CORRUPTION IN INDIA

THE EXTENT THE CONSEQUENCES THE CAUSES THE REMEDIES

ANANG PAL MALIK

CORRUPTION IN INDIA
The Extent The Consequences The Causes The Remedies

Anang Pal Malik

Self published on the web.

December 2014

 Anang Pal Malik

All rights reserved. This book can be freely
shared on the web, can be emailed, can be
downloaded on any media, can be printed for selfstudy or for free circulation. But this cannot be
printed for the purpose of sell without prior
permission of the author.

To
Ma and pitaji

Contents

Chapter

Page

Chapter 1 Introduction

Chapter 2 Extent of corruption

14

Chapter 3 Consequences of corruption

63

Chapter 4 Causes of corruption

108

Chapter 5 Remedies of corruption

138

Chapter 1

Introduction

In his book A Writers People V S Naipaul writes

that all Indian works of fiction are essentially
autobiographical because Indians know so little of
the world beyond their immediate family, their
friends, and the place where they live. The man
said to possess the keenest sense of observation
has so accurately described us. And nowhere this
is clearer than in the knowledge even well
educated Indians have of corruption: its volume,
its extent, and its consequences.
Awareness of the world around us and its ways
seem to be something that should come naturally
to us. We live in social settings, human beings
love to talk, to share, and to boast. In fact on the
face of it, keeping a secret seems to be the thing
human beings are least capable of. Apart from
word of mouth, there are all mediums-books,

newspapers, pamphlets, secret books; and now

the electronic media and the Internet. But once
one starts removing the layers that pass for
knowledge, it is really stunning to discover the
evils, the lies, and the stratagems one never
thought were possible, not only existing, but
flourishing, and at the same time kept secret from
the whole wide world, kept secret by not an
individual or a close knit small group, but by
whole ruling class, not just by the ruling class but
even by those who are trying to enter it, and also
those who have been excluded from it. In fact
evils seem to have powers to cast spell on human
beings. Soon people start defending evils as if
they were the most sacred Truths. Though
corruption is one of the lesser evils that have
made the world the hell that it is, but corruption is
also one such evil about which everybody talks,
but almost everybody among those who know its
full reality also makes sure that its whole secret
never comes out.
Above statement may seem a bit bizarre in
view of what has happened in India in the last
four years or so. Corruption has been the central
issue in the public discourse during these years at
least. But all through I have watched amused, for
even those who are in the forefront of the
movements launched to eradicate it have kept its
central secret assiduously hidden from the public.
7

Like in that Panchtantra story in which courtiers

inform the king that elephant has stopped moving,
eating, drinking, and breathing, except saying that
it has died, everything about corruption in India is
being said except revealing its biggest secret, the
secret which ensures that all efforts to end
corruption in India come to naught.
Lack of awareness among average Indians
regarding extent of corruption came out most
vividly in the admission by N Vittal at the time
when he was Chief Vigilance Commissioner (CVC),
when he said that it was only after he became
CVC that he came to know that the Customs and
the Income Tax were the two most corrupt
departments of India, both in volume and extent
of corruption. N Vittal, a career bureaucrat, had
spent almost thirty-five years in the corridors of
Official India when he became CVC, without ever
knowing this simple fact.
Pratyush Sinha, who also retired as India's
Central Vigilance Commissioner, did somewhat
better when he said that almost one-third of
Indians were utterly corrupt, and half were
borderline. Of course in the same statement he
also revealed his total lack of knowledge of cause
and cure of corruption, when he blamed increased
wealth after Liberalization for much of the
problem.

The Delhi High Court came closest to stating

the true extent of corruption when in June 2010 it
said that around ninety per cent of employees in
Delhi
Development
Authority,
Municipal
Corporation of Delhi, and Delhi Police were
corrupt.
In my experience people think corruption to be
the phenomenon in which a few crooked
government servants make some extra money in
collusion with corrupt contractors/suppliers or tax
thieves, leading to some poor quality public
works, inefficient services or negative effect on
the
development
and
poverty
eradication
programmes. The reality is that it is not about
some crooks and some money, but out and out
loot, across almost all government departments.
In essence, plunder at a scale never seen in the
history of mankind is on, leading directly to deaths
of human beings in real time, here and now. Many
of the problems that we see around us-poverty,
hunger, illiteracy, crushing unemployment; and all
crimes like assault on women each time they
move out of their homes, thefts, highway holdups
right in the heart of New Delhi, kidnappings for
ransom, and dacoit menace all can be not only
directly and fully traced back to corruption; in
reality they are linked to corruption in a cause and
effect relationship.

I assert that very few people in India are

aware of the true magnitude of the corruption and
still fewer are able to relate its consequences to it.
I have not come across anybody stating its real
causes.
In this book you will finally learn the truth, the
whole truth of corruption in India, and perhaps in
the world, as systems and causes that make
corruption possible and inevitable are now in place
in almost all countries. And therefore corruption is
also now a phenomenon common to almost all
countries of the world. In this book, its true
magnitude is revealed, both its volume and the
extent. Consequences of corruption are discussed.
I am not sure what will come to the readers as the
bigger surprise-the extent or the consequences or
the causes or the cure. I believe that even reading
about the consequences will be an eye-opener for
the average reader. The cause of corruption may
seem obvious-that there are corrupts and so there
is corruption. But that is the least significant of its
causes.
Much has been discussed about the cure of
corruption in the last few years of agitations
against corruption. But again I assert that the only
remedy that can eradicate this disease has never
been stated. This book finally lays bare the evil of
corruption, lays out its consequences, reveals its
10

causes, and lays down The Solution of this

problem; the problem that seems to defy all
solutions.

What is corruption and how it is possible and

why it is flourishing despite everybody being
against it is what is detailed in this book. The
discussion of the genesis of corruption, its true
extent, its sustaining force, its chief cause, its
actual and all consequences, and most importantly
what needs to be done to remove this ever
ballooning tumour from the body politic are what
form the chapters of this book.
The chapter on the extent of corruption lists
the departments, roughly in descending order of
the magnitude of total loot in the department, and
briefly gives the methodology of the corrupts.
Chapter on the consequences connects the world
around us to the corruption that has created that
world, mostly department wise. Chapter on the
causes of corruption gives details of why it all
began, and why it is growing by the day. And
finally the chapter on the cure gives a definite,
readily doable plan of action to eradicate this
disease from our society.

11

This book is the result of my observations over

last twenty-five years, my studies of various
political philosophies, my study of economics, my
reading of newspaper items on the subject and
deducing from them the real causes and
consequences. The subject is frequently discussed
among the government servants and I have tried
to refine the arguments based on those
discussions. During Vigilance Weeks, dignitaries,
mostly ex-bureaucrats, are invited to address the
staff, and anecdotes they narrated in such
gatherings have found place in the book, without
identifying the speakers or the actors involved. I
have friends across various Departments, and
have discussed the corruption and the ways of the
corrupts in their departments. Knowledge I so
gathered has also been used in writing the book.
What follows may not be readily believable or
observable but is correct and true nonetheless.
Something mindboggling and humongous is
permeating our lives without our being aware of
its true spread and even more tragically, without
being aware of all of its consequences.
First let me define some of the terms I use in
the book. Volume of the corruption means the
average amount that people on average make in
the department per year. And extent of the
corruption in the department denotes what
12

percentage of the posts in the department give

opportunities to be corrupt. Type I corruption
means where both the giver and the taker of the
bribe benefit monetarily, type II corruption means
only the taker benefits monetarily but persons
willingly give bribe. Type III is the corruption
where only the taker benefits but he literally
extorts money from those who have to deal with
him.
The role played by the Central Vigilance
Commission (CVC) and the Central Bureau of
Investigation (CBI) at the Centre, and Anti
Corruption Bureaus (ACB) in the States, is also
discussed at relevant places. The reasons why
they are largely ineffective are also discussed
wherever their roles come up for discussion in the
book.

13

Chapter 2
Extent and Volume of Corruption
The sweepstakes- an overview of the volume and
the extent and the scope of corruption in some of
the
leading
departments
of
the
Central
Government and State governments. The listings
here are roughly in descending order of the
volume, extent, and opportunities of the loot in
the department. Some light is also thrown on the
methodology with a preliminary analysis of the
relationship of the giver and taker.
Customs and Central Excise
Those in the government services may be
surprised to see the Customs and Central Excise
department at the top instead of Indian
Administrative Service (IAS), but IAS is a service
and not a department and listing here is
department wise and not service wise as public at
large is mostly familiar with departments, not
being much aware of the services and their ways.
Most Indians are aware of the corruption in the

14

Customs department chiefly because of our

movies and also because of recent recurring news
of the officers in the department getting caught
taking bribe, or being raided by the CBI.
The Customs and Central Excise are two
branches of the same department tasked to
collect indirect taxes. Customs collects taxes on
the goods imported into the country whereas
Excise does the same on the goods produced
within the country.
When we were preparing for the Civil Services
exam way back in the late eighties, it was
generally agreed that the Customs and Excise was
the up and coming department; with enterprising
persons easily able to make one crore every year.
That was before Liberalization and the resulting
boom in the economy. Currently the figure is
somewhere around 5 crore per year. The
corruption is Type I corruption and therefore
almost impossible to eradicate. The process is
simple-you import goods and do not pay the due
duty, and share a part of your savings with the
officials in the customs department. Similarly in
case of Excise, you produce goods within the
country and show lower costs and higher input
costs, and in many cases declare less production
than actual, and share part of the savings so
made with the officials of the Excise department.

15

Volume can also be gauged from the wealth

unearthed by the CBI in raids at the residences of
the officers of the Customs and Excise
department, which runs into hundreds of crores in
cases of some very enterprising officers. With
current indirect tax collections of India being
about four lakh crores, it can be safely assumed
that volume of bribes is tens of thousands of
crores every year. This also becomes evident from
some of the cases detected by various agencies.
In a case of distilleries in a Western Union
Territory, duty evasion worth Rs three hundred
and forty crore was detected. An IAS officer in the
case was found to have taken bribe of rupees
twenty-five lakh just to transfer a officer to the
place where distilleries were located. The searches
on the IAS officer led CBI to an airhostess who
was discovered to possess assets worth Rs three
and a half crore, 265 % over and above her
known sources of income.
In another case in which a whole group of
junior
officials
and
clerks
was
caught,
investigators found Rs two point two six crore
investment
details
of
customs
deputy
commissioner. An appraiser was found to have a
balance of Rs nine lakh in his bank accounts and
was also the owner of three flats. The details
emerged when CBI officials raided them and

16

twelve other officers for accepting gifts from a

clearing agent. The agent gifted them laptops, airconditioners, and mobile phones; gave them cash
and made their travel arrangements.
Investigators also found seventeen mobiles at
the residence of a clerk among the group who was
posted at Nhava Sheva. She feared that someone
would intercept her phones. So she called from all
these mobiles. Some senior Customs officials
contacted the clearing agent through her when
she was their personal assistant. She demanded
some gifts for herself but said the officers wanted
it, a customs official said. All the officials met the
clearing agent during their posting at air-cargo.
Clearing agent also told the CBI that he helped to
transfer
a
deputy
commissioners
wealth
amounting to Rs twenty lakh to Jaipur illegally.
In another case of Mumbai, a Customs officer
was found to have many vacant flats where he
stored his ill-gotten wealth. CBI did not find any
papers at his residence or anything incriminating
in his lockers till it stumbled upon those vacant
flats purely by chance.

17

Income Tax
A friend once joked that in income tax
department hardly one percent were still honest.
And also that among the corrupts who make up
the rest ninety nine percent; till a couple of
decades ago some were grass eaters, some were
egg eaters, and some were meat eaters. Now
according to him a new category has also
emerged-the cannibals. The CBI raids on the
Income Tax officers also have yielded riches that
would induce inferiority complex in the top
industrialists of the country. In case of this
department also, corruption is type I and
therefore very difficult to eradicate. The method is
simple-the person understates his or her income
and the savings so effected are then shared
between the taxman and the person concealing
the income. Chartered accountants come into
picture in two ways. They devise the ways to
conceal the income and also act as conduits
between the taxman and the assessee.
An Additional commissioner of Income Tax in
Thane was caught by CBI accepting from a builder
as bribe Rs one and a half crore in cash. When
CBI raided her residence, as it does when it
catches somebody in the act of accepting cash,
the team found large amounts of cash both in
Indian and foreign currencies, jewellery worth

18

lakhs of rupees and documents relating to several

properties in India and abroad. The high flying IT
official was found in possession of foreign
currency belonging to 25 countries and flats worth
crores in Malaysia. The officer was also found to
have overseas bank accounts where, CBI
suspected, she parked her money to avoid raising
suspicion at home.
And detection of tax evasion doesnt normally
lead to increased revenues for government. It
brings up only opportunities of bribes. As
undeclared income detected by the taxmen carries
heavy penalties, so the desperation of the evaders
comes as God given opportunity for the taxmen
who preside over the case. The Anti Corruption
Branch of the Central Bureau of Investigation,
Mumbai, nabbed red- handed Commissioner of
Income Tax (Appeals), while accepting a bribe of
Rs two lakh. The accused had demanded the bribe
to give a favourable judgement in connection with
an order of additional tax liability passed few
years ago.
Similar is the ultimate fate of much publicized
raids by the Income Tax. The raids by the Income
Tax department more often than not end up with
settlements and it is business as usual after that.
The evader normally pays the bribe in proportion
to the amount of tax evasion, and the taxmen are
19

left richer as a result of the raid, with country just

as poor as it was before the raid.
State Sales Tax
This is a little known department because
public almost never comes into contact with this
department. But in volume it fully justifies its
position at number three and in extent I do not
think figure of ten percent staff incorruptible will
stand for long in this department. It functions in
many ways and is Type I. The trader does not
charge the Sales Tax from the buyer and is thus
able to sell at a discount and gets more buyers
and from the amount so saved bribes the sales
tax people when they question him. Or he charges
the buyer the sales tax but does not pass it to the
government sharing part of the saving with the
sales tax people. He pays because the taxman has
powers to ruin him completely even if he never
stole anything. Extent of corruption came out
most vividly in a sting operation conducted by a
popular TV channel in an office of the Delhi Sales
Tax department, in which it was shown that the
staff members were accepting bribes at their
tables for all to see. That is the brazenness which
the staff in the department soon acquire.

20

In fact in Uttar Pradesh many elections have

been won on the promise to abolish Sales Tax.
But, because it is also the major source of
revenue for the government, only its name has
been changed to Trade Tax.
Shopkeepers dread the Sales Tax inspector
because if he decides to do his job honestly, the
whole labyrinth of tax evasion- Income Tax, and
Customs & Excise Tax- may unravel.
Police
The police department is the place where you
find all three types of corruption. This is also the
department where the corruption has taken its
most organized form. Entire collection is made at
the level of thana and then the loot flows right to
the very top, defying all laws of gravity and
hydraulics.
The corruption in the police department in its
simplest form is that you commit some crime and
you pay the policeman to escape the law. He may
straight away exonerate you by not even
registering the case, or may see to it that the
evidence is destroyed. or is rendered unfit to
stand in a court of law. Next comes that you are
victim of a crime and go to police station to seek

21

help and the policeman demands money to do his

duty of acting against the person who has
aggrieved you. More pernicious, you have not
committed any crime but he demands money
under the threat of booking a false case against
you, or in case of hardened criminals, under the
threat of bumping them off. Some time back,
some Haryana policemen were caught on camera
extorting money from a jeweller. In another case
seven members of Haryana Police Special Task
Force (STF), including its chief, were arrested
after allegations of having extorted money from
two businessmen by threatening to implicate them
in false cases.
In the seventies and the eighties, Haryana
policemen used to come to jewellers in western
Uttar Pradesh towns, and claim that some thieves
caught in Haryana had implicated the jewelers by
stating that they sell the ornaments they steal to
those jewellers. A jeweller so approached by the
policemen should either pay the policemen or face
the arrest and transportation to Haryana. All
jewellers used to settle the matter then and there.
Policemen are best placed to extract the
money in the form of bribes because they have
the powers to arrest. The departments which

22

handle cases that can be referred to police indulge

in type III corruption because of their powers to
refer the matter to the police. Policemen also take
hafta from each and every illegal/legal activities in
their jurisdiction starting from hawking to erecting
hutments on government land to squatting in
public spaces; to petty crimes like pickpocketing
and chain snatching to more pernicious activities
like sin-crimes. They also take bribes to grant
permissions
to
public
functions
requiring
permissions from them.
And women police officers ensure full gender
equality in the matters of corruption. The Central
Bureau of Investigation (CBI) arrested a Punjab
woman Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) on
charges of corruption. The woman officer was
caught while she was accepting from a person a
bribe of one lakh at her residence. On a tip-off,
the CBI laid a trap for the DSP at her residence;
after receiving a complaint against her. The CBI
later revealed that she was being watched since
long, as there were allegations against her of
accepting bribe in many other cases too.
Murders and other high visibility crimes are
also high-income events for the police. More
serious the crime, or more famous the accused;
more is the bribe coming in.

23

And of course it is very rare that a policeman

is caught taking bribe, or the residence of a police
officer is raided for disproportionate assets. After
all, folks in the CBI and the ACB are brothers in
uniforms.
State Electricity Boards
Till the late Nineties, media was of the opinion
that we had power shortage, and the Electricity
Boards had huge losses, because of electricity
theft by farmers at tube wells. During all those
years it never tried to calculate the total possible
consumption by the farmers and hence scope for
the theft. Then finally it discovered that the
problem actually lay in the large-scale thefts by
the big industrial consumers who steal electricity
in connivance with the Electricity Board staff. This
theft, coupled with the theft by all the domestic
consumers, is what is at the root of all the losses
of Electricity Boards in India. Methodology is
simple, and the corruption is Type I: Consumer
pays for electricity units that are far less than the
actual consumed by him and pays a part of the
amount so saved to the Board official. The
corruption in this department has also become
organized; that is, the loot flows right to the top
through internal channels, i.e. from officer to
officer. Volume in the Boards is also very high.

24

By the very nature of their activity, SEBs also

procure large quantities of very high value Stores.
Huge bribes change hands in all procurement
contracts.
The Civil Engineering departments of the
States and the Centre
The Public Works Department (PWD) engineer
is the quintessential image that comes to the mind
of an average Indian when he thinks of a corrupt
government officer. But discussion here applies to
all Civil engineering departments like PWD,
Irrigation, Housing Development Authorities,
various
Nirman
Nigams;
in
short
every
government department or the public sector entity
that constructs buildings, houses, roads, bridges,
canals, dams, and other structures involving
cement, steel, brick, and mortar; or maintains
such structures. Though they might not be the
initiators of the phenomenon of corruption
because the corruption predates the concept of
the Public Works, but they definitely raised it to
the status of a fine art in the early years of the
independence when large scale investments were
made to create infrastructure in the country. They
can be said to be the early devisers of the
methods to turn the black money into white
money; that is how to invest the ill-gotten wealth.

