corruption causes and its cure an article by js rajawat

7/27/2019 Corruption Causes and Its Cure an Article by Js Rajawat

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Menace of corruption : causes and its cureJ S Rajawat1

Introduction

IPL and cricket scandals has again boiled our blood and starteddebate that the evil of corruption and its auto narcotic effect pose

great threat to the welfare of society and continue to grow in

menacing proportion..2 We may have two perspective regarding it.

The first perspective is that there is corruption in every alleyway in

India, so wise up , why should cricket be exception. The second

perspective is that corruption is increasing the world over. Why

corruption become so pervasive all over . we know about Indian

and their greasy fingers, but the glass is no cleaner on the other

table . corruption in China is nearly as monumental as its Great

wall. France’s ex President , Nicolas Sarkozy, faces charges for

taking cash from a L’Oreal heiress. In Russia, the mafia is close to

being state-run. Britain was recently shaken by parliamentary

expenses scandal. In America from the ex- governor of illionois to

Jesse Jackson Jr, the civil rights leader, the rich, the powerful and

holy are stained.3

Corruption in a civilized society is like cancer, which if not

detected in time, sure to mailings the polity of country leading todisastrous consequences. It is like plague which is not only

contiguous but if uncontrolled like fire in jungle.4 That no region

or country in the world is immune from corruption and out of 183

countries assessed scored below 5% (0 being highly corrupt and

10 very clean.5

Corruption in India

1 Spl Public Prosecutor ,C B I2 KC Screen v/s CBI 2001 Sc3 TOI Dt 25th may 2013. Article by Dipanker gupta , social scientist4 State of M P v/s shriramsingh AIR 2000 SC8705 Transparency.org/cpi2011/results

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Government officials in India are well known for their rampant

corruption which has been further fortified from report of the

transparency International report 2012. Departments that manage

to spent money budgeted and allocated are considered efficient and

so in the mad rush to show utilization of funds, false receiptvouchers and muster rolls are churned out on large scale.

Thousands of school, hospital, road, check dams, community

centers and residential quarters are shown completed on papers.

The general perception of public that public ex-chequer is being

managed and that the funds for development is going in pockets of

rich and powerful.6 Large dams and mega irrigation projects in

India are good example of this. The major reason for promoting

these projects is because of the scope they offer for largecentralized kickbacks.

Corruption is an age old Phenomenon throughout the world. It is

through Corrupt Practices of our citizens that, India has been ruled

by so many Tribes and cultures i.e. British, Mongols, Mughals,

Portugese, Dutch etc. Today, we cannot think of a Single

Department which is not corrupt. We often criticize the Politicians

for corruptions, but however forget the Bureaucrats working

behind the curtains. Actually it is the Bureaucrats who run theGovernment. Corruption in judiciary is also known to all. In 2004 ,

transparency international and Delhi based centre for media studies

, a research firm undertook the India corruption study, in which it

revealed that 59% of respondents aid bribes to lawyers, 5% to

judges, and 30% to court officials.7 There is a very powerful

lobby and know well how to play with law and get away from such

allegations. We will see soon the newspapers not printing about it

any further and soon people will also forget about such a serious

issue. Well, people have very short memories, out of site is out of mind.

Rajiv Gandhi , former Prime Minister

of India had estimated that 85% of public funds leak away due to

6 Kaveri- The right to information movement Aug.20037 www.livemint.com/ corruption-in -judiciary

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http://www.livemint.com/






corruption . Even the funds that are actually spent on public works

and developments are often spent in projects which are not in

public interest and have been selected to maximize the possibility

and scale of kickbacks. The illegitimate money made by corrupt

public servants and the power that its gives them is than used bythem to perpetuate in office. This corrupt money is one of the

main factors responsible for continued re election of such

politicians. They become masters of the people to whom they are

supposed to serve8

Independent India’s first scam was

of 1948 Jeep Scandal. The Cycle Import Scam was reported in

1951. the Defense Scam starting from Bofors scam9 1990’s

witnessed innumerable scam involving crores of rupees such asMedical Equipment Scam (5000 crores). Waqf Scam (1600 crores)

