Abstract
Reasons and remedies for corruption in public services have been well charted in scholarly writings as well as official reports in India. 1 Yet, precise data on the extent of corruption in state and local administration is scant and a focused strategy for freeing the departments from corruption remains unrealised. Bhaskara Rao’s work on Good Governance is a welcome addition in this connection since its unique data base as well as prognosis adds new dimensions to the concerned debate.
As founder chairman of the Centre for Media Studies and ex-CEO of the Operation Research Group, Rao was personally involved in the conduct of numerous surveys including the pioneering ‘India Corruption Studies’ published between 2000 and 2011. Based on thousands of ‘exit polls’ with aggrieved citizens outside government offices across the country and elaborate interviews with households on their perceptions and experiences with public services over time, these reports offer a long-term perspective on perceptions, estimation and experience (PEE) of corruption across 29 states now. In conjunction with other national and international reports on public services, Rao has used this voluminous data to offer a fresh perspective on the nature of corruption prevailing in major services (used by at least 10 per cent of the population) along with his wise counsel on tackling the menace in this timely publication.
The first chapter of the book spells out the range of work available on corruption in India and how the present study goes beyond the top level financial scams covered by media frequently by focusing on 19 public services used by ordinary citizens on a daily basis. Deliverance from corruption in public services where the masses mainly interact with the Indian state is thus seen as the principal plank for moving toward good governance. Good governance has been defined by Rao as efficient delivery of a range of public services including security, basic infrastructure and universal schooling, health care etc. in a corruption free, inclusive and non-partisan manner. The author focuses mainly on corruption in the delivery of major public services. ‘Corruption’ itself refers to the misuse of official position by state functionaries to make personal gains (through pilferage, bribes or dereliction of service) thereby harming the public financially or in service support.
The second chapter of the book ‘Perceptions about Corruption’ spells out the difference between changing perceptions and estimates of corruption on one hand and the personal ‘experience’ of the same among respondents on the other. The latter has been measured, in Centre for Media Studies (CMS) surveys, by recording the number of bribes paid or witnessed in past 12 months by respondents. ‘Perceptions’ regarding corruption have been linked to reported impressions of the process generated by own observation or narratives from the media or hearsay. According to the author, a decline is noticeable in both the perception and experience of corruption in many public services in the preceding decade even though the estimation of corruption between the money barons and top politicians, in media discourses, increased considerably over the period. The decline in perception and experience of corruption in services like telecom, railways and electricity bill payments, particularly, came down though others like NREGA and the public distribution system showed little improvement. Interestingly, the slide in the experience of bribery was even more than in reported perceptions of the same across services (pp. 54–57).
However, some methodological infirmities remain in this vital segment. Rao has stated that the range of services, states and the sample size of successive corruption surveys conducted by CMS varied from year to year (pp. 13–14). This implies that shifts over time in the perception or experience of corruption cannot be deduced by looking at cited surveys alone. Second, key concepts like ‘corruption’ and ‘governance’ have not been defined rigorously at the outset and the gap between the main title of the book viz. ‘good governance’ and the focus on ‘public services’ appears considerable. Still, the tentative evidence regarding a fall in the perception and experience of corruption in major public services when high-level corruption in 25 spectrum licensing and allocation of natural resources, especially coal blocks, from the centre generated so much hullabaloo in the country seems significant and promising.
The third chapter of the book, ‘Corruption and the Poor’, takes a disaggregated view of various government departments and offers insights into the forms and extent of corruption therein. Some of the themes in this and the following chapters seem to overlap. Yet, the data showing that ‘problems in redressal leave up to 80 per cent of victims reluctant to even complain’, that 40 per cent admit to having paid bribe(s) in 2003 while 20 per cent of the respondents, in 2005, lodged complaints and 19 per cent of voters surveyed in 2008 declared that they received cash for vote and that 47 per cent visiting courts admitted they had to offer bribes is useful in a wider discourse in which impressions and lose generalisations have abounded till now. A systematic table on year-wise and state-wise data on each of these themes would have been ideal as also a comparative chart on CMS findings and those from other reports on corruption. However, resources and time required for such an exercise would have been clearly huge; it is hoped that progress in this direction would be seen in future editions of the work.