25

Corruption is Type I, and its ways are simple and

straight- you advertise a notice for the tender of a
public works like building, road, or a bridge; and
money starts flowing. The office superintendent
takes money to sell the tender form, then the
tender committee takes money to award the
contract, then the staff and officers take money
for making the payment for the work done; then if
any excess work needs to be done, money
changes hand for the sanction of that extra work,
if the completion date needs to be extended
money is again extorted from the contractor.
Why does the contractor pay? He pays
because if he quotes rates enough for him to do
the quality work he would not get the contract;
and therefore the quality he is able to achieve
leaves the scope for the exercise of discretion of
the officials tasked to supervise the work.
Therefore they are in a position to accept or reject
the works carried out. If he doesnt pay at each
subsequent stage I have outlined above, he can
forget about his payments because he could not
do the work to perfection; simply because he
could not have quoted the rates required for that.
Why is nobody able to detect poor quality work in
the subsequent inspections, resulting from say
complains? Because the ten percent less cement
cannot be detected by any test. Consequences of
poor quality work become evident many decades
later and even at that time many other factors can

26

be cited to explain the deterioration. Further,

Those-Who-Come-To-Inspect
are
equally
amenable to bribes after all.
One more element has entered the equation
now. As the financial condition of the State
governments deteriorated in the eighties and
allocation for the new works reduced to a trickle,
persons started making false payments: first for
the maintenance works and soon, as they
developed the taste, for new works also. That is,
making payment to the contractors for work
actually not done. So mind you, the road in front
of your house might have been repaired every
year for last many years, though only on paper,
and therefore you rightly never saw a soul doing
anything to fill those potholes.
The Civil Engineering departments lost the
prime position as far as volumes of bribe were
concerned during the last decades of the last
century, chiefly because of deteriorating financial
health of the State governments.
But after the lull of the two decades of eighties
and nineties, as the State governments became
solvent because of higher tax collections as a
result
of
the
vigorous
economic
activity
consequent to the Liberalization of the economy,
and the launch of the National Highway projects,

27

the civil engineering departments under the State

governments and the Central government are
again having it good. Recently in Pune, officials of
the anti-corruption bureau (ACB) recovered
unaccounted cash to the tune of Rs one point sixty
eight crore, gold ornaments worth Rs nine point
seven lakh, and silver ornaments worth Rs forty
five thousand from the house a PWD executive
engineer who was arrested earlier accepting a
bribe of Rs one lakh.
In a case involving many senior, in fact very
senior NHAI officers, CBI recovered Rs two and a
half crore in cash from the premises of the two
NHAI officers it raided. This case was in fact
interesting as the trail led right to the top. The
case was cited many times on the TV but nothing
finally came of it.
The cash recovered in above two cases shows
that Civil Engineering departments are down, but
not out.
The district development department
This is a very vast ocean. This department,
headed by a district development officer,
disburses all the funds under various schemes
launched to develop us. If we go by the estimates

28

of late Rajeev Gandhi, only fifteen paise of a

rupee reach the intended beneficiaries. That would
make the department comparable with the
Customs and Central Excise department. Even
though MNREGA is in its infancy, and leakage
systems are being put in place, still the
department now has an unending and everexpanding source of loot at its disposal.
In a case of Assam, Central Bureau of
Investigation (CBI) sleuths seized Rs thirteen
crore in cash stacked in sacks and boxes from the
house of a relative of a scam-accused official in
Guwahati.
The accused was a deputy director in the state
social welfare department and was one of the
fourteen accused by the CBI of conniving with
militants in swindling development fund. The case
came to light during an investigation into a terror
case by NIA, which pursued the money trail that
reached the development funds of North Cachar
Hills district. That should give us some idea of the
volumes involved.
State Revenue Department
The department, headed by the Collector at
the district level, with usual hierarchy running to
the top, handles chiefly land transactions. And as
anybody who has had the misfortune of dealing

29

with them can vouch, you have to pay for

everything- for transfer of land titles, for change
of land use, for proving that you are the owner of
your own land, etc. With the cost of land
skyrocketing, bribe money available is now so
huge that persons right up to the top can be made
pliable. In an interesting case of Defence land in
Mumbai, Maharashtra government, in an ex-parte
decision, sold to a builder a plot it had rented to
army in 1942. The concerned department of the
army took action to protect physical possession of
land under its control, but was forced to relinquish
possession by higher ups. Later an inquiry
revealed that orders to relinquish possession of
the land piece had come from an officer who later
became Army Chief, and from the Defence
Minister of the time. The regulations have created
shortage of housing in our cities. So every piece of
land is a gold mine. Every change in policy, every
change in regulations occasions bribes in crores of
rupees. Builders are able to pay because they are
able to earn matching amounts because of
housing shortage, and consequent outstripping of
supply by demand. Labyrinth of laws, including
the rent control laws, means that in most cases of
buildings in cities, the ownership itself is always in
dispute, with dispute more often than not being

30

resolved by the prospective builder by bribing

the current residents of the building, the Civic
authorities and District administration. In fact now
land is said to be the chief source of earnings of
the politicians who get to decide where to develop
new townships, where to permit what industries,
and which areas to open up for development. As
the Welfare State and Republic of licensing,
permissions, and regulations expanded; most of
these functions also got invested in the Collector,
making him a true Jagirdar of independent India.
With powers came mechanisms to encash them.
The Municipalities
It is not for nothing that Municipal Corporation
of Delhi (MCD) is a metaphor for corruption. All
the local bodies-panchayats, town municipalities,
and municipal corporations of the metros are
thoroughly corrupt and more like mafia gangs
extorting money. The avenues are aplenty-Civil
engineers make money as Civil engineers make
money everywhere-by taking cut as percentage of
the contractors bill passed, and by making false
payments for the maintenance of roads and drains
never carried out, and by paying very high rates
for the items of the work. Then there is the map
section- the section that passes the plan of house
we submit to them before we can construct a

31

house. No plan can pass through it without

payment of huge amounts.
In a recent front-page report in one of the
leading dailies of Mumbai, it was alleged that in
Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (BMC),
the going rate of bribe to approve building plans is
Rs twelve hundred per square foot. This is almost
equal to half of the construction cost per square
foot in Mumbai.
Then comes allowing unauthorized alterations
in the houses, allowing change of use of the
premises from residential to commercial or vice
versa. Corruption is the only reason our cities are
so unlivable. You need to pay for all permissions
you need to obtain from the municipality.
Municipality officers in many cases compete
with the Customs and Income Tax department
officers for the loot accumulated. Loot flows
upward in the form of payments to those who are
in a position to transfer various officials, or as a
direct share from the loot of those below. But all
potholed roads, overflowing sewer lines, and
mounds of garbage are the results only and only
of the corruption. The corruption in municipalities
comes in all three types-type I, type II, and type
III: In some cases both giver and takers of bribe
benefit, in some cases only the takers, and in

32

many cases municipal officials literally extort

money. Still rarely anybody reports the matter,
because after all, when you approach municipality
you actually want to construct that dream house
you have waited all your life. You just pay the
bribe so that you can get on with actual
construction.
Functions wise, very close to the Municipalities
are the City Development Authorities, in place in
almost all major cities of India. And they ably
compete in corruption with the Municipalities.
Recently the Income Tax department raided a
Chief Engineer in one of the Development
Authorities in North India. The raid led to
unearthing of his wealth totaling Rs one thousand
crore!
The City Development Authorities have been
the preferred destination of corrupts since 1980s,
when States finances deteriorated leading to
reduction in allocations for the Public Works. Cities
needed to expand and funds for that came from
the homebuyers, making these Authorities
perpetually cash rich. The example of the Chief
Engineer above shows that they fully justify the
preference the corrupt have for them.
The forest department

33

They say that forest officer and not the tiger is

the tiger in the forests. Our forests are
disappearing so fast because our forest officers
are corrupt just like officers in any other
government department. You can cut any tree
whether on your own land or on forest land by
paying them a cut; and cannot touch a tree even
on your own land, even a sapling, if you do not
pay. Rate is ten percent of the cost of the tree in
the market or gain you will make by cutting the
tree. Forestland gets encroached upon with
impunity, and poachers kill forest animals without
any fear, all because of corruption.
As the cities are expanding and industries are
being set up, Forest department is fast climbing
up in the rankings of departments by volume of
corruption. Forest land needs to be freed up for
housing, or for an industrial plant, and that means
a lot of money needs to change hands.

The Health department

When Income Tax department raided a
Director of Public Health and Family Welfare in
Madhya Pradesh, besides finding the cash stashed
in beds and cupboards, a large number of gold

34

jewellery and silver articles, as usual in such

cases; they also discovered a maize of investment
and properties which it took them two years to
unravel. Just a sample: they unearthed 85 bank
accounts in his name and names of his family
members, with total deposit in them being Rs
thirty crore. Then there is the famous scam
involving misappropriation of National Rural
Health Mission (NRHM) funds in the office of
Lucknows Chief Medical Officer (CMO) a racket
that got exposed after the murder of the then
incumbent. The murders of those suspected to be
involved in this scam makes one think that some
mafia war is on, not investigation into wrong
doings in a government department. As the
review of NRHM in UP began, money thought to
be siphoned continued to grow and so did the list
of those dead.
The Doctors in government hospitals take
money for everything they do: from purchasing
the medicines, to certifying that a person was in
hospital, to certifying that someone is suffering
from a disease or not, to issuing fitness
certificates, to releasing a dead body. Then there
is the issue of prescribing medicines. In hospitals
the patient is made to procure excess medicines,
which are then retained and sold back to the
medical stores. Farma companies do their bit by
showering gifts and freebies on doctors. So much

35

so that The Medical Council of India (MCI)

proposed to health ministry in 2010 penalties,
that ranged up to deleting the name of the doctor
from the register of doctors, on doctors accepting
freebies from Farma companies. Of course, soon
after this, the chief of The Medical Council of India
himself was arrested for demanding and getting
bribe of Rs two crore for granting approval to
courses in a private medical college. Proving once
again that every approval by a government body
is an opportunity to make money. In fact CBI
discovered that the scam involving granting
affiliation for money was multi crore and hydra
headed involving officers of health ministry also.
Proving that each new activity undertaken by a
government department also brings new avenues
of corruption, granting approvals to new private
medical colleges has come as a money-spinner for
the corrupt the health department. According a to
recent report in newspapers, doctors earn lakhs of
rupees by agreeing to pose as faculty in Private
medical colleges, during the inspections in those
colleges by approving authorities.
The Transport department
Road Transport Office (RTO) is a very big
earner of bribes. Bribes taken for issuing driving
licenses is of course a small amount. Their big

36

source of income is issuing road fitness certificates

for road vehicles and issue of commercial driving
licenses. Then there are bribes taken from
overloaded vehicle owners. We are not a road
accident capital of the world for nothing.
And like all good Indians, they are also finding
ever newer ways to mint money. In a case
involving registration of imported superbikes a
Deputy Regional Transport Officer and three of his
assistants were discovered to have taken huge
bribes for illegal registration of imported
superbikes. According to the records of the Pen
and Andheri regional transport offices, more than
700 motorcycles were assembled with imported
spare parts, in blatant violation of laws, resulting
in a loss of Rs hundred crore to the state
exchequer. Involvement of at least a dozen
officials of the Transport Department was
discovered in the case.
Cases of fraudulent registration of imported
vehicles surface regularly. Such cases in fact
cause loss to both the RTO department and
Customs department- and therefore are likely to
have involvement of officials from both the
departments. And like all corrupt, they also devise
ever innovative ways to receive the bribe money:
Haryana State Vigilance Bureau (SVB) arrested a
sales tax inspector and a clerk on charges of
37

taking a bribe of Rs fifty thousand. They revealed

that they had taken the money on behalf of a
District Transport Officer (DTO).
He had demanded Rs five thousand per vehicle
for not issuing challan against the vehicles plying
unauthorized between Gurgaon and Faridabad.

The Development ministries

The ministries which administer various
Socialist fads- fisheries, horticulture, khadi vikas,
small enterprises, etc., control huge grants and
loans, which you can not get without paying the
cut. These also control various corporations
involved with the noble objective of developing
various weaker sections, etc., etc., and etc. Each
and every grant comes with the proviso for the
cut for the babu.

The Licensing ministries

38

Industrial licensing was abolished by the

government in 1991. But still you need licenses
for lot many things and for each you need to pay
money: telecom licences, radio/TV licenses, SEZ
permissions, no-objection certificates from many
government departments, permission to build a
power plant, registering a business with the
government. For each, you need to pay amounts
depending upon how desperate you are, and what
amounts you are going to earn.

Education department
Here the corruption is in two distinct
categories- administrators of schools in the
education departments of the Centre and the
States, and teachers-to-students. In the first
category you need to pay for permission to set up
the school and its recognition, and to obtain the
grant for your school, and for getting favourable
opinion on every inspection that is conducted to
let you remain in the business. In this category,
opportunities have multiplied manifold with
coming of the policy allowing setting up of private
universities and other institutions of higher
learning. As stakes have become bigger, so have
become the bribes. Since recognition as deemed
39

university also means becoming eligible for

government grants, the temptation to buy
recognition is ever higher. In a case in which it
was discovered that over forty universities had
been fraudulently granted recognition, at least two
of them had also been given grants totaling over
Rs forty seven crore, because they had been
recognized!
Like
in
every
government
department; every new project, every new
scheme, is just another opportunity to mint
money. Just to give one example: the Haryana
Textbook scam. The scam surfaced in 1999 in
the District Primary Education Project (DPEP) of
Haryana. A state project director of the Haryana
Prathmik Shiksha Pariyojna Parishad (HPSPP), a
registered society formed for implementation of
the DPEP, was investigated by CBI when
allegations surfaced that he had awarded printing
tenders at very high rates. He was later charged
in the CBI court.
Teacher-to-student corruption is taking money
from students for giving them admission, for
increasing their marks, for writing their lab
journals, for writing their project reports; and at
higher levels, for writing their thesis; and in
extreme cases, for leaking the paper. Corruption

40

is the reason that PhDs in India are dispensed like

onions at a mart.
Here onwards the departments are
listed
randomly,
without
any
relation to their earning power. It
may be mentioned here that the
talibanis (as a friend of mine calls
those who literally extort money
using their official position) are
capable of making money in almost
every department, and except for
the top fifteen or so departments
listed above, quantification of total
volume and assessment of extent of
the corruption in other departments
is difficult. And therefore it is not
possible to rank them.
Railways
The
persons in
the
Civil
Engineering
department, Electrical department, and the Signal
& Telecommunication department of Railways
make money, in the works tenders and contracts,
in exactly the same way as described earlier for
Public
Works
Department,
and
Irrigation
Department, etc. Only difference is that so far it is

41

personal not organized; that is the loot does not

flow upwards; and because the quality of work is
checked by the locomotive, false payments have
not started yet, except for the works of colony and
other building maintenance. Mechanical Engineers
of Railways make money in Stores tenders, and in
approvals to new products and vendors. Of the
remaining departments of Railways methodology
is discussed one by one in the following
paragraphs.
Stores department: The Stores department is
entrusted with procurement of stores for
Railways; and with disposal of scrap which is also
generated in huge quantities annually. In the
supply contracts method is straightforward and
simple-those who award the contract take a fixed
percentage as cut, those who inspect the material
before dispatch also take a lump sum amount,
and those who finally accept the material at their
depots/workshops/repair sheds also take money.
Supplier gives for the same reason- he would be
harassed to the extent that he may have to give
up the business itself if he doesnt pay. In case of
the scrap, the cut is obtained by those selling it,
and then by the custodian of the scrap while
delivering it, by delivering excess quantity than
auctioned.
Commercial department: Well, who hasnt have
had to deal with the TTE in India. But he is a very

42

small functionary. His main source of bribes is of

course to extort money in lieu of the berth he in
any case would have allotted. There is another
method he employs with the regular travelersallowing them to travel without ticket and
pocketing half the amount of the ticket price.
But passenger traffic is not the chief source of
earnings of the Commercial department officials.
People have always wondered as to how a former
Railway Minister was able to turn around Railway
finances. It was simple. What was being done
before him was that overloading was allowed in
the Railway wagons, and some fixed percentage
of the freight charges of the excess goods carried
but not booked (officially overloading could not be
shown) was pocketed by Railway officials. All that
the Minister did was to officially allow overloading;
that is he allowed wagons to be overloaded by
about fifteen percent more of their marked
carrying capacity-thus effectively increasing the
freight carried by Railway by fifteen percent, in a
single stroke. Thus the freight earnings increased
by about fifteen percent. That was the miracle he
effected. He came to know of overloading through
some Railway officials themselves; then he raided
some goods trains as well as some parcel vans,
and found rampant overloading. He legalized it,
and brought the resultant earnings to the railway
coffers. And since margin between the marked
carrying capacity of the wagon and its maximum

43

carrying capacity was almost exhausted, so scope

for
unaccounted
for
overloading
reduced
drastically.
Of course there are other minor avenues of
corruption like catering services, refreshment
stalls on the platform, advertisements on
platforms; and in trains where persons just to do
the business pay the bribes to officials in the
Commercial department.
A very big source is the waiver of demurrage
and wharfage charges in which a fixed percentage
of the charges so waived in business interest is
extracted as bribe. In one instance, the siding
belonged to a State Electricity Board (SEB) whose
officials themselves being government officials
could not have paid bribes for the official work.
What to do? A very ingenious solution was found.
A consultant was appointed by the SEB who was
to receive a fixed percentage as official payment
for arranging the waiver of the demurrage and
wharfage charges from the Railway. The
consultant was then detailed that out of his fees
he was also supposed to pay to the Railway
officials their share. This case was later on
investigated by the Railway vigilance but was
hushed up, terming it as system failure.
Recently a case also came to light in which it
was discovered that earnings from non-reserved
tickets were being misappropriated by officers and
staff of Commercial department. They were

44

pocketing a part of earnings that they were

supposed to deposit in the Railway account.
Operating department: Operating department
in the Railway controls the movement of the
trains, allotment of the wagons for loading, and
placement of the wagons for loading and
unloading. And for each of these favours they
grant to the hapless customers, there are fixed
rates of bribes. With over 600 rakes being loaded
over entire Indian Railway everyday, this is the
highest grosser of bribes among all departments
in the Railway. Without bribes you would not be
allotted wagons, they would not be placed for
loading when you need them, when loaded would
not be moved to the destination, and when taken
there would not be placed for unloading at the
goods platform. Then there are bribes taken for
approving the construction of private sidings, for
opening a station for goods booking, for
constructing a goods platform at a location
convenient to a party etc., etc., and etc. Recently
CBI arrested an officer for accepting a bribe of Rs
five lakh for allotting coaches to the tour
operators. When the customary post-trap raid was
conducted at his residence, initially nothing
incriminating was found. But then CBI officers
stumbled upon cash hidden in the drainpipes of
his Railway quarter.
The
Personnel
department:
Personnel
department makes money almost exclusively from

45

group D and group C employees of Railway; for

promotions, increments, appointments, postings,
and compassionate appointments-that is almost
every time an employee interacts with them. Only
saving grace is that unlike State governments,
they do not expect officers in the Railway to pay
them bribes for their own personnel matters, as
yet.
Finance and Accounts department: They also
deal with contractors and suppliers, and quite a
few of them partake of their share much the
same way as engineers do. They control
expenditure, and payments to contractors and
suppliers, and take bribes at interaction points.
They also pre-audit the contracts, and often take
money from the contractors to wave the case
through.
Railway Protection Force: RPF personnel
jokingly call their force as Roti Paani Free, and
are just as corrupt as Police in a district, with the
same system of money defying gravity and
flowing upwards. Since opportunities are fewer so
innovations abound, with money being extorted
by them from just about everybody-ticketless
travelers, squatters on Railway land, hawkers,
carriers of merchandize from one State to another
(which they carry by Railway to avoid sales tax
payment.), from the persons who purchase scrap
from Railway, permitting theft of Railway
property in lieu of the payment of their share,

46

even from the touts of Railway tickets. The

corruption in RPF is just as organized as in case of
police in districts. Just one example-CBI officers
arrested a RPF constable at a Railway Station in
Mumbai area while accepting a bribe of Rs fifteen
hundred from a hawker. According to CBI, he
collected money on behalf of an inspector. The
Railway Protection Force (RPF) inspector, caught
by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) after
this, revealed that he used to send cash gifts to
higher ups every month.
Justice delivery system
A judge of a High Court in North India was
arrested by CBI for taking bribe. Another judge
was arrested in Karnataka for granting bail after
accepting bribe. The judge was being watched.
Then on August 13, 2008 a Punjab and Haryana
High Court judge had a bagful of currency notes
totaling fifteen lakh delivered at her door. She
reported the matter to police. It was suspected
that they were meant for another judge of the
same High Court, with same first name.
And there are allegations that at least half of
the Chief Justices of India in recent years have
been corrupt.