Fodder Scam (1000 crores) Sukhram Telecom scandle (1500

crores)10 21St century corruption scams made India to feel ashamed

due to various mega scam including the recent 2 G spectrum scam

and coal scam . In recent reports of Transparency International,

India’s image on tackling corruption has not improved with

Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index (CPI)

placing it at 94th rank out of 176 nations this year. Though Indiawas ranked at 95th position last year, the international watchdog

said it has started evaluating the positions through a different

formula beginning this year and hence this cannot be compared to

last year's ranking.11

India may be witnessing popular

agitations against graft but there is no respite for the common man

from the menace with over 60 per cent of slum dwellers in major

cities feeling that corruption has indeed increased in the past one

year, the slum dwellers surveyed felt that corruption in publicservices has grown in the last 12 months, the season of protests

against graft and scandals that rocked the country .The study

8 Prasant bhusan- Fighting against corruption vol 1119 Money involved is Rs.65 crores10 www.onwikipedia.org/ listof scam in India on 15.02.1211 TOI 5.12.12

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conducted by the Centre for Media Studies in the slums of

Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Bhubaneswar, Chennai, Delhi,

Hyderabad, Goa, Kolkata and Mumbai also said slum dwellers in

all these cities perceived an increase in corruption especially police

services."More than half of the slum dwellers from nine major cities in the

2012 survey felt that corruption in general has increased in public

services in the last 12 months while around 29 per cent opined that

corruption in public services continues to remain the same," the

study released today says.88 per cent of the people said they faced

corruption from police service in the last one year and least in

water supply services (78 per cent).12

The study threw up several interesting features like 'most often paid' amount among services was highest in police which is Rs 500

and the highest amount paid by a single slum household in Delhi to

get a housing plot is Rs 7000.The Income Tax authorities have

slapped a demand notice on P.V. Sreenijin and his wife K.B. Sony,

son-in-law and daughter of the former Chief Justice of India K.G.

Balakrishnan, asking them to cough up a tax due of Rs. 2.2 crore

for the period between 2007-08 and 2009-10.The demand was

raised last month after an enquiry into the alleged undisclosedincome of the couple was conducted by the department’s

investigation wing based on a whistle-blower complaint in

December, 2010. 13 Looking to magnitude and extent of corruption

in coal, Rail and Khel14 in India , Apex court has rightly equated

12The CMS -India corruption study201213 PTI Dec 7, 2012, 02.58PM IST

14 Rajasthan patrika Dt 17th may 2013

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the evil with disease like cancer and virus like HIV leading to

incurable disease likes AIDS.15

Indians today carry a photocopy of the American dream in their

heads. It did not seems that way in 1947 when Pandit Jawahar lal

Nehru, first Prime Minister of India, delivered his famous “ Trystwith destiny” speech which was all about peace, democracy and

freedom and not about getting rich .it is now all about global

economic supremacy and releasing the “animal sprit”.16 This did

Indian well for a while but its feeble democratic institutions helped

corruption grow to new heights. When we make our own Indian

dream, there is one lesson we should not forget, Getting rich is

good but doing it by our ethical value is better.

Causes of corruption

The causes of corruption are

many and complex. Following are some of the causes of

corruption.

1. Emergence of political elite who believe in interest-oriented

rather than nation-oriented programmers and policies.

2. Artificial scarcity created by the people with malevolentintentions wrecks the fabric of the economy.

3. Corruption is caused as well as increased because of the change

in the value system and ethical qualities of men who administer.

The old ideals of morality, service and honesty are regarded as an

achromatic.

4. Tolerance of people towards corruption, complete lack of

intense public outcry against corruption and the absence of strong

public forum to oppose corruption allow corruption to reign over

people.5.Vast size of population coupled with widespread illiteracy and

the poor economic infrastructure lead to endemic corruption in

public life.

15 KC sareen /s CBI 2001 SC16 Dr sanjay jain , Head of psychiatry at NIMHANS

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6. In a highly inflationary economy, low salaries of government

officials compel them to resort to the road of corruption. Graduates

from IIMs with no experience draw a far handsome salary than

what government secretaries draw.

7. Complex laws and procedures alienate common people to ask for any help from government.

8. Election time is a time when corruption is at its peak level. Big

industrialist fund politicians to meet high cost of election and

ultimately to seek personal favour. Bribery to politicians buys

influence, and bribery by politicians buys votes. In order to get

elected, politicians bribe poor illiterate people, who are slogging

for two times’ meal.

Consequences of corruption

Corrupt society are unable to support their citizens, they starve

their children not only for food, for education , health care . They

are ongoing nightmares.17 Corruption devalues human rights,

chock development and undermine justice, liberty, equality,

fraternity which are core values in our constitution preamble18. The

consequence of this evil are countless but few among them may

be- When society is corrupted its member become cynical andcontemptuous of social and moral values. In such a society sane

voices of wise man and social reforms will remain unheard and

unattended. Now I feel that majority of Indians have become

cynical and helpless about this exist.

