes by that we don`t hear of a new scam. Be it the Telgi stamp scam, or leaking CAT question papers, or bribing selectors of BCCI, our nation seeks a new nadir in every dimension. So long as corruption meant a peon making fifty bucks to move a file, one could probably afford to live with it. When every new scam makes a complete joke of our "democracy" (if we can call it so), then we have every reason to be concerned. Take the Telgi scam for instance. Here, on one hand, we have a government managing the country with one deficit budget after another and yet on the other hand, its very own ministers, in cahoots with top cops and counterfeiters, are bilking the revenue stream, by flooding the country with bogus revenue stamps. But, when a young and honest engineer is killed for standing against corruption and the system fails to protect him, our "democracy" ceases to be a joke; it just ceases to be.

In this past week, I read about two unique individuals from Bihar. The first was Ranjit Singh or Ranjit Don (or RaDon as he preferred to be called). RaDon produced enough bogus certificates to not only get the MBBS degree for himself, but also for couple of his siblings. He eventually mastered the art so well, he was leaking entrance exam papers for some of the prestigious professional schools all over India. His business was worth Rs.100 crore, at its peak. The second individual is indeed Satyendra Kumar Dubey. Satyendra came from a very humble background; his father worked as a clerk in Gaya. Dubey was admitted to the Civil Engg. program at IIT Kanpur, all on his own merit. On completion of his education, he supported his family, helping two of his sisters to become teachers. For someone, having lived in such desperate conditions and a ton of responsibility to shoulder, he not only had a reason to make some extra cash, but he was perfectly positioned to do so at National Highway Authority of India (NHAI). Sure, we could have had a few potholes on the Golden Quadrilateral, a few accidents on the road and a few lives lost. Yet, he decided to stand by his values and paid dearly for it. For a state like Bihar, that is not even worth joking about, Dubey is quite an achievement.

We can whine and whimper to the same PMO, which was callous enough to reveal Dubey`s identity in the first place. But there are other alternatives as well. Transparency International (TI), a global organization for fighting corruption, is one place to start. TI releases an annual survey called "Corruption Perceptions Index". At this link, http://www.transparency.org/surveys/index.html, you`ll find their reports since 1995. For 2003, India was ranked 83rd with a score of 2.8. If you look at their report from 1995, you will notice that India was ranked 35th, with a score of 2.78. The bottom line is in the 8 years that we became a nuclear power and an IT power, we have had no improvement in our social standing. Indeed as the scope of this survey has increased over the years, we have been ranked behind some African, Middle Eastern and South American countries.

However, the interesting survey report to be read is the one for 1997. It cites the example of Pakistan and Malaysia. It describes, how the Pakistanis, ashamed of being rated at the bottom of the 2 previous surveys made a serious and concerted effort to understand this disease and how it affected the downfall of the Bhutto government. (Pakistan still continues to be ranked low, but not much lower than us.) It talks about how initially Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia, described this index as yet another example of "western cultural imperialism" and yet now Malaysia has made it a focal point of their campaign against corruption.

For once we may have something to learn from our friendly neighborhood.

Tushar Desai