47

In the famous recruitment scam of Punjab

Public Service Commission, wards of many judges
were found to have secured jobs by paying sums
beyond the known means of their fathers. And of
course stories of son-stroke, and the Supreme
Courts famous remark, Something is rotten in
the High Court of Allahabad, also stand out. And
retired judges headed all the Dealer Selection
Boards that gave us the famous petrol pump
scam.
The Andhra Pradesh High Court had to
suspend five judges for bringing disrepute to the
judiciary by copying in a law examination. The five
judges were caught red-handed while copying
during the LLM examination by a squad of
invigilators during the examination conducted by
the Distance Education Centre of Kakatiya
University. Advocates fleecing their clients,
advocates arranging verdicts are the things known
to all but mentioned by none. A former Civil
Servant once said during his lecture in a course I
attended- Abroad, Indian Courts are famous for
giving two opposite rulings in exactly similar
cases.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI)
began probing allegations of bribes paid by a US
company to a judge of the Customs, Excise and
Gold (Control) Appellate Tribunal (CEGAT).
Officials of the company, one of the worlds
largest offshore drilling firms, were alleged to

48

have paid bribes to the tune of half a million

dollars for obtaining a favourable order from
CEGAT way back in June 2003.
According to indictments served on the
company by the US Securities Exchange
Commission in 2010, the estimated gain to the
company from securing a favourable decision from
the Indian tribunal was at least ten million
dollars. The case came to light only as a result of
the investigations in the US.
To sum it up, judges cannot be more honest
than the society they come from.
Banks
Recent arrest of the Managing Director of a
Public Sector Bank, after he was caught by CBI
accepting a bribe of over Rs fifty lakh, is perhaps
the best example one could think of corruption in
the banking sector. In fact it would have been a
big surprise had it not been so. After all, the
Public Sector banks are the places where so much
public money is in the hands of public servants
who would almost never be affected by the
outcomes of their decisions to lend money.
The whole idea that one could select bankers
through competitive exams is ridiculous. So the
banks have non-bankers doing banking, shielded
against failures, with a corrupt business class in
need of money. So corruption was bound to be
49

there. Most bank loans, from the smallest ones in

loan melas to the big Corporate loans, carry a cut
for the bank officials; otherwise wait for the loan
can be endless. And in case of smaller Cooperative
Banks, which are not too big to absorb losses,
failure of banks is common because loans are not
made to those who would actually return them;
but to those who are ready to pay bribes. The
appraisers of the property to be mortgaged take
bribes, and those who sanction the loan take
bribes, and finally those who disburse the loan
take bribes.
Really big was the housing loan scam involving
state-owned institutions and a private and listed
Mumbai-headquartered company. It was also
discovered in the same scam that retired officers
of banks and other State financial institutions had
become the independent directors in various
private finance companies and were facilitating
scams.
CBI detailed that in the scam, the private
finance company bribed senior officials in LIC and
LIC Housing Finance while mediating and
facilitating loans for builders and corporates from
these institutions. Among those arrested included
the chief executive of LIC Housing Finance.

50

Here onnward I desscribe corru

uption not department
d
wise, but in
n
generall.
Every scheme as always is the
t
opportunity to
o
siphon
n of its money
m
to
o officials own po
ockets. In
n
Sitapu
ur distric
ct of UP
P, Distric
ct Social Welfare
e
Officer, who in fact had
d abscond
ded after his name
e
figured in the old-age
o
pension
p
sc
cam, was
s arrested
d
along with five oth
her pers
sons. The others
s
arres
sted were
e four em
mployees of his de
epartmentt
and a middleman.
d againstt
This was the resultt of a FIIR lodged
f
thous
sand pers
sons in Sitapur aftter it was
s
over five
found that old age pens
sion amou
unting to Rs ninety
y
one la
akh was disburse
ed to ov
ver five thousand
d
ineligible candidates on the basis of fake
e
identiffication papers.
p
This
T
was the scen
ne in justt
one district
d
in just one Sta
ate. Butt this is
s
repres
sentative of all schemes in
n all distrricts of all
the Sttates.
Wh
hen we board
b
airrcraft we
e believe that the
e
officerrs tasked
d to do so
s are en
nforcing all safety
y
regula
ations. Bu
ut a case
e in Mum
mbai reve
ealed thatt
our confidenc
ce is misplaced
d. Inves
stigations
s
revealled that a Civil aviation officer accepted
d
favourrs from two
t
priva
ate airlines. He availed
a
off
perks worth lakhs to clear two
t
majo
or airline
e
merge
ers. The CBI
C case against this Burea
au of Civil

51

Aviation Security (BCAS) official literally opened a

can of worms in the aviation sector.
He used his position as the additional
commissioner of BCAS to facilitate security
clearance for the mergers of Airlines. He was part
of the policy-making process in aviation security
and had considerable influence in such matters.
After the two mergers, security parameters had to
be redefined for both the airlines. That is where
he was suspected to have played a role.
CBI investigations found that he had availed of
free air tickets worth Rs sixty five lakh from one
airlines alone for himself and his family for
international travel.
He had availed of free stays at five-star hotels
from another airlines. He also rented out his
parents flat to the airlines, which paid Rs one lakh
twenty thousand every month as rental for the
flat.
Earlier the agency had found that Mumbai
International
Airport
Limited
(MIAL),
GVK
Industries and the Airports Authority (AAI) footed
bills of five-star hotels where the officer stayed
during his visits to Mumbai. CBI sources said
extension of such courtesies to him ensured

52

hassle-free operation of international flights as far

as security checks and adhering to parameters
were concerned. Such is our fate. Those we hire
to ensure safe air travel for us, whose salaries we
pay, whom we grant powers to ensure aviation
safety, start using those powers to earn bribes;
overlooking security lapses as a result.
And if the top was rotten, there was no way
those below could have stayed honest. It came to
light that commercial pilot licenses and air
transport pilot licenses were being sold by DGCA
staff for Rs six to seven lakhs based on forged
mark sheets. Further investigations showed that
the pilots had done the mandatory flying hours
on planes that were never built. It was web with
no boundaries. They had flown during the time
when no flight was actually in the air but was
shown in records.
And in a very recent case, it has been
discovered that over hundred Air India pilots were
flying planes even after their licenses had expired.
Both Air India and DGCA blamed each other for
the lapse.
Bribes change hand in departments in which
public could never suspect the bribes were
possible. The CBI arrested a former Ordinance

53

Factory Board chairman and several of his

associates for bribes collected by him from agents
and middlemen of defence companies.
In the case CBI also recommended black
listing of many foreign companies supplying
defence hardware, choking vital supplies to our
military. Corruption has some very pernicious
consequences.
Army officers, who serve the country with
highest display of integrity, catch the virus of
corruption as soon as they come in contact with
civilian environment.
An Army officer who worked as ADC to a
former Punjab Governor was booked by the CBI in
a disproportionate assets case after the agency
searched his residences in New Delhi and Gurgaon
and subsequently raided the house of his
Chandigarh-based CA who was alleged to have
routed money into companies owned by the
members of the family of the officer. And officer
was going places. When the case came to light, he
had already joined the Research and Analysis
Wing (R&AW) on deputation as Director following
a four-year tenure with the governor. Corrupts
move from deputation to deputation.

54

During his tenure in Chandigarh, he was

alleged to have played a crucial role in allotment
of multi-crore commercial projects, which had
come under the scanner of the CVC and had
become the subject of a preliminary enquiry (PE)
of the CBI.
And it is not that only the pure bureaucrats
make money. Some highly skilled professionals we
never knew had opportunity to make money have
been caught in scams. The CBI, in a case of
disproportionate assets, raided a cardiologist, who
was also head of his department in a top Delhi
hospital.
Everything the government does is just some
more milk and butter for the corrupts. Dairies
being run by various State governments always
seem to be making huge losses, but only for the
State, not for their officers. In a major operation,
the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) of Rajasthan
conducted a raid at the residence in Ajmer of a
Rajasthan Co-operative Dairy Federation official
and recovered cash worth Rs one crore and fifteen
lakh, besides jewellery worth lakhs of rupees. The
raid followed after the ACB, following a tip-off,
intercepted the car of the official and recovered Rs
one lakh from his vehicle, about which he failed to
come up with a convincing reply before the raiding

55

party. But recoveries at his Ajmer residence

proved to be only a part of his ill-gotten wealth.
ACB sleuths next day recovered Rs two crore
and thirty five lakh in cash, and eight and a half
kg of gold biscuits worth another Rs one crore and
fifty eight lakh from the lockers in Jaipur
belonging to the officer. Total in his case was over
Rs four crore seventy lakh cash and gold worth Rs
two crore. Even persons in other government
departments hardly suspected that loss-making
State owned dairies in various States were
actually cash cows for the dairy officials.
Every time a citizen wants something from a
government department, antennae of the corrupt
go up and they smell the bribe. State Vigilance
bureau of Punjab arrested a Provincial Civil
Services (PCS) officer, who was at that time a
joint secretary in the department of welfare board
(Scheduled Castes and backward class people),
while he was accepting a bribe of Rs fifty thousand
from a person who wanted to become just a
Numberdar in a village.
Public would never suspect that a Charity
Commissioner would be corrupt. After all, the
official is overseeing the noble business of charity.
But in reality, for them it is just another

56

government job, and therefore

avenue to ill-get wealth.

legitimate

The Anti Corruption Bureau of Maharashtra

Police arrested an assistant charity commissioner
(ACC), who was in the rank of an assistant civil
judge, accepting a bribe of Rs five lakh. He was
caught red-handed in his office. He demanded
bribe from the complainant to settle a land case.
The case in fact is a very sad story of how State
enables grabbing of the Private Property of the
citizens. In this case the complainant had a
farmhouse in Mawal, Pune, and had filed a
complaint with the charity commissioners office
alleging that an organisation had registered itself
on her property.
ACC, who was then presiding over the
Commission in Pune, had admitted the complaint
after observing that a prima facie case had been
made out. However, few months later, after he
was transferred to Mumbai, he called the
complainant and demanded Rs fifty lakh for
passing the order in her favour. So the State was
effectively extorting money from a citizen to let
her keep her property.
Sometime ago, Election Commission warned
that it suspected that many political parties were
floated just to channel black money as donations
57

into them, which then is used for private purposes

like investments in stock markets, purchase of
jewellery, etc. A party is registered, it starts
receiving fantastic cash donations, and then
simply goes defunct.
In
Maharashtra,
a
Food
and
Drugs
Administration commissioner cracked the whip on
violation of laws being permitted by persons in his
department in exchange for bribes. As a
consequence, a campaign of defamation was
launched against him. When he completed his
tenure and was transferred, he said that he knew
corruption would quickly come back to the level at
which it was before he started his campaign. Of
course he never thought of reviewing the
necessity of laws and rules that made the
corruption possible.
And of course the recent arrest of a Censor
Board official once again reaffirms the fact that
corrupts create avenues for corruption where none
suspect them to be possible.

An Estimate of Total Annual Volume of Bribe

Money In India

58

So what is the estimated amount of bribes in

India every year? Only some very rough estimates
are possible. We can only make some intelligent
guesses. An idea can be had from the fact that
recently an Engineer of a Development authority
in North India has been found to have assets
worth one thousand crore; and an IAS couple in
Madhya Pradesh had assets worth Rs four hundred
crore; and a former Chief Secretary of Uttar
Pradesh was found to have assets worth Rs two
hundred crore. Of course these worthies are
evidently real enterprising, the outliers, but they
give some idea of volume of corruption.
There are three thousand group A and
seventeen thousand group B officers in Customs &
Central Excise department. Around 1990, it was
rumoured that it was easy to make Rs one crore
every year in this department. Since then, Indias
tax collections have multiplied six fold. Assuming
that on average they each still make the same
amount: Rs one crore, and ninety percent of them
are corrupt, the total bribe earnings in this
department for officers alone would be around
eighteen thousand crore per year.
There are six thousand Group A officers and
twenty thousand Group B officers in Income Tax
department. From the assets of those caught for
disproportionate assets, and by the amount of
bribes they are caught taking, it is good estimate

59

that Income tax officers also make on an average

Rs one crore per year per officer. Again assuming
that ninety percent of them are corrupt, roughly
Rs twenty five thousand crore is the bribe amount
earned by Income Tax officers every year. Of
course in case of both these departments, as in all
government departments, not all posts have
opportunities to make money in bribes, but that is
more than offset by the posts where scope to
make amounts far in excess of Rs one crore per
year exists. Further, the posts that offer no
opportunities to be corrupt, in any case are more
often than not pushed into the laps of the ten
percent incorruptibles.
Total annual development budget of the
Centre is roughly Rs five lakh crore. At the
minimum, ten percent of it is siphoned off. So that
would mean another Rs fifty thousand crore in
bribe money per year.
Above total itself is roughly Rs one lakh crore
every year. If we add all that earned by staff in
above departments, and that earned by the State
government employees in all States of India, and
assuming that to be in the same order of
magnitude, we have a figure of another Rs one
lakh crore every year.
So as a rough estimate, it is safe to say that
total bribe money in India is at least Rs two lakh
crore every year at present GDP of India. A very

60

rough estimate, but we have at least some

estimate.
And how to know which departments are at
the top in volume and extent of corruption at any
given time?
This is in fact the simplest task. Most simple.
The order of preferences for Services
candidates fill in their application forms for Civil
Services Examination at the Centre, conducted by
Union Public Service Commission, and for
Subordinate
Services
of
States
in
the
examinations conducted by the State Public
Service Commissions, is the sure indicator of the
relative opportunities of corruption in various
departments. The only criterion that governs the
order is the avenues for corruption in various
departments. There may be few individuals who
may actually have choices based on other factors,
but overwhelming majority of the candidates
chooses Services only based on the opportunities
for corruption in various departments. In fact no
research, no study is required to find the year on
year state of corruption in various government
departments. The departments which are more in
demand by the new recruits, are also the
departments having more opportunities for
corruption.
Opportunities for corruption in a department
also decide the rate in marriage market of men
employed in that department.

61

Direct loss of at least Rs two lakh crore every

year may look huge, but indirect loss to the
country
that
results
from
corruption
in
Government is far deadlier, as we shall see in the
next chapter.

62

Chapter 3
Consequences of corruption
This book can be said to be the result of my
contemplative study of the consequences of
corruption. I would think about a problem in the
country, would start following the money, and lo,
at the root would be found the corruption. In my
experience even those who knew the scale of
plunder by the government officials seldom linked
to it its all consequences. In this chapter are
described the consequences of corruption, again
roughly department wise, wherever possible.
At our tax rates and real GDP, our tax
collection should be around Rs fifteen lakh crore.
That means we can have a balanced budget
(Socialists must be salivating), without any
increase in tax rates. But it is not so, and it is not
so only because of corruption. As Mark Steyn, the
Americam author, says, if tax collection agency is
corrupt, nothing else can be honest. A whole
industry of Chartered Accountants (CAs), fixers,
havala operators, and tax lawyers has grown
around corruption in the tax collecting agencies.
And it all becomes interlinked. Once production
figures are fudged to steal Excise Duty; Corporate
Income Tax, Sales Tax, that is all taxes in the
63

downstream get stolen as a result. Sales tax

stolen means that that much of income tax also
gets stolen. Once a person learns to steal taxes,
he learns to bribe everybody who is in a position
to benefit him. He learns to pay speed money,
making persons who render services hooked to
speed money. The stolen money goes to fund
shady ventures and businesses, which would
otherwise merit no funding, and all sorts of shady
characters become businessmen. Businesses earn
profit by stealing taxes, and incentive to earn
profit by improving product, investing in research
to improve products, to earn profit by cutting
costs, and by improving processes disappears.
Consumers get poor quality product at higher
cost.
Corruption in the police department has made
our country a lawless jungle. Criminals operate
with impunity because they know that they can
bribe their way out of a police station. A citizen is
afraid to enter a police station, as if he is entering
a mafia den. Most of India has been rendered
inhabitable. Organized crime is flourishing. Now
the situation has become so dire that police
department is just one more protection gang in
the locality. Police will not act on your complaint
until you pay them. If the person against whom
you complained pays more bribe than you, they
will favour him over you, without returning your

64

bribe money. They have stopped policing. They

now only investigate crime. If they effectively
police, crime will reduce and so will their income.
So if you report that your neighbour is playing
music after 10 pm, they will be on the spot within
five minutes. But if you report that the same
neighbour is about to hit you they will not turn up
even after one hour. Because if no crime gets
committed, they do not get any bribes. They
never try to prevent a crime from getting
committed. Because crime is a source of income
for them
And people now have the correct impression
that they can get away with anything if they can
pay. Thievery is now so common that except may
be in some gated communities in metros, in any
place of India, if entire family goes out even for
one night, the house will be cleaned up. Chain
snatching is a flourishing industry because policing
is totally absent.
During investigations they normally unearth all
the evidence necessary to get the perpetrators
punished. But what evidence is presented in the
Court depends whether the charged person has
paid the bribes or not. If he has, evidence will
disappear, will be destroyed, or tampered with.
And as a direct result of police corruption,
protection rackets are flourishing. Shopkeepers

65

even in famous markets like Connaught place pay

protection money to criminals. Kidnapping is a
huge industry in North India.
In rural areas, each side to a quarrel is
encouraged to name as many persons in First
Information Report (FIR) as they wish. The names
are then deleted or not deleted, depending upon
whether the persons so named pay bribe or not.
Police never tries to find out the guilt of the
implicated person, more the names proposed in
FIR, more the bribe. And organized crimes
patronized by police, like betting, bootlegging, and
unauthorized running of vehicles to ferry
passengers, are very common in rural areas.
Every factory pays the local police to live in peace.
Corruption has made sure that politicians
control the police. In rules and manuals there is
nothing that gives control over police to the
politicians as far as actual cases of crimes are
concerned. Politicians only have administrative
and policy control on police. But corruption has
made sure that politicians control the police like
their private goons. It works like this: a transfer
out of a post which has opportunity to make
money, to a post which doesnt, can make the
difference of not just lakhs but crores in the life of
a policeman. Politicians know this. And rules say
that transfer is not a punishment. So no reasons
need to be given to transfer a government
servant. A transfer thus becomes the punishment

66

bigger than dismissal from service, as transfer in

most cases means loss in bribe money more than
the total lifetime pay plus pension of a policeman.
And so policemen obey politicians as if they are in
their private employment.
Further, since bribe money collected at a thana
flows right up to the Director General of Police
(DGP) in most cases, so the chain of command
has totally been destroyed. Higher ups are not
able to command not only any respect, but they
are not even able to command. That is why going
to a Superintendent of Police against an in-charge
inspector of a police station brings only more
misery, not relief.
People have lost fear and respect for police,
and as a result they have also lost fear and
respect for the law and system as such. Politicians
by their power to control police have been able to
create vote banks, which demand and get
protection for the criminals of their group as one
of the prices of their vote. That is why mobs seem
to be ruling us, and holding us to ransom at will.
Corruption also makes sure that the party in
power gets its own private army in the form of the
State police, though the State continues to pay
their salaries. The party attracts the goons and
the mafia, as being with it brings protection. They
then terrorize voters, and rig the elections,
making democracy a joke.