Economists provide realistic evidence to prove that corruption has

an influence on economic growth. Competitive markets and

openness to trade reduce corruption by decreasing the collection of

rents available to be captured by giving and taking bribes. Many

studies have shown that corruption has pernicious effect oninvestment and growth. Some of the ways in which corruption

weakens the economic growth and investment are- misallocating

17 Stuart Gilman, Head of UNDOC18 Justice Ganguli in Subramanian swamy v/s Manmohan singh 2012 CR L J 1539

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talent and under utilization of key segment of society (b) lower

domestic and foreign investment (c) distorted enterprise

development and growth of unofficial economy (d) distorted

public expenditure and public investment (e) lower public revenue

and less provision of rule of law as public good. 19 Corruption also undermines the stability of the government. We

have examples where corrupt Ministers, M P ‘s were unseated and

chief ministers of states were compelled to resign their posts on

corruption charges. Some ministers remain behind bars . this pose

a threat to stability of government, because now polities has

become number game and these corrupt politicians has some

representatives and followers in their support.20 On account of

corruption charges Pawan Bansal, Railway minister has to reign.21

And Law minister has also to lose his cabinet berth . These

unprecedented and large scale corruption raised serious concern

about the functioning of Indian democracy. Corruption also

decomposes democracy and deflating the most fundamental

principles of democracy governance. Corrupt practices remove

government decision s from public realm to private, diminishing

openness and accountability. Corruption is major obstacle to

democracy and rule of law. In democratic system, offices andinstitutions lose their credibility and legitimacy when they are

misused for private advantage. Corruption is inherently

contradictory and irreconcilable with democracy.22

REMEDIES OF CORRUPTION

Corruption is a cancer, which every Indian must strive to cure.

Many new leaders when come into power declare their

determination to eradicate corruption but soon they themselves

become corrupt and start amassing huge wealth.Many People

become materialistic and money oriented, there is no important of ethics and morals in business dealings. This is because these kinds

of people have no moral accountability to anybody; and these kind

19 www economic soferisis.com/reading .doc. 3.4.1220 Resignation of BS Yadiyurapa CM , karaataka21 TO I Dt 10th may 201322 www.transprancy.org/news_room/faq

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have people have full trust on money, they strongly believing that

money can hold big role in their life, they believing that money can

solve their current and future problems, they believing that money

can give them life without problems.

Tentacles of corruption have started grappling even the institutionscreated for protection of republic, unless these tentacles are

intercepted and impeded from gripping the normal functioning of

legislative, executive and judiciary , so to my mind civil society ,

legislature , judiciary and investigating agencies may play major

role in combating corruption.

(1) role of civil society

Right to information campaign by civil society, we have seen that

transparency in all aspect of government functioning is by far themost important measure to deter corruption, particularly in an

organized and vigilant civil society. The experience with public

hearing has shown that open public exposure of corruption is in

most case sufficient to bring corrupt official to book. Technology

progress has made it feasible to videotape and camera

surveillance of public offices throughout working hours and

maintains electronic record for public access. Such total

transparency may not completely eliminate corruption but certainlyclose many avenues for corruption.23

Corruption in India is a consequence of the nexus between

Bureaucracy, politics and criminals. One part of the remedy is to

limit the role of ministers to evolve policies and leave the

application of policies to individual cases in the hands of an

independent commission/authority in each such area of public

interest. Each such commission/authority may be a statutory body

whose members are 'appointed by the cabinet on the basis of their

professional credentials for a fixed tenure. Conditions of servicesimilar to those for judges and other constitutional officers may be

evolved to ensure independence

If political corruption is at the heart of our corrupt system, then

funding of elections is at the core of political corruption. Electoral

23 Supra

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reforms are crucial in this regard. Several reforms have been

suggested -state funding of election expenses for candidates; strict

enforcement of statutory requirements like holding in-party

elections, making political parties get their accounts audited

regularly and filling income tax returns. Denying persons withcriminal records a chance to contest elections; reducing number of

days of campaigning and providing airtime on Doordarshan and

AIR to campaign; treating as electoral malpractice the violation of

the Model Code of conduct prepared by the Election Commission.

These reforms need to be evaluated and the meritorious ones

implemented immediately.