The fourth chapter, ‘Strategic Approach to Curb Corruption’, lists the problems faced by people across government departments and the measures adopted by the state and civil society in the country to fight corruption in recent times. As stated by Rao, a number of initiatives have been taken by the judiciary, civil society and central and state governments to tackle corruption. Yet, the problem persists and an analysis of best practices as well as failed initiatives needs to be made so that ‘each state does not have to reinvent the wheel’ in the absence of systematised information on this issue. The revisions made in the Prevention of Corruption Act in 1988, the devolution of powers to panchayats and urban bodies in the 1990s, the central Right to Information (RTI) Act of 2005 and the suggestion for confiscation of properties of convicted officials by the Administrative Reforms Commission, in 2007, as also new Public Service Delivery Acts of the state governments in Madhya Pradesh and Bihar, etc., have borne some fruit, according to the author. Yet, the murder of 20 RTI activists between 2005 and 2011, the marginalisation of the citizens’ charter and dysfunctional ombudsmen or Lokayuktas in many states remind us that the fight against corruption is a long haul and cannot be won without an active civil society. In this connection, the near silence of the book on the Aam Admi Party and cursory references to Anna Hazare in the uninspiring section on civil society initiatives (pp. 66–68) seem puzzling. Similarly, Rao’s views on the role of privatisation and end of monopolies in telecom and electricity distribution in reducing corruption seem contradictory (as on page 106 and page 237).
The next chapter, rather vaguely titled ‘ICTs, Media{,} Perceptions{,} and Corruption’, focuses on the new technologies and initiatives now available in the fight against corruption. Rao gives considerable space to the use of information technology, mobile messaging and computerisation of records, etc., in his proposals for a ‘strategic approach’ to reducing corruption (with some repetition across chapters). A detailed section (Chapter 6) on experiments with e-governance, grameen e-seva, biometric records, information through websites and digitisation of court and land records, etc. is however useful as it lists the failures and achievements of such initiatives across states.
Chapter seven, ‘A Strategy and a Campaign for Good Governance’, turns to a discussion of classical remedies against corruption applicable across services. The need to simplify procedures, introduce single window delivery, curtail discretionary powers of officials and to penalise delay in services, minimise the compulsion for repeated visits to offices and home delivery of forms, information, attestation, etc., for the physically challenged and the disadvantaged are relevant but known. Similarly, the stress laid by the author on checking political influence on promotions and transfers and regular collection of feedback from clients for prompt redressal through the Lokpal or the ombudsman at various levels are also in limelight. Two new initiatives suggested by Rao, in the same context, are the need to attend to government functionaries’ perspectives and logics also and to correct the inflated perception on corruption generated by media hype that proves counterproductive and spawns cynicism.
While the theme of Rao’s book is not new, his analysis and prognosis are novel and noteworthy. However, some slips and omissions are worth pointing at this stage. We have referred to the methodological problem in reading temporal trends in experience or perception of corruption from asymmetrical CMS surveys. It may also be added here that the sample size of the surveys needs to be made clearer in the book. Also, long-term qualitative data based on fieldwork is of immense value to any analysis. While a single scholar cannot be expected to muster varieties of evidence alone, considerable anthropological work has emerged in recent years on corruption in the ‘local state’. 2 It is hoped that it would be found useful in future writing on the changing dynamics of corruption in the country. In fact, Rao himself has appended an excellent section on the history of public services in his own village of Munduru in Andhra. But the insights available there (as on changing interfaces between the village and the administration) have not been related to the main text at any point.
The book seems to focus overwhelmingly on the financial aspect of corruption and ignores the considerable harm brought to individuals as well as the system by subtle dereliction of duty, delays, excessive nepotism and factionalism, penalties on merit and entrenched inefficiencies which make the structure weak as well as parasitic. Rao does enumerate significant measures to ensure better accountability in work and a carrot and stick for functionaries. However, the excessive stress on tracking bribery seems to overlook the costs of policy paralysis that may grow with witch hunts in administration. Indeed, dereliction of duty also needs to be viewed as a form of corruption given the huge suffering it causes to public at large.
Finally, it is suggested that a detailed bibliography and a short introduction on the international and historical context of corruption in public services would add value to the book. Corruption was ironically the product of the modern state which replaced the open exploits of the aristocracy with the invisible bureaucratic cage. Democracy was expected to challenge bureaucratic dirigisme as well as corruption. However, the trajectory of a democracy is shaped by the dynamics between the political process and its socio-cultural matrix. In India, identity politics and caste mobilisation have both helped and distorted governance in multiple ways. In some provinces, even the response of the police to a citizen depends heavily on the compatibility between his/her caste and the party in power at that moment. To hope that corruption would decline sharply with ICT or even city centred civil agitations will not be realistic in such backwaters of underdevelopment.