67

Corruption in the police department is giving a

very dangerous turn to the politics of vote banks
in Northern and Eastern India. Vote bank
managers grant their vote banks immunity from
law. Members of vote bank use this as license to
kill, rape, and loot those out side the vote banks.
Persons at the receiving end of this crime spree
finally snap and take law into their hands, and
riots, horrible riots ensue; cleaving the society
apart. This is leading to a very dangerous
polarization, consequences of which are too
horrible to contemplate.
Corruption has made sure that policemen are
never able to outthink the terrorists, as they are
busy thinking of the next bribe. Further, the
culture of crime and the mass of criminals it gives
rise to, also becomes the water in which sharks
of terror swim. This leaves us highly vulnerable
to terror attacks. It is compounded by the fact
that intelligence postings and counter-terror unit
postings are normally dry postings. So personnel
posted there, instead of gathering intelligence and
fighting terrorists, sulk; and all the time try to find
ways to get out and get posting in a thana, and in
case of officers, at the suitable level in the
hierarchy that controls the thanas. This also
means we never develop expertise in intelligence
or anti-terror operations.
Corruption has led to a situation that police
has forgotten even basics of investigation. On

68

Saturday, January 30, 2010 a biker with his girl

friend on the pillion met with an accident on
Jogeshwari- Vikhroli link road of Mumbai. He got
flung into the empty space in the divider. A Good
Samaritan took the girl, who was lying on the
pavement and therefore was visible to passersby,
to hospital, and informed the police about the
accident. Police reached the spot, saw only the
bike and took it to the police station. Boys body
was found by his family at 11 pm next night still
lying in the space in the divider. And in the
Aarushi case of NOIDA, Hemrajs body was lying
on the roof of the house for full two days, and the
police was not aware. A retired, and hence old
school policeman, who came to visit the family,
located the body of Hemraj, just by following the
trail of blood, which the police that surveyed the
crime scene had failed to locate.
The first and foremost condition for a civilized
society to be possible is rule of law, and
corruption in police department is fast making rule
of law disappear. This has become a vicious cycle.
As a consequence of the absence of rule of law,
businesses and educated flee, leaving behind
poverty and unemployment, and a mass of
unskilled but restive persons. This leads to even
more crime, forcing even the remaining
businesses
to
flee,
compounding
the
consequences. The vote bank politics has

69

transformed it into a cancer that is threatening

the very existence of India.
Corruption in the State Electricity Boards
(SEBs) is the only reason that there are power
cuts in India. And the extent of corruption in a
particular SEB also neatly matches with the
duration of power cuts in that State. Corruption in
the Electricity Boards means that those who pay
bills pay far more than the amount they should be
paying-they pay for themselves and they pay for
those who do not pay. If still any shortfall
remains, the tax money is used to fund the
electricity consumption of those who steal
electricity.
Power cuts do not mean only inconvenience.
Power cuts mean that much less business
activities, leading to loss of employment, lesser
productivity and finally impoverishment. Power
cuts also mean that much less use of appliances
like refrigerators, and other kitchen appliances in
the homes leading to more discomfort to the
women in the house, higher wastage, lower sales
of white consumer goods leading to lower
production,
loss
of
employment
and
impoverishment.
Power cuts mean use of costly oil in the
gensets leading to more import bill. Use of more
gensets means more smoke and noise pollution in
cities. Less business activities mean more

70

unemployment and as a result more crime and as

a result even less business activities.
Corruption in the SEBs mean that we do not
make world-class electrical power equipment
because crony businessmen, expert at paying
bribes, win contracts to supply the SEBs the poor
quality equipment which gets accepted by the
corrupts.
Corruption also means that a lot of Capital
gets blocked in underutilized installed capacity. In
India, plant load factor, which tells us the
percentage of installed capacity being used, is
under fifty for the State Electricity Board owned
power plants, whereas in private power plants in
India itself, plant load factor is above ninety. That
means that half of our installed capacity is just
lying waste.
Corruption in Civil Engineering departments
mean that roads give way in the first rains, during
rains our cities become one big pond, our public
buildings leak like sieve, our water supply is only
for some hour of the day and always remains unfit
to drink. Corruption in Civil Engineering
departments means that road signage fade into
invisible soon after being installed, leading to
accidents and deaths. Corruption in Civil
Engineering departments feeds money to entire
food chain. Politicians now know that engineers
are minting money so they demand cut out of
every contract signed in their constituency,

71

threatening to kill, and in some cases even killing

engineers if they do not pay. Corruption in public
works departments now attracts all sorts of
blackmailers-journalists, Right to Information
activists, local goons; thus creating an ecosystem
of loot and crime.
It is because of corruption that art of
surveying and planning a work has by and large
died in India. As surveying and planning have no
money in them, so nobody actually does the
survey, and those who get posted on posts
involving survey and planning sulk and curse their
fate, and figure out that if they become too good
a surveyor they will forever be in the surveying, a
dry post, and therefore make it a point to do a
shoddy job. This leads to huge cost overruns. As
initial survey is never done, so cost is not properly
estimated. As a consequence, design is not done
properly, leading to huge revisions of design and
scheme of construction during execution. Soil
investigation is not done properly therefore
foundations do not get designed properly, and
therefore buildings develop cracks soon after
construction. Both, such modifications and cost
overruns, require sanctions at higher levels
leading to huge time overruns also. Drainage in
cities is not proper because nobody did the slope
survey of the city before designing the drainage

72

system, nobody computed the proper size or

required layout of the drains.
There is one more reason why surveys are no
longer done in India. Higher ups earn money in
awarding contracts and earlier the tenders are
invited, earlier they receive the bribes. And they
are in this tearing hurry because who knows when
he will get transferred out of that lucrative post,
which he has literally bought in an auction in most
cases. So higher ups force invitation of tenders
without proper survey and planning, leading to all
the consequences listed above.
Corruption in Civil Engineering departments
means
that
we
never
make
world-class
construction material like tiles, sanitary wares and
fixtures, because there is a huge market of
government construction for poor quality material.
All famous brands get faked and sold to
government departments as the real thing,
enabled by corruption.
Corruption in Civil Engineering departments
means we spend huge amounts on maintenance,
which would not have been required if quality of
construction were proper, and corruption means
that cost of maintenance itself paid to the
contractor is much higher than actually incurred
by the contractor. In fact now that false payments
have become rampant, maintenance is not done
at all, though money is spent on maintenance.
This leads to earlier than normal aging and

73

consequent replacement of government buildings

and other public assets.
Corruption
in
district
development
departments means that all the hard earned
money of taxpayers dries up at the district
headquarters, never percolating down. Citizens
learn to be corrupt because for all development
assistance they need to pay the cut to the
disbursing officers. Corruption also results into the
fact that whatever money finally reaches the
intended beneficiary; he doesnt use it for the
purpose it is given. For example, assistance to the
poor for constructing house is not used in
constructing the house, money is diverted to other
needs, and such diversion is not detected,
because the monitoring system itself is corrupt.
Corruption in Revenue department has led to a
brand new entrepreneur in India- the person who
purchases land from a farmer, and then by bribing
the district administration, gets its land use
changed and mints money by reselling the land.
Revenue department also grants many licenses
cinema, etc.- in the district and gets paid for
every such service rendered. Corruption makes
sure that the officers in district administration
want to retain their posts and therefore become
very pliant to their political masters who soon

74

make sure that they also become part of the

action. And quality of governance becomes what it
has become in India.
Since monitoring and implementation of
various schemes in most of the cases rests with
the district administration, therefore every
scheme lands with a well-oiled machinery of loot
in place beforehand.
Enforcement of most of the acts also rests with
the district administration. Corruption in district
administration makes their enforcement very
arbitrary.
Corruption in municipalities means that you
can construct anything anywhere, if you pay. And
if you dont, you may as well forget the dream
house you planned to construct after you retired.
So people are building on ponds and in the Right
of Way of rivers leading to catastrophic
consequences in case of heavy rains. Corruption
means that all the time there is illegal
construction going on in our cities and towns,
making mockery of town planning and zoning. And
corruption also makes sure that you can never
construct a house in a city without greasing
innumerable palms, making every citizen a
partner in the crime and hence amenable to bribe
and getting bribed.

75

Corruption in municipalities has made sure

that our cities remain more like garbage dumps
than cities. A whole army of middlemen, fixers,
musclemen and blackmailers lives off municipal
corruption in the cities. The sewage systems and
water supply systems are not constructed after
careful planning as everybody is in a hurry to
reach the tender stage where all the fun and loot
is. Maintenance of all assets is poor because
money is diverted into pockets, and maintenance
again is not planned properly but is based on who
can get the amount sanctioned for his jurisdiction
based on his expertise in bribing the sanctioning
authority.
Corruption in the forest department means
that our forests are disappearing, our tigers are
disappearing, but our industrial development is
comatose. We now require permission of the
Forest department for pretty much everything,
and as power to grant permission is the power to
extort money, so ever more rules are framed
daily, forcing people to come to Forest department
before undertaking any economic activity.
They have spread their tentacles everywhere.
Those who are familiar with Mumbai would not
think that Forest department could come into
picture in case of construction within Mumbai

76

Metropolitan region. But it is

delaying and blocking projects.

there,

happily

Corruption in Forest department means that

every work requiring their permission gets
delayed as nothing moves without bribes.
Investments of billions and billions of rupees
remain held up for want of permission from Forest
department leading to paralysis in the economy,
unemployment, and poverty. The poverty that
leads to persons becoming available to cut trees
and poach animals. The forest department is thus
causing exactly what it is supposed to prevent. No
wonder one of the former Prime Ministers said
that the Ministry of Forest and Environment had
become the new licensing ministry.
Corruption in medical department has the
consequences that include complete decay of
medical profession in the country. Doctors in
government hospitals spend their time not in
treating patients but in manipulations and in
collection of bribes. Patients are prescribed tests
beyond all needs just because doctors have
arrangements with labs around the hospitals. The
medicines not required get prescribed. Medicines
not up to the mark get prescribed. Medical
Certificates have lost all their values. The doctors
who are supposed to be like Gods, when seen to
be indulging in petty corruption shake faith of the

77

common man. The medicine companies earn

money by selling sub-standard/ fake drugs and
therefore do not spend money on research.
Corrupt doctors are not able to command the staff
in the hospitals leading to gross indiscipline and
lack of care in the hospitals. Doctors have become
part of the racket to fleece the patient, and
therefore cost of treatment has increased to levels
enough to bankrupt him.
Corruption in the Transport department means
that people start driving without actually learning
to drive, causing accidents. The non-roadworthy
vehicles break down and cause accidents/traffic
disruptions. Unfit vehicles allowed to be driven by
untrained drivers cause accidents. The overloaded
vehicles damage the pavement so our roads are
always in need of repairs, and frequent repairs
drain resources. The roads broken by overloaded
vehicles cause accidents and slow down speeds,
lead to more consumption of fuel, and lead to
longer journey time. Overloading skews the
transport market because those who overload can
charge lower freight causing loss to those who do
not do so. Overloading also enables stealing of
taxes, as many tax departments count number of
trucks exiting premises of the firm to calculate
production.
Overloading
also
leads
to
undercharging of road tax, and thus leads to the
situation where revenues from vehicles using the

78

roads do not match the funds required to repair

them.
Development ministries suck precise Capital
from the market and then waste that on unviable
ventures or unproductive activities. The country
gets deprived of a precious resource, and because
tax money is being used to prop up failing
ventures, it leads to non-development of viable
ventures, people do not feel the need to compete
in the market and therefore do not try to acquire
new skills, keeping India a low skill, loss making
economy. People develop the notion that instead
of doing business it is better to milk the various
government schemes.
Corruption in licensing/permission ministries
means that true entrepreneurs do not stand a
chance to start a business in India. Those who can
grease the palm, those who know someone get
to set up the businesses. They then run the
business inefficiently, incur losses, and soon wind
up. They thus cause net loss to the economy by
causing inefficient allocation of a very precious
and scarce resource-Capital. Businesses do not
get started leading to a subsistence economy.
Those who get licenses/permissions are able to
distort the market by making sure that the likely
competitors do not get the permission, thus
causing distortion in the economic process and

79

harm to the general public that never gets the

best deal and value for money.
Businesses get set up where permission can be
arranged and not where they should be set up,
causing regional distortions, leading to internal
migration and all its attendant consequences of
housing shortage, rise in crime, and splintering of
family. Failing businesses lead to non-performing
assets of the banks, blocking the most precise
resource-Capital. Entrepreneurs simply give up or
migrate out of country, increasing the net mass of
hustlers, charlatans, and wheelers & dealers
within the country.
In fact bureaucrats themselves suddenly
turning highly successful businessmen is not
uncommon. Income tax raided a hotel group in
Gujarat with twenty hotels in the chain, and
discovered that an ex-IAS officer of Gujarat, who
had quit Service when he was transferred to a dry
post, owned the group. Income tax officers
discovered that the Group was not doing much
business, still was earning fantastic profits;
apparently ill-gotten wealth of the officer was
transforming itself into profits of the hotel Group.
Corruption in the field of education has
completely destroyed Indian education. Those
ready to pay bribes and with means to pay bribes

80

get to set up schools and colleges, and because

they started with the corruption, they continue to
spread corruption. They can purchase rankings,
and they can purchase the HR departments of
companies who then recruit from their colleges.
The recruitments are then touted as the proof of
academic standards of the college.
Principals are corrupt so they are not able to
control teachers. Teachers have stopped teaching,
and therefore tuition industry and coaching
classes are flourishing. Students very early learn
to cheat, and try to cheat their way through life.
In 2007, a Public Interest Litigation application
was filed in Bombay High Court, alleging that
students had forged mark sheets and secured jobs
in government and private sector. The Court
ordered a CBI inquiry, and it was discovered after
inquiry that a total of 1,135 students had forged
mark sheets of various universities of Maharashtra
and secured jobs. Similar scam has been
discovered in Bihar also recently.
Corrupt Principals and teachers have now
rendered it almost impossible to hold any exam
without paper leaking somewhere here or there.
Students can pay to increase their marks
therefore even Indian recruiters have lost all faith
in Indian mark sheets. They thus have to spend
money on their own tests. Since students are not

81

well taught therefore companies have to spend

huge amounts on training. PhD thesis and project
reports can be purchased, a teacher can be paid
to write them, or they can be plagiarized without
any fear of getting caught. Students with such
moral training steal wherever they can- in
attendance, in work ethics and in money handling.
Therefore data leakages from the Indian call
centres are so common. Productivity is very low,
and workers can riot and kill. Because they dont
know what an honest earning of a days living
means.
Corruption in education has meant that Ganga
is getting polluted right at the source; the fountain
itself is throwing up corrupt citizenry. Efficiency in
offices has become very low with new recruits not
able to handle files, or read or draft simple letters.
Skills in factories have become very low, because
nobody knows what hard work is. Commitment of
workers has become very low, because students
never learn what commitment is. Students grow
up among corrupt administrators and teachers,
and lose all respect and fear of figures in
authority, leading to increased lawlessness in the
country.
Copying in examinations is now rampant in
most of the states. In Uttar Pradesh, percentage
of students who passed Board examinations had

82

stayed below fifty for decades. Then a political

party promised that examination centres for the
Board examination would be in the same schools
in which students had studied. Pass percentage in
that year jumped above eighty percent.
We permit such frauds on ourselves. Nobody
raised a finger, nobody called this mockery what it
was a mockery of education system. In fact the
rival political party, which won the next election,
restored the old system, and became tough on the
students who tried to copy. It became highly
unpopular and duly lost the next election. Pass
percentage in Uttar Pradesh has stayed above
eighty percent since then, but UP now sends most
students to Kota for coaching, and in UP itself it is
difficult to find students who are not attending
some tuition or coaching class. The same UP once
had the best schools and colleges. Such blatant
deceptions we permit, and then we think that
some bunch of Leftists on dharna and hunger
strike would save us from our own corruption.
Corruption in Railway means a culture of
corruption in a highly technological system.
Components of poor quality mean frequent
equipment failures leading to delays and reduced
system capacity. The workers lose respect for the
administrators leading to very low productivity
and output, increasing the cost for the paying

83

public. Corruption means that there is no

guarantee, even normal confidence in the
availability of transport, therefore people either
keep higher inventories or shift to road transport
causing jump in demand for diesel. Power plants
always struggle with coal supplies; and steel and
other metal industries struggle with shortage of
raw material on the one hand and piling up of
their products in their own warehouses on the
other.
Railway is a big purchaser of various products,
and corruption means that not true entrepreneurs
but those who know how to bribe get to do
business with Railway. They earn huge profits by
supplying substandard equipment to Railway,
causing failures in Railway, and killing market for
good products, thus harming the economy as a
whole.
RPF is not able to control Railway thieves, who
often steal with their connivance, resulting into
costly replacements, failures, and promotion of
culture of crime in the country.
Corruption in Railway means the wheels of
economy are getting corrupted.
People say that all laws to eradicate corruption
itself, or to do the good they are supposed to do

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fail to achieve the stated objective, because the

justice delivery system is corrupt. Rule of law is
the basis of a Civilized society and its economic
well being, and if justice delivery system is
corrupt, no rule of law is possible. People prefer to
bear wrong than to approach courts, because they
fear getting bankrupted and still reaching
nowhere.
Judicial
corruption
coupled
with
police
corruption has made sure that in India it is rule of
men and not rule of law. Even in a city like
Mumbai, mafia gangs control territories in which
no business is possible without paying cut to the
gangs. For the poor, life is just one long struggle
to buy protection by paying the overlord of the
locality, and still avoid the same overlord for the
fear of him getting too close. Even in crimes like
murder and rape where the perpetrators are
mostly known to the family/victim, their names
are either not even reported to police or if at all
told, more often than not the cases are botched
up at trial stage, under the influence of bribes,
leading to acquittal. Therefore people have learnt
to keep quiet, and simply leave the area or live
the wretched life. Indian State is failing in its most
basic function: to keep citizens safe from violence;
and corruption in the justice delivery system is to
be blamed as much as the police corruption.

85

Then there are civil disputes. Businesses in

India suffer badly as it is very difficult to enforce
the contracts in Indian Courts. Sanctity of
contracts is the foundation of commerce in a
society, and this foundation is the weakest link in
Indian Commerce. Commerce is the lifeblood of
the economy and underdeveloped Commerce is
the reason that we are always on the verge of
collapse, remain a wretchedly poor country in the
world, despite an awesomely talented population
and great traditions of intellectual and commercial
activities.
Now onward I discuss anecdotes and show
how they all have resulted from corruption.
Corrupt political class and bureaucracy mean
that people all the time try to get posts where
they can mint money. One surest way of doing so
is to pay money. Therefore people try to earn
money and purchase ever-higher paying posts.
And the result is that government employees in
India hone their skills to bribe and get bribed
instead of skills required for their actual job.
Government employees have actually stopped
reading files, framing noting, scrutinizing what has
been placed before them. So we have sharm-elshaikh statement type slip-ups.
Once a former prime minister chatted with
editors and made an off the record statement

86

concerning popularity of Jamaat-e-Islami in

Bangla Desh. The off the record comment not
only got recorded, it was duly uploaded on the
concerned government website. Those who took
the notes, those who wrote the manuscript, those
who scrutinized it; nobody bothered to read what
they were permitting to pass their office table.
A minister on one fine morning landed in
London to attend a UN conference, only to
discover that there was no UN conference, she
was victim of a Nigerian email scam type email
fraud. The lure of a government paid holiday in
London so blinded entire entourage that they did
not carry out simple checks and cross checks,
though a whole army of secretaries and down is
fattening itself on taxpayer money just to do that.
A full- page newspaper advertisement given by
the government to mark the National Girl Child
Day carried a photograph of a former Pakistan Air
Force chief along with that of then Prime Minister.
The advertisement must have passed half a dozen
desks for its approval. Nobody bothered to have a
look at it.
The textbooks are routinely discovered to have
wrong maps of India, wrong historical information,
and wrong attributions. This when teachers, who
are supposed to have eye for accuracy, write most
of the textbooks.

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Corruption makes terror more easily possible

than it would be otherwise. Mumbai police seized
a total of 71 AK-47 rifles during raids in the
aftermath of 93 Mumbai blasts. The consignments
continued to be delivered from Pakistan and
everybody from customs to police to octroi staff
took his cut and waved them through. The death
merchandise reached Mumbai and around 300
people lost their lives. Families got destroyed,
Commerce got hit and country got further pushed
into the abyss.
There are thousands of irrigation projects
across India stuck at various stages of execution
for want of funds, because newer projects are
started without completing the earlier ones as
ministers change, and they want fresh projects in
their own constituencies where they can get the
cut. Therefore no proper surveys are done, and
during execution it is discovered that the project
is reaching nowhere as it was wrongly planned, or
the cost itself was incorrectly worked out,
requiring expenditure much beyond the initial
sanction. Other departments that had kept quiet
in the reign of earlier minister also wake up to
proclaim that project was started without
clearances and approvals, further stalling the
project. Result: huge amounts of public money
get locked, and farms get no water, impoverishing

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ever increasing rural population, keeping Indian

agriculture comatose.
In a case investigated by Punjab Vigilance
bureau, it was discovered that all seven members
of Punjab Public Service Commission, who
included retired IAS officers and retired Army
officers, colluded to vitiate the entire selection
process, indulged in gross irregularities and
arbitrarily selected non-deserving candidates. The
beneficiaries included the sons of some of the
sitting High Court judges, bureaucrats and
politicians. Such cases shake the faith of citizens
in the State, and they become ready recruits for
all sorts of movements launched to liberate
them from the corrupt State.
Every new government frames rules and
policies, which force more and more people to
seek its approval, permission, and clearance; so
that more bribes can be collected. Result is
complete paralysis in economy. There is always
talk of simplification of rules and procedures but
nothing gets done, precisely because doing so will
lead to reduction in opportunities for corruption.
Government employees buy posts by paying
politicians, and then sell posts they have
jurisdiction on, and extort money from whatever
activities they lord over. Ever afraid to lose

89

purchased posts, they say yes to whatever

politician says, flouting rules and procedures.
Soon they learn to be arbitrary and because they
are able to buy protection from political class,
they become autocrats. Their subordinates soon
learn that knowledge, efficiency, and work do not
matter; and soon start earning money and paying
to always get favourable appraisal reports and
lucrative postings. Therefore all government
departments have become morass of mediocrity.
The air in most of the government
departments feels to be that of a den of criminals,
not of a government department. Trust level is
zero and government employees are afraid to do
any work which may land them in the clutches of
Vigilance/CBI; because even if they may be found
innocent after half a dozen or so years, income of
intervening years is lost, because during inquiry
they cannot be on the earning (called sensitive
posts) posts. This also means that by bribing the
controlling authority, one can get any post,
therefore thoroughly corrupts are rising higher
and higher, almost reaching right up to the posts
of CVC. J F Rebiero once, during a talk on
Vigilance Day in my department, narrated how the
most corrupt bureaucrat was about to become
CVC. J F Rebiero wrote to the then Home Minister
who made inquires, and the appointment was
averted.

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Officers are also mortally afraid of confronting

Unions,
politicians,
judiciary,
and
other
government departments which obstruct their
legitimate functions, as the confrontation may
lead to the loss of the lucrative post. In fact not
just officers, but everybody from politician to
lowest clerk wants peace during his hard
purchased tenure so that he can make good the
investment, earn enough to purchase next post,
and earn enough to live the life of luxury to attain
which he became corrupt in the first place.
Therefore activists, Courts, approval ministries are
having a free run in the economy of country,
banning things left and banning things right,
banning things in the morning and banning things
in the evening; with nobody having courage to
stand up and shout, What the hell are you
doing?
A new form of corruption has also emerged
from the ever-tightening chains of regulations and
permissions. A government department has no
provision
to
bribe
another
government
department. But if a department blocks activities
in other government departments, employees in
those departments cannot get bribes paid
resulting from those activities. Therefore finally
government employees are devising ways to bribe
employees in the other departments of the

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governments. So a new class of consultants has

emerged in
the
country
that
arranges
permissions for a government department from
other government departments. Terms are
carefully framed like surveying and preparing
application papers., or some such language.
Consultants grease the palms, which the officers
could not have greased out of their own pockets,
out of consultancy money paid to them. As
described in the chapter 2, in the paragraph on
Railway, one of the State Electricity Boards
engaged one such consultant to arrange waiver of
demurrage and wharfage charges levied by
Railway on coal rakes. The consultant paid the
bribes, which the employees of the SEB could not
have paid. The case was reported by a renegade
Railway officer, but was eventually hushed up by
classifying it as a system failure.
There are whole markets devoted to
generation of fake receipts, vouchers for
everything. There is a whole industry of producing
fake branded goods to be sold to government
departments, to be used in public works. All these
bad entrepreneurs combine to drive good
entrepreneurs out of market, making India a
market of thieves, fixers, and thugs.
From bureaucracy the cancer has travelled to
every other field. Parties do not give tickets to

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deserving candidates but to the ones who are able

to buy the tickets. Ministers do not become
ministers on merit, but because of their capacity
to pay to The Dear Leader. Annual Confidential
Reports have lost their meaning. The culture of
rewarding the bribe giver has become culture of
the country so in fields like sports, arts, and
cinema; those who can pay in cash or in kind get
ahead. Prizes can be purchased and awards are
bought. Doctors see a patient not as a person to
be treated but as a cow to be milked. Earlier, in
the good old days, you walked into a doctors
room, he would feel your pulse, use stethoscope
and write prescription and matter ended. Now the
doctor would not touch you, would not look at
you, but would start writing list of tests you have
to undergo even before you finish telling him what
you are suffering from. Going to a doctor now
means almost a week of tests, collecting test
reports, and going back to the doctor, and you
feel lucky if he doesnt write few more tests.
Persons who hardly flew a plane become pilots
of passenger jets by purchasing the flying hours
they never earned. They carry the culture of
corruption in the air and the aircraft becomes full
of odour of corruption with everybody cutting
corners, airhostesses left in-charge of cockpits,
pilots unable to handle even ordinary out of
routine situations. We have successfully corrupted

93

the most sophisticated and best creation of manthe aircraft.

Bank loans go not to the entrepreneurs who
can pay them back; but to those who can pay
bribes. Shady ventures get funded, true
entrepreneurs starve for Capital. Banks earn
nonperforming assets instead of profits, and need
frequent bailouts with tax money. Therefore
money gets taken away from the productive-the
taxpayers- and ends with those who destroy it.
That many businesses not started, that many jobs
lost, that many young men added to the mass of
desperate.
Corruption has made sure that new houses
always remain in short supply so the builders are
able to fleece purchasers. They also get
purchasers to fund all the bribes they need to pay
to make the project become a reality. It means
that people who save all their lives to have a
home when they retire, pay not only the cost of
land and the building materials and labour that go
into making the house, but for all the bribes,
extortion money, and protection money the
builder has to pay.
Journalists of the country have also come to
know the extent of corruption in the system, and
have devised ways to blackmail contractors,

94

officers, and industrialists. Corrupt editors then

promote journalists who are good at blackmail,
and so the quality of India media is so mediocre.
Most columns are like school level essays retailing
homilies. The media in fact has become part of
establishment and guards its secrets; therefore
public is unaware of the extent of corruption, rot,
and cancer in the system. Perfidy of rulers is
never challenged by media, never reported. Lies
are promoted as news, columns are written to
create favourable images of those in power.
Contrarians are eased out so there is uniformity of
ideology in Indian media. Merit has died.
Projects that should be sanctioned never get
sanctioned if those having the authority to
sanction are not likely to get bribes during
tendering/execution. Persons in government
instead of doing actual pre-planning surveys and
proper planning and cost estimation, try to find
ways and means to bribe sanctioning authorities,
therefore all Indian projects see huge cost overruns, time delays, technical difficulties in
execution.
Public distribution system (PDS) has destroyed
entire farm produce market of India, making
pilfering of the PDS grains the most lucrative
trade.

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Corruption has distorted the marriage market

with the corrupts able to buy grooms for their
daughters. They are also able to launch business
ventures for the failed junior. This sucks Capital
from the market, starving true entrepreneurs.
That is why so many Indian businesses are always
failing; hotels open where none was needed, malls
open only to shut down few years down the line,
because those with ill gotten money, or with
abilities to arrange permissions build them, not
the entrepreneurs who could do the appraisal to
locate the mall at a proper place, or decide
whether to open it at all. Restaurants get opened
only to fail, for the same reasons.
No mining can be done without paying bribes
to the approval granters, to the clearance givers;
therefore mining is done not by entrepreneurs but
by fixers and mafia gangs. Therefore instead of
mining tycoons we have mining dons. No scientific
mining is done; resources are milked in the most
inefficient and wrong ways; killing the mines. The
mining mafia pays everybody in the area: the
legislator, police, revenue officials, and the
transport department officials; therefore working
conditions are horrible in the mines. Crime
radiates in all directions from a mine, and fellow
mafia gangs become transporters and labour
contractors. Mafia is able to kill competition so it is
able to fix prices. Therefore ultimately the last

96

consumer ends up funding all the bribes paid

upstream, and funding the inefficiencies so
generated. This creates the inefficiencies in the
economy, flow of black money all around, giving
rise to cash couriers, hawala operators. Supply of
raw materials is always uncertain so hardly any
true businessman thinks of setting up business in
India.
From whichever point in the economy we start,
we discover an intermeshed labyrinth of
corruption, each vein feeding other veins feeding
off many other veins, creating a full fledged
parallel economy of ill-gotten wealth. Leaving no
option for any citizen but to learn the trade and
tricks of bribing giving, bribe taking, stealing
taxes and avoiding levies.
Corruption has led to the trade union
movement having been taken over by mafia.
Therefore instead of honest negotiations between
workers and owners to secure the best possible
deal for both, it is now extortion and protection
racket. Protection for the workers against
consequences of not working, being absent, not
working to the full capacity, against losing job
when not required; and extortion from the owners
for letting them do the business. And of course,
by keeping the union bosses in good humour,
owners also secure exclusive rights to fleece the

97

workers. To secure these ends, trade union mafia

uses all the weapons a mafia uses: intimidation,
terror, beating, and in extreme cases, murder;
and burning down/shutting down the plant.
Administration, instead of enforcing the law, sides
with the mafia, because politicians need their
votes, their contributions, and feel good about
siding with the underdog, duly assisted by the
screaming media. Police being corrupt does what
politicians tell them to do, instead of upholding
laws. So India is dotted with shutdown industrial
units, sacrificed to secure workers rights, finally
sacrificing the workers themselves at the altar of
labour laws. Workers routinely beat up officers in
government undertakings and public sector
undertakings, for the crime of asking them to
work. Therefore a citizen is left wondering why
complaining to the officers against the clerk
doesnt help.
Mafia controlled trade unions mean that Indian
productivity is woefully low, absenteeism is
rampant, there is no drive to learn new skills, no
drive to work hard to keep the job. Trade union
mafia makes sure that only entrenched owners
who have learnt to play the Union game are left in
business and true entrepreneurs with ideas never
stand a chance. Trade Union mafia has laid waste
to our most industrialized State: West Bengal, and
has made sure that industrialization has never

98

taken off in one of the most educated States

Kerala. Trade Union mafia has made sure that
worker employer relationship is not of two free
and equal in law persons contracting at mutually
agreed terms, but one side using violence against
the other side, and State protecting the violent,
vitiating the entire job market in India, leaving it
highly underdeveloped and distorted.
Corruption has given rise to formidable vote
banks, as politicians cultivate them to win power,
and then use power not only to loot and enrich
themselves, but also to extend benefits to vote
banks.
The
benefits
include
targeted
unconstitutional freebies, protection against law,
manipulating recruitments to give government
jobs to vote bank members. Sheltering mafia dons
and criminals belonging to vote banks from the
law, thus destroying rule of law. This is made
possible by corruption because policemen want to
retain their hard purchased lucrative postings and
therefore do what the politicians want them to do.
This erodes authority of State and sanctity and
aura of law, with tragic consequences for the
country and citizenry.
Corruption has left politicians and bureaucrats
susceptible to blackmail. This is the reason that all
sorts of extra-constitutional authorities have
started
dictating
the
elected
government.

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Anybody with airs of righteousness can intimidate

government. Saviours are coming up by dozens
every day. The hunger strikers, RTI activists,
activists pursuing various causes, are seriously
eroding authority of legitimate government
elected by people.
This was seen most vividly in the case of Anna
hunger strike. A cabal of Leftists used a sincere,
old man from hinterland, out to save the country
from the corrupt; to terrorize the government with
threat of anarchy, and government of the day
panicked because it had no moral authority and
courage of conviction and aura of honesty. So we
had the illegal act of forming that Joint Drafting
Committee to re-write Constitution, that fine
and sacred document drafted by some of the best
minds over a period of many years.
Coming back to RTI activists, what is an RTI
activist? Right to Information was enacted to
enable a citizen to obtain information he needed,
which had been otherwise denied to him. Of
course if administration is honest, there will be no
need to have this act in the first place as honest
officers will straight away furnish any information
not classified as confidential. But soon after the
act was enacted we had this whole new category
of activists, the RTI activists. What do they do for
a living? Most of them actually obtain information
100

and then use it to blackmail government

machinery and businessmen who are in cahoots
with that machinery. Otherwise how does an
activist, any activist, not just RTI activist, earn his
living? This is not a case of good law being
misused, but a law necessitated by corruption,
expected to eradicate that corruption, being used
to force the corrupts to share the loot with one
more layer-activists. Of course, there are some
sincere and honest persons who are using RTI to
make a genuine difference in governance.
CBI arrested an ex-commissioner of Income
Tax in Mumbai in 2009 after it was discovered
that he had a Non Governmental Organization
(NGO) in the name of his family members. The
persons who needed to bribe him were told to
donate the bribe money to the NGO owned by his
family members. Having an NGO has come handy
to the corrupt to evade the prying eyes of CBI or
the Vigilance wing of their own departments. A
very large number of officers in the departments
with opportunities to earn bribes have NGOs in the
name of close family members. In fact India has a
surprisingly large number of NGOs registered;
which are otherwise not visible in the society, but
still receive huge donations.
Corruption has made sure that being in power
or out of it can make difference of many hundreds
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or even thousands of crores of rupees in the life of

a politician. So politicians resort to all sorts of
stratagems
to
win
elections:
enacting
unaffordable, unconstitutional, wrong freebies;
fragmenting electorate to create vote banks, thus
seriously damaging economy and social fabric of
the country. Political corruption has made sure
that India has rule of men, not rule of law with all
the
attendant
consequences-lawlessness,
economy in coma, thievery, thuggery all around,
and no governance. This is because most
politicians, for the fear of losing power, support
thugs and venal Party bosses who can win
elections for them.
Corruption has made sure that we have
leaders who are experts at loot, who all the time
think of loot, who all the time think of next
election, who only think of acquiring power.
Therefore there is no long term, or even shortterm vision for the country. No big idea, no
breakthrough initiative.
Freebies enacted to win elections lead to
diversion of precious Capital into sinkhole of
waste, leaving no Capital with entrepreneurs. This
impoverishes people further, necessitating more
freebies, setting up a vicious cycle, which reduces
citizenry to whining freeloaders surrendering their
freedom to the one who feeds them. In exchange

102

for the freebies they forgive him all the failure of

governance, all the scams, all the loot, all the
crimes, all the moral turpitude, thus electing
charlatans to legislatures. So we have a very
mediocre ruling elite, always afraid, always
fearful, misusing law to crush opposition, both
intellectual and political. Using law to intimidate
businesses to donate to them and to the party,
thus instead of deserving candidate getting
donation from an informed citizenry, we have
charlatans in power and corrupt machinery
extorting funds from businesses and individuals,
thus making sure that no honest candidate can
ever hope to contest and win.
It has become a very effective closed system
of looters using loot to win power to loot even
more, keeping intelligentsia and media on its
payroll, so that people never get informed how
their future, their childrens future, and their
countrys future are being destroyed in plain sight.
Corruption has made sure that students in
villages, who cannot afford tuitions or relocating
to cities to attend costly coaching classes, do not
stand a chance, as teachers do not teach in their
classes. Skills remain low, intellect levels remain
low, information levels remain low, and electorate
remains susceptible to politics of freebies and vote

103

banks. No small businesses get started. No selfemployment happens.

Corruption has made sure that no culture of
local governments has developed in India. Local
governments made the US the great Nation that it
became. In India starting from the Center as you
go down, corruption spirals to ever-greater
heights keeping the dream of local government
just that a dream. Sarpanches become the
looters of all that they get in development funds,
use that loot to buy votes, setting up a pattern to
be replicated at all higher levels.
State in India still remains the biggest
businessman. Since almost every business needs
to sell to, or buy from government, and all those
transactions involve bribes, therefore Indian
companies develop core competence of paying
bribes to government officers. So India doesnt
create great companies, Multinational or domestic,
but companies that are more often than not
discovered to be paying bribes even when they do
business abroad.
Corruption has made sure that laws are made
to create ever more controls over businesses and
citizens. A case in point is restrictions on stone
quarrying and sand dredging. Man has been
quarrying stones and dredging sand since the time

104

immemorial. Both the activities were suddenly

rendered illegal unless approved by somebody. I
dont know who has the power to approve and
what is the procedure. Also declared illegal was to
dig soil to make bricks, unless permitted by
somebody in government in advance. No
government or government department thought
of challenging the order, or reviewing the law that
makes such orders possible which overnight
render illegal the activities we have always been
doing.
Such orders always lead to creation of mafia
gangs specializing in mining and selling stones,
sand, and soil. Paying bribes to everybody who
matters, creating a whole new sphere of
corruption, and physically eliminating those who
are not amenable to bribes. IAS and IPS officers
are dying and getting suspended in trying to
prevent what? Quarrying of stones, dredging of
sand, digging of soilEven Gods must be
wondering when they created such idiots who are
currently ruling India.
Sand dredging was banned first in Mumbai
area. Almost throughout the year 2010, district
administration minted money out of sand. The
issue of royalty payment was not settled and
therefore builders and contractors did what
businessmen in India do, procure the sand

105

anyway. The district administration would seize

the trucks carrying illegal sand, and release them
after extorting hefty sums. Court intervened in a
way that only enabled more loot. Per truck loot
was about Rs fifteen thousand. Of course all the
costs of sand mafia, all bribes, were charged to
hapless home purchasers. In case of government
contractors, they abandoned their government
contracts and got ruined. All projects got badly
delayed, and cost got escalated. That is how we
are supposed to make Mumbai a Shanghai on the
Arabian Sea.
In the States, the situation has deteriorated to
the extent that officers pay bribes to the accounts
clerks in their own departments to get their
travelling allowance bills passed. There is total
mistrust among officers: brutal, no holds barred
fights for lucrative posts, and in many instances
even murders of the rivals for a post. Officers
have lost total moral authority over staff, there is
rampant absenteeism, and rank indiscipline.
Officers joke that now it takes two persons on a
government job in the States, one who actually is
in the chair, and another, a relative or family
member, in the State capital to keep the posting
secure. Politicians know this, and that is why for
them, in most states, the most lucrative industry
is transfer industry. Officers routinely go to courts
to get the transfer orders cancelled, and though

106

Supreme Court has many time stated that Courts

should not interfere in transfers of government
employees, courts happily accept the petitions.
I am sure the reader, after reading the
consequences of corruption in this chapter, is
alarmed enough to want to immediately learn its
cure, but we can not find cure till we learn the
causes, and so we move to the next chapter that
details causes of corruption.

107

Chapter 4
Causes of Corruption
In this chapter I discuss causes of corruption.
In the last four years much has been said about
causes also, in media and elsewhere. But I could
only watch in despair, because though the
agitators came very close to identifying the
extent and the consequences of corruption,
nobody even looked in the direction where the
root causes of corruption lay. And roots of
corruption in India, and in fact everywhere, lie
deep in the moral state of the society and the
political economy being followed. It is the society
that creates the government, creates the
politicians, and creates the bureaucracy. And the
economic system being followed in a country
decides how much money government gets to
handle, and how much power it has to change
business outcome.
How do we learn to recognize wrong as wrong?
How do we know what is wrong and what is not?
Please note that I have used the word wrong,
not illegal. Distinction is very important and will

108

become clear as we analyze the causes of

corruption. Both, why the distinction is necessary,
and why it is important.
In my district there is a Caste living in a
cluster of twelve villages on the bank of Yamuna.
The traditional profession of the Caste is:
thievery. Everybody in those villages inhabited by
that Caste is a thief. More successful the thief,
more honoured he is in the village and among his
Castemen. Fathers look for their daughters
grooms who are successful thieves. It is said that
a father visiting a prospective grooms family will
not marry his daughter into the family if the man
doesnt succeed at stealing the shoes of his
prospective father-in-law during the visit.
Thievery for the Caste is not legal (thank God
no vote bank manager has yet promised to make
it legal for the Caste in question, citing
tradition..), but it is not wrong in eyes of the
members of the Caste.
And so here is the ancient Caste, living on
thievery, illegal since time immemorial but not
wrong for the Caste. The Caste has been included
in the list of Scheduled Tribes, and so enjoys all
the benefits that could make giving up life of
thievery fully and easily possible; still not much
dent could be made by the State in the reputation

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a thief carries in the village. The villages choose

their Sarpanches as usual from among their own.
But profession of choice and honour remains
thievery.
So.
The point, the most important point, I am
trying to make is that it is almost impossible to
eradicate even something illegal if it is not wrong
in the eyes of society. And society is own family,
friends, relatives, colleagues at work, and
neighbours.
Ethics, morality, and sense of right and wrong
are things a child learns from his family, starting
with his mother. What if mother does not consider
corruption wrong? A report in a newspaper few
years ago wrote about the mother who had come
to the Examination Centre of her son who was
sitting for the CBSE Tenth class examinations. The
mother had come to help the son in copying, and
was ruing the fact that strict vigilance had made
copying impossible and her son would lose an
academic year. Without ever displaying any signs
that she thought there was anything wrong with
the copying itself.
She is representative of average Indian mother
of today.

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Corruption has become fully acceptable and

honourable to mothers of India
General impression in the minds of members
of public is that the corrupt public servants,
businessmen, and politicians are doing it all alone,
unknown to their wives, their children, their
parents, relatives, and their friends.
Anna Hazare speaking from the dais at Ramlila
Maidan said, If the constable brings money extra
to his salary to his wife, she should question him,
ye kahan se aaya? Tab rookega corruption. That
is why I knew all along that this sincere, honest,
and honourable man is not going to make any
difference. My apologies Anna ji, but you know
nothing about corruption, which you were
promising to eradicate. That is the trouble with
human beings. More often than not, a human
being sees himself in everybody else. And as I
quoted V S Naipaul in the beginning, we Indians
never observe what is going on around us. We
know little beyond our immediate family. As I
wrote earlier, therefore N Vithal, former CVC,
admitted when he was CVC, that only after
becoming CVC he came to know that most corrupt
departments in India were the Customs and the
Income Tax. Something a career bureaucrat
should have known during his probation, if not

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while filling up Service preferences. And Anna

Hazare, who is said to have devoted his whole life
to fighting corruption, thinks that wives of the
corrupts do not know that their husbands are
corrupt! When in fact the wives of corrupt in most
cases are married to them because the husbands
were known to be in jobs that had opportunities
for corruption.
The fact is that in almost all cases of
corruption; wife, parents, siblings, friends, and
colleagues all know that the person is corrupt. And
they never feel that he is wrong or doing anything
immoral or illegal. Because that is how the things
are. That is what everybody is doing. They
sincerely believe that if he wont do, corruption
will not go away. He will live a life of poverty and
consign his family to a life of shortages and
financial misery. He will be a fool if he doesnt
indulge in corruption.
All readers who grew up in the Hindi medium
States must have read the story by great Munshi
Premchand- Namak ka Daroga. The story of the
Salt Inspector who refused to accept bribe, and as
a result faced castigation from his family, his wife,
and his parents. The man he caught got himself
freed by bribing everybody else. The story Namak
Ka Daroga in fact contains in itself everything that
I wanted to tell through this book:

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1. We tax the things we should not be taxing.

2. Even their own families call honest officers
fools.
3. Honest officer cannot make any dent. The
person he catches will go scot-free as
everybody else is ready to accept bribe.
4. Corruption and corrupt officers are not only
fully acceptable to their families, the families
desire and expect them to be corrupt.
No father in India marries his daughter to a
man who earns crores of rupees by looting banks.
But the same father tries his level best to find a
groom who would earn crores in bribes. That is
the reason all officers in Group A services do not
carry the same rate in marriage market. Dowry
rates are governed by the possibilities of
corruption in the department. There is no other
criterion. And that is the reason many officers are
known to quit Group A services which are known
to have no opportunities to take bribes, to join
Group B services where such opportunities exist.
I was once visiting a family that had recently
married a girl to a man in Group A service of
Central Government. Her sister started wailing,
The boys family has cheated us. They never told
us before marriage that the job was a dry job. He
will never get to take bribes throughout his

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service. The girl herself was also there. She

looked as if a truck had just overrun her.
Parallels in corruption and dowry are striking.
There are laws against dowry. But dowry is
flourishing as always. Reason? It is not considered
wrong. No man will allow his son to enter home if
he has looted a bank, what to say of displaying
sons loot to the whole neighbourhood. But in case
of dowry, all items in the dowry are displayed first
at brides place, and then at grooms place, and
whole neighbourhood and relatives are invited to
admire and get impressed. This is the reason the
laws against dowry are just words on paper.
In case of corruption also, the bribe money is
fully acceptable to the family of corrupt. It is not
displayed like dowry (as yet), but all know about
it. Nobody, even those who attend anti-corruption
rallies, ever feel that the corrupt person they have
in their own family/friend circle is doing anything
wrong. They think he is not corrupt; he is just
taking bribes because everybody else is also doing
the same. And if he doesnt, it will not stop; only
he will impoverish himself and his family.
Just to retell one of the most famous scenes of
Hindi movies: if now Vijay were to ask Ravi what
he has in wealth, Ravi wont be able to say, Mere
paas Ma hai. Because now mother also would

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have gone to live with Vijay, and would call Ravi

dumb and a fool: the son who wasted being in
police.
This is what I had in mind when in the
beginning of this book I said that very big secrets
could be kept by very large groups for a long
time. Corruption is one such secret of the Indian
society. Everybody who is part of the government
at various levels, from Cabinet Secretary to peons
in Municipalities, is aware of it, but nobody reveals
the whole truth of it. If at all it is talked about, it
is talked about as the doing of some lone corrupt
government servant- mostly, the one who is so
singled out is the one who somehow gets
exposed- never as the phenomenon that pervades
everything, and in which almost all government
servants are complicit.
The degrees of corrupt practices indulged in by
individuals may vary-some may take cash, others
may take kind, still others may enjoy lavish
hospitality only, and still others may only claim
wrong Travelling Allowance, and some may only
get fabricated medical bills reimbursed. Some may
not draw any extraneous benefits for themselves
but grant favours to the people of their Castes or
their linguistic groups. Some may only force
donations to the NGOs they are part of. But
corrupt they are, almost all of them.

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And still the true extent and volume of

corruption in India is such a well-guarded secret.
Corruption in India in fact is just one of the
examples of the tragedy of mankind-that ruling
elites can indulge in most fraudulent and evil
practices and find enough willing accomplices, so
long as everybody involved gets some share in the
spoils. That man can live with the most horrible of
moral defects so long as he benefits from them.
In most Services people openly demand posts
where opportunities for corruption exist, giving
the justification that they also need a chance.
They openly discuss scope of corruption at
different posts in their department, and vie for
those posts. When on dry posts, they openly sulk
and stop working, busying themselves in
arranging transfer to the lucrative post. When
they manage to do so, they become objects of
admiration, not of contempt. When somebody who
is otherwise known to be corrupt gets caught in a
corruption case, people in his department call him
unfortunate, not a justly caught criminal. In many
cases they in fact curse him for revealing the
extent of corruption in the department by getting
caught. And trap cases by the CBI and the ACB
are carefully and thoroughly studied to avoid

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getting caught by repeating the mistakes

committed by the person who got trapped.
This is the scenario in the country in which
some say that some Lokpal will stop corruption. It
will not. It will either become one more layer to be
bribed, or will stop whatever decisions presently
get taken by officials. It will at best bring the
government to a halt; at worst it will increase the
amount of loot, as palms to be greased will
increase.
How did we reach where we have?
Corruption at its most basic is breaking of
promise. Promise to people who have hired the
person at a pre-decided salary. Promise to the
society to work at the predetermined salary to
discharge pre-decided functions. If the person
finds salary too low, he is at liberty to walk out,
instead of fleecing his employer, that is his
country and his society. How have we become so
indifferent to the breaking of promises by us?
After all we have always been a society that
lived by the dictum that a man was his promise.
Karan promised to Duryodhan that he would
never desert him. And this promise he kept. His
mother tried, Lord Krishna tried, to get him
defect. But Karan refused to change sides. Karan

117

stayed with the man who is one of the two names

synonymous with evil in Indian psyche; in
defiance of the man we worship as God incarnate.
Still Karan remains a very popular name for
babies in India. More popular than Arjun himself,
the hero, and the victor of The Great War of
Mahabharata.
Meghnad tried to reason with his father
Ravana to make him see error of his ways.
Ravana castigated him for doing so. Meghnad did
not agree, but stayed with his father, fought
alongside him, nearly killed Laxman. Still Meghnad
remains a very popular baby name in India.
Vibhishan switched sides. He left the side of
the most well known villain of India-Ravana and
joined Lord Shri Ram, God incarnate, and helped
him kill Ravana.
Still no
Vibhishan.

Indian

has ever named his son

That is the value we have always placed on

honesty and upholding the sanctity of promises.
To repeat, Indian Culture has always been a
culture in which a man was his promise. Break the
promise and you cease to exist. Shunned, never
honoured by society. So how has that society

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come to hold corruption honourable, which is

nothing but the breaking of promise with the
employer and the society? How it happened is not
the subject of this book. Just suffice to say it
happened in nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
accelerated after Independence, and now it is
literally an infectious viral disease.
Something happened in 1947 that put petrol to
the smouldering mass. The British were never
great paymasters for the empires servants. Still
the amount was enough to live a life of comfort,
bordering on luxury. After Independence we
decided to be Socialists, and calling the pay scales
of higher officers obscene in a poor country, cut
the salaries drastically. Cabinet secretary was
brought not exactly at par with his peon, but the
gap was drastically reduced. For example, a
collector had a salary of Rs sixteen hundred in
1939. Collectors salary was reduced, and he was
again to get that salary only in 1982, after many
pay commissions and annual increases in
Dearness Allowance. In 1929, a Chief Engineer in
Railway had a salary of Rs twenty five hundred,
which was reduced drastically in 1947. A Railway
Chief Engineer got salary of Rs twenty five
hundred again only in 1973, after the III pay
commission. In addition to that, effectively
reducing salaries of higher officers continues to
this day, which is evident from the fact that where

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as salaries of Group D staff are now almost 180

times of what they were in 1947, salaries of top
level are only 70 times of what they were in 1947.
In fact, in initial decades, even the Dearness
Allowance increase was less for higher salary
brackets.
The elected representatives also decided to set
an example and fixed their own salaries even
lower than their bureaucrats.
That single step, rarely discussed, in my view
has made sure that India remains a third world
country mired in abject poverty, with one of the
most corrupt bureaucracies and ruling elite in the
world.
Before I go into details let me state one basic
aspect of human nature: man is a corruptible
animal.
According to a study about which I once read,
but am not able to locate, and hence not able to
attribute correctly, but vaguely remember to have
been conducted by Harvard University (My
apologies if it is some other university.) In any
given group of human beings statistically large
enough, ten percent human beings are absolute
honest, who are not affected by their salary, by
the powers they wield and hence have opportunity

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to encash. They may starve, but will not accept

bribes. In the same group, ten percent people are
absolute corrupt. Whatever salary they get paid,
they still try to find avenues to earn money
through corrupt means. Remaining eighty percent
are the people who choose to be honest or corrupt
depending upon difference in the salary and
bribes, chances of getting caught, consequences
of getting caught, ease of getting bribes,
acceptability of bribes in the family.
So what happened in 1947 was that salaries
got cut drastically. Had they been always as low
as they had become after the cut, still matters
could not have gotten out of hand as they have
gotten in India. But most painful for any human
being is the change for the worse in the lifestyle
he is accustomed to.
But that was done, done to serve the Gods of
Socialism, and that single step, ably aided by
Socialism that became the ruling economic system
of India, has thoroughly destroyed moral fibre of
Indians.
Socialism led to one more, may be even more
powerful impetus to the corruption. Socialism
placed in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats
enormous powers to control and regulate business

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on the one hand, and humongous amount of other

peoples money (to redistribute) on the other.
Bureaucracy
everywhere
has
only
one
function: to draw ever more power unto itself. And
in India it was ably assisted by the political parties
mostly controlled by people who hated money and
the wealthy; thought of wealth creators as crooks
to begin with; and believed that living in poverty
in itself was a mark of greatness. Our evil Caste
system
also
came
handy:
Castes
which
traditionally did not go into business mostly joined
bureaucracy, and which did, kept away from
government jobs, at least in initial decades. And
of course political class still comprises almost
exclusively of Castes that do not go into business
or commerce as a profession.
So both politicians and bureaucrats went about
keeping the businessman under their thumbs, to
show him his place, and lord over him with a
gusto and a sense of God given Right, and equally
strong sense of sacred duty. Human beings, as all
the living organisms, always try to find ways to
survive, and the businessman soon discovered
that policies can be manipulated, regulations can
be managed or bypassed, and rules can be got
suspended, by paying bribes to the policy makers,
regulators and persons who are supposed to
enforce rules. To the politicians and the

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bureaucrats, reeling under the pay cuts but forced

to maintain the pomp and show of colonial times,
the bribes came as breezes of fresh air. Very
soon, systems got put in place, and almost
everybody who got a chance or an offer, refused
to refuse.
Politicians and bureaucrats everyday invented
one more policy, one more regulation on top of all
the ones they had created till the day before; and
businessmen invented newer and newer ways of
delivering more and more cash to them. Once
they started bribing the regulators and policy
makers, they internalized the habit. They started
bribing taxmen, and they started paying the
regular money to all the inspectors, which were
being foisted on them by dozens everyday.
An ordinary restaurant has to cope with
around 54 inspectors. A kirana shop in a mall has
to bribe around 38 inspectors to come into
existence. An average construction contractor in
government works has to pay around 38 different
taxes. Businessmen soon concluded that it was
impossible to do business in India without bribing
government officials and started budgeting for the
bribe money.
Soon people in society started getting the
news that government officers mint money.

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Competition for government jobs became cut

throat. Those who were on the posts where there
were no opportunities for bribes started creating
avenues of getting bribed. They would find
something to inspect, something to regulate,
something to approve, some permission to
grant
Politicians discovered that as they collected
money for elections, they could retain far larger
part of it for themselves. Soon, people started
joining politics precisely because it became the
easiest way to get rich quick, with money flowing
in from people needing all those permissions and
approvals, people who needed to bend policies to
beat or block competition. Ministers in charge of
ministries hitherto not dealing with granting of
approvals, etc., at their level, soon found out
which posts in bureaucracy had the opportunities
for bribes and started auctioning them.
Powers to transfer and promote government
servants soon got centralized at the level of
ministers.
Quite a few of Members of Parliament and
Members of Legislative Assemblies found out
which officers were earning bribe money in their
constituencies and told the officers to pay them
the cut if they wanted to continue in their posts.

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Many MPs and MLAs now take it as a right to

demand a cut from the contractors working in
their area. If the contractors hesitate, they
threaten to get the work blocked on one pretext
or another.
And soon corruption became honourable,
sacred right, known to everybody in the family of
the corrupt, known to his relatives, and came to
be accepted with one simple justification:
everybody was doing so. The politicians and
bureaucrats became one single Caste with
corruption as its profession, which carried no
shame, no guilt, and no sense of wrongdoing.
And it is highly lucrative and safe also. Recent
case of the Engineer of a Development Authority
having assets worth Rs one thousand crore is of
course exceptional, still he is not very far outside
the range of some high profile cases unearthed in
the last decade. An IAS officer of Madhya Pradesh
cadre was discovered to have amassed assets
worth Rs forty crore in twenty years of his service.
He had a total of 220 bank accounts, many in the
name of his domestic help, his cobbler, his
gardener and even a local paan shop owner. As
mentioned in chapter 2, an IAS couple, in Madhya
Pradesh again, was discovered to have property
worth Rs four hundred crore. All the three cases

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above were detected by Income Tax, not by the

Vigilance wing of the departments where they
worked during their career, nor by the CBI.
While investigating the third case, that of the
IAS couple, mentioned above, it was also
discovered that wives of government officers
make very successful insurance agents; helping
their husband in investing the ill-gotten wealth,
and also earning some more by selling policies to
the people who had business with their husbands.
These officers easily flew under the radar of
Vigilance wings of the departments, in which they
worked, and of the anti-corruption bureau of the
States (which is otherwise quite effective in case
of Madhya Pradesh) and the CBI.
Corruption is really very safe and very
rewarding. In fact the first IAS officer mentioned
above was nominated to and went on six training
trips abroad between 2003 and 2006; fully paid
with the public money. The training programmes
stretched for up to two weeks each and were
conducted in the US, Denmark (twice), Singapore
and Thailand. Honest officers are lucky if they get
any training abroad in their entire service of
thirty-five years or so. Corrupt officers can really
pull many strings and are highly popular with
superiors, and always manage to get good or

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prestigious posting. So much so that even a

secretary to a former speaker of Loksabha was
investigated by the CBI for disproportionate
assets. The case was referred to the CBI by the
CVC.
An IAS officer of Andhra Pradesh cadre was in
2010 discovered to have amassed assets worth Rs
twenty crore in just initial ten years of service. No
wonder being a government servant in India beats
almost all businesses in India when it comes to
returns. With such windfalls has come brazenness,
therefore ill-gotten wealth is now being flaunted
more and more. Life styles of bureaucrats and
politicians now resemble those of kings of past. An
engineer
in
Kalyan
Dombivali
Municipal
Corporation was apprehended by Anti-Corruption
Bureau (ACB) accepting rupees fifteen lakh in
cash. When they made the customary raid at his
residence, they discovered a five thousand sq foot
palatial house spread over three floors in a tower.
Only electronic items in his house were worth Rs
fifty lakh. Interior decoration was estimated to
have cost around Rs two crore. And he had been
under scanner many times earlier also, but always
got a clean chit.
With such fabulous and safe returns, it was
inevitable that corruption would travel far and
wide. The departments which had nothing to

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control, regulate, or permit; started demanding

money for the services they were to render: issue
of driving license, ration card, Caste certificate.
Telephone staff started to demand money to put
phone of a subscriber again in working order.
Teachers stopped teaching in class and started
expecting
the
students
to
take
tuitions.
Municipalities started to extort money for the
services they provided. Doctors started to take
money for false sick certificates and soon started
to prescribe unnecessary tests, as they would get
a cut from the laboratories. Where there was no
avenue for bribes, for example CRPF, huge bribes
started being taken in recruitments, and then
commanders
started
selling
leaves.
Now
controlling officials in all departments with large
number of group D employees sell leaves to
employees. Officials in Personnel Branch started
demanding money to effect that increment, to
prepare those retirement papers of their own
employees. Drivers in government started selling
diesel in the market, and soldiers started selling
ammunition they are issued for practice. Officers
in charge of allotting houses to their own
employees started taking money to allot houses
out of turn, so much so that finally a minister who
by the time of a Court mandated inquiry had
become a governor (corrupts go places, as I said
earlier), lost her Governorship for allegedly

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allotting houses to government officers out of turn

against payment of bribes.
Government officials across most departments
have now mastered the art of earning money, and
then paying out of this money to persons
controlling their transfers and postings (higher
officers and ministers), to always remain in posts
with opportunities of loot. The bribes are taken in
cases you would never imagine could yield bribe:
a Postmaster General was nabbed by CBI
accepting a bribe of Rs two crore to give no
objection certificate to a builder to construct flats
on a plot which was earlier reserved for a post
office.
And amounts being extorted in the form of
bribes are also increasing by the day in terms of
the percentage of the gain to the prospective
bribe-giver. CBI arrested a general manager of
the Neyveli Lignite Corporation (NLC) while
accepting a bribe of rupees fifty thousand for
passing the bills of a contractor worth Rs two
point seventy nine lakh for the work of renovating
a suite in the rest house of NLC. Even mafia gangs
do not extort money in such high percentage of
the income of their target.
Every
new
activity
undertaken
by
a
government department becomes one more

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avenue to take bribes. Every new group of

employees, hired for howsoever petty jobs, soon
discovers ways to fleece the citizens they are
supposed to be serving. When Municipal
Corporation in Mumbai hired clean-up marshals to
keep the city clean; the marshals started extorting
money from persons and establishments, leading
Corporation to discontinue the scheme. For
example, these marshals would throw the medical
waste into the hospital premises at night, would
visit the hospital next day in the morning, and
allege that the hospital was not disposing off its
waste properly. They would relent only on
payment of bribes.
And of course because of Socialism, ever
newer venues continue to come the way of the
corrupts. Socialism means that Governments
come up with new Schemes and Yojanas on a
daily basis, each scheme sucking huge money
from the market and pouring into the river of
corruption, its water to be drawn by everybody in
its route. Politicians and government officials have
become filthy rich administering these schemes
and Yojanas, and the poor are exactly where they
were 67 years ago.
As in the movie Invasion of the Body
Snatchers, India seems to have become the place
where persons in positions of power in

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government soon have their souls snatched and

replaced with those of corrupt alien beings. Like in
trance, people are helping themselves with both
hands with bribes, as if it is the most important
fundamental Right, and there is no tomorrow.
Anything that is not considered wrong by a
society is not wrong. Corruption is that elephant in
the room in India, which everybody who can is
riding, but each claims that he is just walking,
somebody else is on the elephant. The best kept
secret of Indias politicians, bureaucrats, other
government officials, their families, and their
friends.
The reason it has become virtually impossible
to eradicate corruption in India (and anywhere
else for that matter): is that it is not considered
wrong by the mother of the corrupt.
And
Socialism
has
created
the
best
environment for its growth and sustainability by
keeping salaries of those in government low, and
placing in their hands powers to influence
business outcomes, and also placing in their hands
huge amounts of public money to redistribute to
eradicate poverty and alleviate suffering.
Socialism has numerous incentives, and many
compulsions, to make persons corrupt. Socialism
ordains that government servants must serve the

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people on barest minimum salaries, and with no

perks. They can be given post specific resources
like government accommodation, official vehicle,
and attendants to assist them in discharging their
duties effectively. So an IAS officer as collector is
given a palatial bungalow, a car, and many
orderlies. The same IAS officer, if transferred to
the Secretariat in State Capital, has only his
salary to survive-no official residence, what to say
of a bungalow, no official vehicle, and no army of
orderlies. So we may sing till eternity that transfer
is not a punishment, but even for an honest IAS
officer, such a transfer has the direct effect of
drastically reducing his salary, if we monetize and
add up the perks he was getting as collector. And
if it is a case in a State like Maharashtra, in which
the State Capital is very costly to live, the life an
officer with no perks can afford crushes him so
thoroughly, that the next time he gets a chance to
be a collector, he makes sure not only never to
fall foul of his higher ups including the minister,
but also to collect bribes so as to be able to buy
similar posts on each transfer. Government
servants have become putties in the hands of
politicians for a reason. Example of collector has
been given only for its familiarity, similar posts
and policies on perks attached to them exist in all
government departments, with exactly similar
consequences of transfer. For a corrupt officer a
transfer may mean loss of few crores of bribe

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money, but for even an honest officer a transfer

can almost destroy his life, such are the
consequences of low salaries.
Such irrationalities abound. Senior government
officers and legislators are entitled to travel First
class when on duty. But their salaries at least till
VI pay commission were so low that a single air
travel by whole family, in cheapest airline, in
Economy Class, would wipe out their total annual
salary. So they do what most human beings would
do in such circumstances. They find some duty in
the city they are travelling to for that wedding in
the family. Every time they do so, their superiors
know this, their colleagues know this, their
subordinates know this, and above all trade
unions know this. Leaving them that much weak
as officers, that much less able to command
respect, and that much less able to command.
They become pliant to their bosses, and the guilt
is reflected in their body language. Many officers,
to avoid this humiliation, opt for another kind of
humiliation. They ask some contractors, some
suppliers to arrange tickets, to arrange hotels,
becoming vulnerable to blackmail in the process.
Even worse is the scene in case of housing.
Salaries are so low that even the senior most
officers can not afford to rent a house in some
good locality in cities like Mumbai, Delhi; in fact in
all metros and tier two cities. But the same

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officers are allotted government accommodation

in the most sought after locations of the same
cities. Similar is the case for legislators. So
officers and legislators go to all kind of demeaning
lengths to retain government accommodation,
eroding their aura and authority in the process,
humiliating themselves in the department, in the
public.
In Mumbai, the market rent of the type of flats
and
bungalows
officers
get
as
official
accommodation is normally three to four times
their monthly salaries. So a transfer out of
Mumbai means, in real terms, a reduction in
salary by upto eighty percent. No wonder, to
avoid transfer out of Mumbai, officers go to any
length to ingratiate themselves with their bosses,
obeying their illegal verbal orders. Legislators
promise all sorts of freebies to win the elections,
because a loss in election doesnt mean just loss
of power, but complete turning of the world
upside down, as the perks are lost, and perks are
real salaries. Socialism also means that there are
hardly any economic activities in the country, so
getting into a government job, and then getting
posted in a metro is the only way out to a better
world. The same goes for the legislators.
In fact one type of corruption creates
circumstances for many other types of corruption.
Each vein feeds all other veins. Corruption in
education department means that government

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schools are worthless in the hinterland, Socialism

means that there are not enough prosperous
people to support a private school there, therefore
an officer getting transferred into hinterland from
a metro knows that education of his children
stands shot, so he first tries to get the transfer
cancelled using all possible stratagems, failing
which he tries to retain accommodation in the
metro by hook or crook, demeaning himself in the
process, and demeaning the office he holds.
And from such wrong practices, the wrong
practice of taking cash is then only a short
distance away. It starts in trickle, soon becomes a
flood, and in case of really enterprising ones, it
soon becomes a mini industry within the
government department.
It is because these absurdities mandated by
Socialism, that most officers, early in their
careers, convince themselves that being corrupt is
not a choice; it is the only way to survive. And
therefore we come to the sad reality of numbers
of the corrupt in India.
The reality is that:
In India, at least ninety percent of those who
have opportunities to be corrupt are corrupt. All
their close family members and friends know the
fact of them being corrupt. And far from being
looked down upon, they are looked up to, are

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flourishing, are living the life king size. Making the

remaining ten percent who are honest, look fools
and idiots; the renegades out to endanger the
incomes and jobs of remaining ninety percent. In
most cases cursed by their own families, their own
mothers, their own wives, and their own children.
This is the best-kept secret of Indian ruling
elite- of politicians, of bureaucrats, of media
persons, of academicians, of activists, of NGOs, of
businessmen, of traders- that at least ninety
percent of them are corrupt.
Of course still they write columns and op-eds
on it, debate the issue with straight face, with all
righteous indignation. They suggest solutions,
they suggest methods to catch the corrupt, they
suggest penalties, all the while knowing that
ninety percent of them would be behind bars if
some magic wand were discovered that could
identify the corrupts.
Every now and then some corrupt does get
caught, mostly because of being a novice at the
game. He is of course crushed, made an example
of, just to show the public that something is being
done. But, as is readily observable, that makes no
dent in the corruption as such. The individual who
got caught of course learns the most important
lesson: that a wrong is after all a wrong. But as

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far as corruption in India goes, in spite of all the

high profile traps and raids, it is business as usual,
the business that always grows, the business that
is recession proof. Because, as we will see in the
next chapter, the only solutions that can eradicate
corruption are not even hinted at, what to say of
applying them.

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Chapter 5
Remedies of Corruption
In this chapter I discuss the remedies of this
deadly disease threatening to consume us. Of
course it is imperative that first we get out of our
way the most talked about antidote to corruption:
Jan Lokpal.
The idea itself is so outlandish that it is difficult
to decide where to start to show that it is the
dumbest proposal put forward to fight corruption.
Actually the word fight itself reveals a lot about
the idea. We should not fight the corruption. It is
a phenomenon and we fight ideas and those who
subscribe to those ideas, not a phenomenon. Of
course the Leftists who have put forth this idea of
Jan Lokpal are the typical Leftists, and Leftists all
the time find something to fight against. For
example, they would say, Let us fight crime. We
do not fight crime. We fight criminals. We catch
them, punish them, and develop social mores and
manners so that persons do not easily become
criminals.
Coming back to Jan Lokpal, those promoting it
essentially say that present departments tasked to

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catch the corrupts are not effective because they

are manned by persons selected from existing
government employees, those who do the
selection are themselves likely to be corrupt, and
after a fixed tenure in anti-corruption departments
the employees go back to their parent department
to work under the persons they were supposed to
investigate during their tenure in the anticorruption department. Therefore we should have
Jan Lokpal, a body staffed by not the government
employees but by prominent persons of repute,
hand-picked by persons of even greater repute,
who themselves are to be hand-picked by- well,
many suggestions float all the time detailing how
to find such persons of highest repute who will
hand-pick the Jan Lokpal and its whole staff.
One way of course can be that we indent
directly from God persons to staff it, or at least
the persons who would select the staff of Jan
Lokpal. With the request to God that they be the
omniscient beings, all seeing, all knowing. Who
would just interview a person and establish his
integrity beyond all doubts. But God seems to be
not responding to any such requests from human
beings.
The insurmountable reality is that there is no
way to know the state of integrity of a human
being in advance. As per current convention,

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honest are those who have had no brush with any

anti-corruption body so far. Apparently, it only
tells us that the person has so far not been
caught, and tells nothing positive about his
integrity. Just to give one example, it was initially
suggested that Magsaysay Award winners would
select the Jan Lokpal. Recently a Magsaysay
Award winner accepted that she had given a false
affidavit to become eligible for a free government
plot.
Even at present, we have watchdogs aplenty,
so we do have a system that can be studied. If we
are able to find why they are not effective at
stopping corruption, we would have clues whether
Jan Lokpal would be free or not of the handicaps
suffered by the present anti-corruption bodies of
the Central and the State governments. A close,
dispassionate look at their functioning shows the
two most basic problems they have. Both the
problems are detailed below, and it is also shown
that Jan Lokpal will also be beset with both.
First is that howsoever carefully chosen, ninety
percent of those who staff the anti-corruption
bodies are likely to become corrupt when they feel
they can get away with it, even if they have been
honest all their lives before that. Being in anticorruption bodies shields them, and those who get
caught by them are really desperate to pay. To

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repeat, man is a corruptible animal. In the case of

famous Tower of Infamy in Mumbai the file was
red-flagged at every desk it reached and red flag
became green flag as soon as a flat in the tower
was given to the owner of the desk. That case
itself shows that almost everybody is up for sale,
validating the assertion that ninety percent of
persons in government are corrupt. But in addition
to that that also shows that sharing the bones
with them can silence watchdogs. A careful study
of all mega scams and cases of corruption would
reveal that in most cases watchdogs smelled the
wrong but did not bark because they became busy
at chewing the bones thrown to them.
Proponents of Jan Lokpal give example of
DMRC (Delhi Metro Rail Corporation) to support
their claim that Jan Lokpal could be so constituted
and run that even if manned by persons chosen
from among the government personnel, all those
persons would remain honest, as staff in DMRC,
though drawn from Railway, is honest.
It is true that staff in DMRC is honest. It is true
that though they were corrupt while in Railway,
they turned honest and stayed honest while in
DMRC. But still there are many problems with this
approach of Jan Lokpal. One, DMRC is a very
small organization. E Sreedharan could hand pick
men of his choice to man it, and could be sure of

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their integrity because he had to pick only few.

Since number was small, he could keep eye on
literally everyone. He was a man of awesome
reputation, so he could frame bid conditions such
that only very big, Corporate style firms quoted.
He could give rates which were enough to give the
quality as demanded by codes and specifications,
so the firms never felt the need to cut corners,
and share profits so gained with the staff of
DMRC. The staff was tasked to construct a metro,
not to detect corruption of others. (Of course,
recently allegations of corruption in DMRC bids
surfaced in UK.) And the fact that in a population
of 125 crore people we have only one E
Sreedharan should show us the limitation of this
approach.
The second problem with the concept of Jan
Lokpal is regarding the ability of any such body to
detect corruption. It is not that the existing
departments tasked to detect corruption do not
want to or do not try to detect corruption. After
all, even if they were themselves corrupt they
would want to detect corruption, if only to earn
money from the corrupts they caught. (In fact
most of the officers who get posted in anticorruption departments are indeed honest, as
postings in such departments are more often than
not dry postings and the corrupts make sure that
they do not get posted to such departments.) But,

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as I have detailed in previous chapters, most

corruption is such that both parties benefit, so
nobody reports it. Even in case of corruption in
delivery of services, when you go to get driving
license or passport or birth certificate, you really
need the document. You choose to pay the paltry
sums demanded and be done with it. You do not
want to delay getting the document by few
months to help eradicate corruption. Persons who
pay bribes to get jobs are desperate to get jobs,
not to expose corruption.
Reality is that most corruption is now such that
persons take money just to do the right thing. So
any post-facto inquiry cannot establish corruption
either. For example, according to the newspaper
report cited in chapter two, corruption in Building
plans approval section of Municipal Corporation of
Greater Mumbai increased manifold after 2011,
when, to reduce corruption, discretionary powers
of officers were taken away. The same report
cited statements from the builders saying that
delays cost them dearly, because they borrow
money at very high interest rates. Therefore they
find it economically sensible to pay the bribe
money to cut the delays. The officers did not grant
them any favours. They just delayed the cases if
the bribes were not forthcoming; on grounds
which could never be proved arbitrary or outside
rules.

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In cases where decisions and reasons thereof

are available on files, it all reduces to saying, You
took this decision, in my opinion decision in this
case should have been that, and because you did
not take that decision, and I am from anticorruption body, so I hereby declare you corrupt.
A way to fix persons, but not necessarily the
corrupt persons. Because of this method,
whatever advantage is gained by punishing few
corrupts, is lost many times over as others simply
stop taking decisions.
And even this approach fails in case of
corrupts who never sign any papers. Yes, there
are people in the government, thoroughly corrupt,
who never sign any paper, any file. One such
officer in Railway reached right at the top. If
circumstances ever forced him to sign a paper, he
would simply call the paper to his chamber next
day and destroy it. Files disappear routinely in
government offices for a purpose. Looking to the
way this method of post-facto questioning the
decisions has paralyzed the government, Jan
Lokpal would simply lock it down.
In addition to the two problems listed above,
the most basic flaw in the entire concept of Jan
Lokpal is Jan Lokpal being given power of post
facto questioning of a decision. Every decision is

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basically an opinion officer records on file. Powers

to question those decisions cannot be given to an
outside body. In fact one of the prominent
persons spearheading the Jan Lokpal agitation
once on a TV show said something like this, The
traffic cop stops and fines a judge. It doesnt
mean he has become controlling officer of the
judge. But the argument overlooks the most
important fact. The constable can fine the judge
for traffic violations, but he cannot review
judgements delivered by the judge and say that in
a particular case a particular judgement has been
given, therefore the judge is corrupt. In fact
nobody can ever be given the powers to review
judgement of a judge to determine whether he is
corrupt. A larger bench or a higher court can only
do review of a judgement. No doubt many judges
are corrupt. But for that they need to be caught
through direct trap or by proving that their assets
are more than their known sources of income. The
day we permit public to say that so and so judge
is corrupt, and therefore investigate him, will be
the day that will mark the end of justice delivery
system in the country. In the case of a judge, first
incontrovertible proof has to be gathered before
he can be proceeded against for corruption. In
case of all other government officers, though such
a body as Jan Lokpal may be given power to
review the decision, but only to establish the
integrity of the procedure followed to arrive at the

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decision. Whether decision in itself is wrong, only

the higher ups of the officers can be given
authority to decide, not any outside body.
And of course, in a democracy, no authority
except courts can be given powers to issue
binding, peremptory orders to the elected
government. All other authorities can only have
advisory
powers.
Otherwise
the
elected
government is no longer sovereign, meaning the
people of the country who elect the government
are no longer sovereign.
In spite of all the anger and high voltage
drama, and even if a majority of citizens decide to
have a body with tyrannical powers over the
elected government, there is no way we are going
to appoint tyrants. Not till even one of us is left
with the wisdom that tyrannies are actually evil,
and destroy the societies they come to control,
even if they claim that they would eradicate
corruption.
In fact concentrating such powers in a handful
of individuals will be negation of the evolution of
the system of governance. Power in itself is a very
dangerous thing, and our ancestors devised the
system of division of power only to defang it, to
keep it in check. Power divided is power
diminished.

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And then there is this little matter of effect of

power on the man who has the power. There is an
instructive tale from Anand Ramayana. A Dog
goes to Lord Shri Rama to demand justice. His
complain is that a priest has struck him for licking
his plates. Lord Shri Rama adjudges the priest
guilty and asks the dog what punishment he will
like to be imposed on the priest. Dog says, Make
him head priest of the temple. Everybody in the
Court is surprised. Lord Shri Rama asks the dog to
give the reasoning behind the unusual punishment
he has demanded. Dog explains, In my last birth
I was a head priest in a temple. The power I
enjoyed made me corrupt. Once this priest is
made head priest, the power he will get will make
him also corrupt, and he will be born a dog in his
next birth.
The chances of Jan Lokpal officers themselves
starting collecting a share in the loot and letting
corrupts go scot-free can never be ruled out. In
Mumbai area a senior IPS officer, who was
vigilance chief of a government body, himself
came under suspicion when the anti-corruption
bureau (ACB) caught his reader accepting a bribe
of Rs two lakh from a government employee who
was
being
investigated
by
the
vigilance
department in a corruption case. The inquiry
report against the complainant was with the IPS

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officer, and was to be forwarded to the ACB. He

allegedly demanded the bribe, from the employee
under investigation, to block the report.
In a similar case in Punjab, an Assitant
Inspector General (Vigilance) of police was caught
red handed by the CBI while accepting a bribe of
Rs fifty thousand from a complainant. The
complainant had complained against a Deputy
Superintendent of Police (DSP) that he was
demanding bribe to drop cases against him. The
AIG (Vigilance) threatened the complainant that
he would be booked for lodging a false complaint
against the DSP, if he didnt pay bribe to the
Vigilance Officer.
And of course let us not forget the fact that
recently an IAS officer who had an inquiry pending
against him had managed to become countrys
CVC.
Whatever procedure we adopt to select
persons for the proposed Jan Lokpal, there is no
way to find how a person will behave once he has
power. Power changes a person in totally
unforeseeable ways. This is one of the properties
of power. If we create this bhasmasur of Jan
Lokpal, we may never get a chance to roll it back.

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Coming back to the power to question

decisions, in case of officers also, where decision
itself is being questioned, it not being a case of
manipulation; the normal procedure at present is
to always obtain remarks of higher ups of the
officer who took the decision, on the merit of the
decision taken. And this is not without purpose.
Just one example of how a decision can be
interpreted in many different ways. Bharat
Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) invited worlds
largest telecom tender for additional GSM lines.
First it was bogged down in the allegations of
arbitrariness in disqualifying some of the
participating firms. When finally the offers reached
the stage of deliberations, one of the committee
members gave a note that the size of order must
be scaled down in view of the falling market share
of BSNL. The officer who gave this note may have
been acting in good faith to save the wastage on
excess capacity. Or he may have been bribed by
rivals of BSNL to slow down, if not entirely block,
its capacity addition programme so that customers
would simply move to other service providers due
to poor services by BSNL resulting from
inadequate capacity. There is just no way to know
either way from the fact of the giving of the note
itself.

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After all there have been allegations even

against the judges of the Supreme Court, of
delivering particular judgements, and not the
alternative, under the influence of bribes. One
such case involved lifting of a ban by the Supreme
Court
on
foreign
liquor
license
to
the
establishments in a Southern state. A Member of
Parliament leveled these allegations. Allegations
can be leveled but there is no way to prove them
by the fact of the judgement itself.
In addition to it is the cost of conducting the
inquiry itself, looking to the point that ninety
percent of those who can be corrupt are corrupt.
It was found that a University in North India had
spent Rs forty three lakh on a fact-finding
committee that was looking into allegations of
financial misappropriation against its former ViceChancellor. That was almost as much as half the
moneyRs
ninety
lakhallegedly
misappropriated; and inquiry was not yet
complete when this discovery of expenditure on
inquiry was made. This was the cost of inquiry in
one case against one individual. Of course no
doubt this is an outlier, still it is readily obvious
that almost a parallel government will be needed
to watch the government, with cost in the same
order of magnitude as of the government. The
idea that having one more government will
eradicate corruption in government is, as I said

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earlier, outlandish,
expression.

to

use

the

most

benign

CBI normally adopts the route of catching red

handed the persons accepting bribes. That is,
literally in the act of accepting the cash. The
method is highly effective and puts fear of God in
the heart of every corrupt. But again, to make any
dent in the corruption in its totality, this method
also needs that the prospective bribe giver report
the matter to CBI, which is unlikely in all major
bribery cases as both the parties benefit. And for
petty corruption, the bribe giver feels that it is
better to pay the small sum demanded and avail
the service than report the matter to CBI and
delay fulfillment of his own need by many months,
if not years.
The method of tapping the phone to catch the
corrupt, as was done in case of Railway bribery
case involving the relatives of a minister, is also
not very effective as it is not possible to tap every
phone, and the seasoned corrupt, the big fish, in
any case never discuss bribery on phone. And
honest
officers
getting
trapped
are
not
uncommon. Raiding the residences of staff to
detect assets disproportionate to their known
sources of income is the best method, but needs
intelligence which is hard to come by, and the

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corrupts in any case have now learnt the ways to

hide their ill-gotten wealth.
Sting operations have recently been touted as
the panacea that will eradicate corruption. But it is
only a matter of time before the corrupts devise
an antidote to sting operations, as they have
successfully done against traps and raids.
So should we live with the evil? Or should we
shut down the government completely? Or post
one watchman with every government servant,
disregarding
the
cost
involved
in
such
arrangement? (They both will simply arrive at the
arrangement of dividing the bribe honestly
between them. In principle, even now every
government servant is supposed to be a watchdog
also; for corruption below, around and above him;
but obviously it has not been of much help.)
So what to do?
The life is not so hopeless.
In reality life is very simple, and we can very
easily have a very honest government; and a very
honest society. I state solution in just few words,
and then elaborate it in the remainder of this
chapter: The solution, and the only solution, of
the problem of corruption in government and

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society is complete separation of economy and

state.
The example of the man, who from a petrol
pump attendant became top industrialist of the
country in twenty years flat, by bribing all sectors
of the government at all levels, is often given;
whenever anything is written on corruption. This
example though is given as the best example of
corruption, in it in fact lies clue to the cure of the
disease of corruption. The question that is never
asked, and which is actually the most important
thing in the whole affair, is why a government
should have powers to make a petrol pump
attendant the top industrialist of the country. Why
should bureaucrats and politicians have powers to
make anybody a successful businessman? Ask any
petrol pump attendant in the country whether he
would bribe people in government if that makes
him a top industrialistwell, you know the answer.
So long as the government has powers to alter
business outcomes, there would always be
businessmen ready to bribe people in the
government, to get the desired outcomes. And
since such powers mean the country is Socialist,
fully or partially, the salaries of the persons in the
government are also low simultaneously, adding
fuel to the fire of corruption. (Of course even if
salaries are fairly high, but economic model is

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Socialist, persons in the government, and society

in general, would still become corrupt, only the
process would be slow.) Once persons at the
policy framing levels are corrupt, everybody below
soon learns his lesson. Then the virus spreads to
departments which do not control business
processes, as persons there have to match the
lifestyle and affluence levels of their counterparts,
so they also find/create avenues of corruption.
Soon, everybody who can extort money from
persons having to interact with government starts
doing so. Corruption in India started from
industrial licensing departments, police, and public
works departments; and soon was picked up by
tax collection departments. Corruption then
spread to every department and now ninety
percent of the government servants who can be
corrupt are corrupt, across all departments,
including in the wings specifically tasked to fight
the corruption.
Before we discuss the solution of corruption
further, a word about the Socialism itself. Of
course Socialism will kill the economy of a
country, even if everybody is honest, as I
demonstrate below.
Why a Socialist State can never succeed? After
all it is common sense that if the rich do even
small things for the poor, much misery of the

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world will go away. And there seems to be no

harm if government redistributes wealth to the
extent that nobody goes hungry.
Is it that if government becomes effective,
there is no corruption in PDS, etc., and
governance becomes world class, and persons
manning the government become totally selfless
and integrity personified; Socialism will succeed?
No, it will not. Because Socialism is based on two
fallacies: 1. Money exists on its own. It doesnt.
Money is just a receipt for the work done by a
man. Receipt with which he buys somebody elses
that portion of work, which he needs and other
has surplus of it and wants to sell. If nobody is
working, there wont be any money, even if
government presses work overtime to print those
currency notes. 2. The rich are just those who
have gathered more money (which exists on its
own and in fixed quantities), and are hoarding it.
And if government takes some part of it and
spends on the needy all will be well. In reality,
rich have earned their money, not gathered it
from the thin air, and are spending their money all
the time. They are not eating currency notes.
They instead buy real food with those notes. The
only difference is that they spend the money on
those who work for them-persons who make
houses for them, who prepare food for them, who
draw the paintings they buy, who make the
jewellery they buy, who make the cars they buy.

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When government takes away money from the

rich and gives it to those who do not work, it has
spread that much cancer in the society as now
those who work for the rich will have that much
less of their work purchased by the rich, spreading
the paralysis in the body of society. And of course
those who got the money without working would
not do any work because the work is pain, and we
all want to go through life as painlessly as
possible.
I explain it with one simple example. Suppose
in a society of hundred persons, twenty are below
poverty line and eighty are above it. The bottom
ten of the eighty who are above poverty line work
for the rich. If government takes away some
money from the rich and gives it to those twenty
who are below poverty line for nothing, the ten
who were working for the rich will be out of job
and will go below poverty line, thus making the
number below poverty line thirty, needing more
expenditure than incurred initially. The twenty will
not work because there is no need to, and even if
they try to work, there would be no money with
somebody else to buy it. And as I have explained
above, money is work, since now only seventy
people are working, there is that much less money
in the society. So overall quantity of money has
gone down, and the number of those needing help
has increased. Taxes are raised, resulting into

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even less money left with the rich to spend,

reducing employment further and therefore
reducing the quantity of money being created in
the society, and the cycle is repeated till taxes can
no longer be raised. The government starts
borrowing, and finally the debt comes due and the
economy of the country collapses. Socialism can
never succeed howsoever honest and efficient the
government machinery becomes.
Corruption in fact is one of the inescapable
outcomes of Socialism, not the cause of its failure.
So Socialism has to be dismantled; even if
everybody were honest. Eradication of corruption
as a result of dismantling of Socialism is going to
be just one of the many positive developments.
Therefore we must first of all completely separate
economy and State. Government should only have
military, police, courts, roads, irrigation, and
schools for everybody and some colleges. This will
drastically reduce the opportunities to be corrupt.
Separation of economy means not just that
government stops doing things it should not be
doing, like running hotels and travel agencies
(yes, the great Government of India owns a travel
agency also). It also means that government
should stop regulating the economic activities, in
all forms. The first principle- that everything that

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is not prohibited is permitted- must be followed in

all its sacredness. A citizen must not have to
approach government for any permission to do
any economic activity that is not illegal. For
example, we can very easily have negative list for
each street, for each road of a city detailing what
businesses can not be started on that street. And
matter should end there. We have a number for
each plot of land in the country. For each plot, we
must have a negative list, detailing what factories,
what industries cannot be put there. A citizen
should only be required to consult the list and go
ahead with his plans if the list doesnt prohibit
what he intends to do there. There should be only
one labour law in the country- law mandating
payment of mutually agreed wages at the
mutually agreed time, and all other labour laws,
being unconstitutional, anti-labour, anti-prosperity
should be repealed. For environmental cleanliness,
we must have few standards specifying quality of
effluent; in short air, water and solid waste
coming out of a plant; and matter should end
there. An entrepreneur must never have to
approach the so called Ministry of Environment
and Forest for any clearances. All government
inspectors, except police inspectors, should be
sent home, with farewell gifts. For example, no
inspector needs to visit a restaurant. If customers
find their experience pleasant in the restaurant,
they would go there; otherwise it would wound up

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in no time. We have been doing fine for thousands

of years without all these inspectors, they have
only strangulated the economy, and made citizens
lambs dependent on government, looking to
government where their own judgements are the
best guides. With personal responsibility would
come courage and fortitude, and character.
Quality of citizenry would improve dramatically.
To reduce the temptation to be corrupt,
government servants must be paid salaries
slightly less but comparable to those in equivalent
position in private sector. Members of Parliament
must each be paid salary of Rs one crore per
month, the first losing candidate Rs seventy five
lakh per month, and the second losing candidate
Rs fifty lakh per month. (Member of Parliament
Local Area Development Scheme-MPLADS-should
be discontinued.) Judges in High Courts and
Supreme Court should be paid Rs seventy-five
lakh per month. The three Service Chiefs and
Cabinet secretary each should get Rs twenty-five
lakh per month.
Group D employees are already getting more
than the market rates and therefore should be
kept at the same level as they are today. All levels
in between should be adjusted proportionately. All
soldiers and constables in police must be

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equivalent to group C civilian employees, and

each personnel in military should get additional
Military Service Pay equal to fifty percent of his
basic pay plus dearness allowance salary.
The government will become very small. It
would be possible to watch it. The citizens will not
have to approach government for anything, so
bribes would dry up. Government servants will
have salaries that would make the eighty percent
fence sitters join the ten percent honest. Ten
percent will still be corrupt, but they will stand out
like a cactus. They can be spotted, detected, and
punished.
Eradicating corruption is that simple, and that
difficult.
Socialism is the lifeblood of the current ruling
elite: politicians, bureaucrats, academicians, think
tankers, journalists, NGOs, poverty eradicators,
and hangers on. So to dismantle it is not going to
be easy, or possible even in a lifetime. But we can
start to roll it back. Just as slowly it has
permeated our lives, it can be drained also. There
is no other way. Alternative is complete collapse,
because of Socialism itself, and because of the
corruption it engenders. God smiled on us in
1947. If we squander this very hard earned
chance on the fantasy called Socialism, we would

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collapse, and forces aligned against us will

certainly not leave us any chance of getting up
and making a fresh start. Our Civilization, the
most beautiful thing in the world, will disappear
forever.
With economy freed from the clutches of the
corrupt, people will learn to earn a hard days
living.
Businessmen
will
never have the
opportunity to manipulate market by bribing the
regulators, approvers, permissionocrats, etc., etc.,
and, etc. Honesty will be in the air. With
dismantling of Socialism, money pipeline that
passes through Delhi and the State Capitals will
go dry. Desperation to win elections will end;
people will try to win elections on ideas, not by
purchasing votes or by promising freebies as no
freebies will be possible. People will stop electing
their Castemen in the hope of getting those
reservations and help in recruitment to the
government jobs, or to win immunity from law.
Because policemen will be fearless and will not
suspend laws in favour of vote banks. They will be
fearless because transferring the honest will not
make any difference to his material condition. And
as ninety percent will be honest so more often
than not an honest will succeed him, and even if a
corrupt does succeed him, the corrupt would
discover that those above, below, and around him
are all honest and he cannot have his way.

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Therefore no politician will be able to manage

immunity from law for his cronies, or for his vote
bank.
With everybody earning his living, gross
domestic production (GDP) will shoot up. People
will get ahead through hard work, innovation, and
better management of their businesses, instead of
by buying regulators, as there will be no
regulators. India will have world-class companies,
and research & development. With corruption
drying up, people will actually opt for postings in
intelligence and research wings of security forces
and our security environment will improve
dramatically.
Of course the mechanisms that are in place
now to fight corruption-CVC, ACBs and CBI have
to continue. So that the ten percent who are going
to stay corrupt are caught; and their number
remains only at ten percent. With much less
numbers to catch, these departments will be
effective and will be deterrents.
The second front in the war on the corrupt has
to be the society. Socialism has slowly made the
citizenry look to the government for everything.
To give an example: Non Resident Indians (NRIs)
marry girls from India and then just abandon
them. Periodically news items and articles appear

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in newspapers that NRIs are abandoning Indian

brides and government is doing nothing! What is
government supposed to do in this matter? You
marry someone you dont know, you have no
means to reach him if he runs away, and then you
say that government isnt doing anything. When
did government take upon itself the task of finding
reliable grooms for girls? Of course soon we may
indeed have a government department: the
department of NRI marriages. Manned by a dozen
secretaries and the entire pyramid below them.
Soon after its formation, the entire top brass of
the department, led by the minister, will embark
on a six month long world tour to find out how the
other countries handle marriages of their Non
Resident citizens with the resident girls. Before
leaving, the minister will sign the first order of the
department reading: No Indian will marry any
NRI without the approval of this department. To
apply, obtain printed form by paying prescribed
fees, three passport size photographs, duly
attested by a gazetted government officer. At the
end of the order there will be the note in fine
print, Please note that the fact that department
has given permission for the marriage doesnt
mean that it is in anyway responsible if the
marriage goes bust at any time in the future.
Indians will soon discover that they cant marry an
NRI without bribing a dozen people, and still have
girls abandoned by NRIs soon after the marriage.

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Somehow, people now invest in government

powers which ancients did not invest even in
Gods. So we expect the government to eradicate
corruption even as we ourselves never let any
opportunity to be corrupt go waste. One example
stands out, the bane of our society: jumping of
queues. This is the corruption at its most basic.
The person who jumps queue thinks that others
are fools, he is smart, or he is too high a person
to be in queue with the lowlies. What he never
realizes is that had others not formed the queue,
he could not have jumped it. Similar is the case
with the corrupts. When they say that everybody
is corrupt and so are they, they do not realize that
everybody is not corrupt, had it been so, they
would have been robbed when they stepped out of
home. If everybody in society becomes corrupt,
society will collapse in no time. In fact India is
surviving the fact of ninety percent of its
politicians and bureaucrats being corrupt because
ten percent are not corrupt, and most among the
remaining ninety percent stop when they perceive
that system may collapse or get at them. A
corrupt
government
servant
still
expects
policeman to be honest when he approaches him
to lodge the first information report of theft at his
place, little realizing that the policeman has
exactly the same justifications to be corrupt as he
has. A corrupt still expects that aircraft

164

technicians have honestly done the maintenance

of the aircraft he is about to fly, little realizing that
they are also product of the same culture in which
not doing your duty honestly is no longer
considered immoral and unethical.
So even as Socialism is dismantled and
government is taken out of economy and from
citizens lives, citizens themselves need to teach
themselves and their children that honesty is the
first building block of a civilized society, and
without honesty, cannibalism is not very far. If
what is good for me is good becomes the
standard of values, it will not take long for it to
become free for all, as in fact is the situation in
many respect already in India, at least in the
Northern States. Mother has to tell her son that
bribe money will not come home, and so will not
the bribe taker.
Mother has to understand that otherwise it is
going to be a life in which she worries daily till
daughter returns home from college, in which son
is unemployed, in which electricity is experienced
by never ending power cuts, in which she has to
get up at four in the morning to fill those buckets,
in which she gets looted while travelling by bus,
and by train. Society has to police itself. In social
exchanges, we have to treat the corrupts for what
they are, criminals. Breakers of promises with

165

their employers, and endangering the lives of us

all through their corruption.
The society also has to separate itself from the
government.
Of course simultaneously we have to eradicate
evil and corrupt social mores-Caste hierarchies,
religious and linguistic chauvinism, all the ideas
and ideologies that give some members of the
society benefits, which are not available
universally. After all, such practices are nothing
but
corruption.
Societal
or
governmental
discrimination among citizens, at its most basic, is
nothing but corruption.
We have to learn and teach ourselves that all
human beings are absolute equals with equal and
same rights, and we have to behave with others
with the knowledge that they have same rights as
we have and therefore our behavior has to be
what we expect from them. We have to accept
that laws apply equally to all, and we have to earn
our living, nobody owes us anything, and that our
needs do not justify any crime we may commit.
Social movements need to be revived. The
prosperity of Punjab, Haryana, and Western Uttar
Pradesh is as much the result of irrigation system
and Green Revolution as of Sikhism and Arya

166

Samaj, the two powerful movements that arose in

these areas, and which laid great emphasis on
honesty, integrity, and hard work.
More such movements need to be birthed and
nurtured, schools have to take lead in character
building and setting examples, and people have to
be always on the lookout for the corrupt and
shame him, instead of celebrating his smartness
or electing him to any public office. Each one of us
has to learn never to jump queue, howsoever
hurry one may be in, howsoever connected one
may be, nor anyone of us should let anybody else
jump the queue within our sight.
Honesty is not a choice. Honesty is the basis of
a society. Without honesty, no family, no society,
nothing is possible. Alternative is misery, collapse,
crime, broken society, poverty, and wretched
social mores. Alternative is present day India.
Honesty is basically self-policing, and as policing is
based on the assumption that almost all members
of society have agreed to abide by certain laws,
and few break them, so is the case with honesty.
If overwhelming number of citizens is not honest,
no watchdogs can succeed. Policing resources are
always finite, and for police to be successful, it is
essential that citizens police themselves.

167

Therefore we need to accept, each citizen of

this great country, each heir of this great
Civilization: That there will be corruption in India
until we the citizens, the aam aadmi, the mango
people of India, stop jumping queues.

The end

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Acknowledgements
Thank you Renu, my darling wife. You inspired
this book, you almost forced me to write this book, and
you have been a rock like support through out this
endeavor. It was your simple exclamation, many years
ago, and straight from the heart, How can this be
allowed to continue like this, this corruption? Do
something, that seeded the whole idea. And thank you
for making me what I am.
To my brothers and sisters, for all the affection and
love, all through.
To my parents-in-law, for all the affection and
support, and for supporting the idea whole-heartedly.
To all the classmates, colleagues, and friends; for
being so much like family, for the love, affection, and
support; and for helping me refine the ideas and
concepts by challenging them. For sharing the
knowledge of their own departments, that has gone into
writing this book.
To Indian Railways, for the fantastic life it has
given me.

169

About the grammatical mistakes and typos in the book

By its very nature, it was not possible to send this
book for editing. Therefore, it is likely that it has
grammatical mistakes and typos. I apologize for them.
I will appreciate if readers write to me pointing out the
mistakes and typos. Of course now that it is in Cyber
space, safe forever, I may send it to an editor and issue
a fresh edition after it is edited.

170

All the anecdotes in the book have been taken from the
news items published in the following leading
newspapers of Mumbai:
The Times of India
The Indian Express
The Hindustan Times
The Daily News & Analysis
Mumbai Mirror
Midday
Web link to any individual news item will be supplied
on request.

171

About the author

Anang Pal Malik did his B Tech from G B Pant
University of Agriculture and Technology, located in
Nainital district of Uttar Pradesh (Now, after the
division of Uttar Pradesh, in Udham Singh Nagar
district of Uttarakhand), and M Tech from Indian
Institute of Technology, Delhi. He started his career on
UP State Electricity Board, moved on to Central Public
Works department, and then to Indian Railways. After a
decade in Mumbai, he plans to shift to Delhi.

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