Responsiveness, accountability and transparency are a must for a

clean system. The bureaucracy must be made sensitive to the needsof the citizens and be purged of its 'Ruler syndrome'. In addition to

it, there should be machinery independent of the government

which can provide speedy justice to the citizen with a genuine

grievance against the state. To make an anti-corruption movement

credible, it is necessary to punish some major corrupt figures.

Punitive action is necessary to jolt the system out of the corruption

trap.

(2)Role of Legislature and judiciaryIn order to eradicate the rampant vice of corruption, the prevention

of corruption Act was enacted in 1947 and subsequently it was

amended in 1964, 1966 and 1967 and the Act was finally replaced

by prevention of corruption Act,1988 as the corruption cases

increased tremendously. The prevention of corruption Act ,1988

however , not consolidated the all amended brought in Act of

1947 so again in 2008 amendment bill was introduced but that

was not passed till now and further the Union Cabinet has recently

approved amendments in the Prevention of Corruption Act, providing a safeguard to retired government officials from

unnecessary prosecution for any bona-fide mistake and also

broadening the definition of bribery to make a commercial entity

liable for failing to prevent bribery of an official. The proposed

changes” Prevention of Corruption (Amendment) Bill, 2013 also

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provide for allowing confiscation of property acquired by

government officials through ill-gotten means.Besides, the change

in definition of bribery will, for the first time, cover intermediaries

or middlemen under the anti-corruption law, which currently

covers only government officials.24

Judiciary has interpreted the above law as social welfare

legislation to remove menace of corruption from public life in a

country and Cases relating to corruption are to be dealt with

swiftly, promptly and without delay. 25 Parliament grave concern

is impelled to chalk out measures to curb procrastinating

procedural clues. Section 22 0f Act is one of the measure evolved

to curtail the delay in corruption cases. So the construction of section 243(1) of Cr.P.C. as telescoped by section 22 of P C

Act,1988 , must be consistent with the aforesaid legislative

intent.26 Similarly section 19 of the Act provides for no stay of

such case on any ground . It has been brought to our notice that in

large number of cases stays have been granted by high courts in the

matter of prevention of corruption Act , even though there is

specific ban against the grant of any stay. J. Thomas further

directed all Registrar of High courts to list all cases in which suchstay is granted before the court concerned so that appropriate

action may be taken by that court in the light of this decision 27.

Therefore, that duty of court is that any ant-corruption laws has

to be interpreted and worked out in such a fashion as to strengthen

the fight against corruption but in practice these judgment are not

followed by High courts and subordinate courts although they have

binding effect under Art. 141 of constitution, I have specific

instances that Rajasthan High court ignoring the direction of

honorable supreme court granted stays in 52 cases of AC B inthe year 2011. I as a prosecutor personally brought the fact to

notice of the than Registrar- General of Rajasthan High court and

24 TOI dated 2, may 201325 AIR 2001 SC 298926 Arivazhagan v/s State AIR 2000 SC 119827 Satynarain v/s state of rajasthan 2001 SC 713

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as a Deputy Director prosecution in ACB during 2010-2011 the

matter was again brought to the notice of High court though

Advocate General of the state but of no use. Thus we can see two

stream in the judiciary , one is interpreting law to erode corruption

from country and other not following the binding verdicts of Supreme court for one and other reasons and thus helping the

corrupts.

(3)Role of Investigation and prosecution

Role of investigating agency in detection of crime is vary crucial

and there is general impression in public that C B I and state

agencies work under pressure of party in power and this has beenreinforced by the Apex court while hearing into the coal

allocation case expressing his concern that ‘CBI is a caged parrot

speaking in its master’s voice. It’s a sordid saga of many masters

& one parrot’ to which the director CBI also agreed.28 Therefore,

there is strong need to give autonomy to agency that may be done

by statutory recognition or constitutional status like Election

commission/ C A G by constitutional amendment. In Vineet

narain case also supreme court issued direction in this regard but of no use , now again court has asked government to file reply in this

regard and we believe that this time govt. will do some thin for

autonomy to C B I.

Besides autonomy there are other

concern within C B I to bring efficiency in investigation and

strengthen prosecution within organization .As I remain associated

with C B I and state ACB as prosecutor for a quite long period . I

feel that CBI investigating offices are not well-worse with law of

evidence and thereby there investigation is very lengthy andvoluminous ,which is the main reason of delayed disposal of cases.

CBI investigating officers are like HANUMAN of Ramayan who

is vary strong/ powerful but lack of legal knowledge . When he

was asked to bring Sanjeevani herb for the treatment of lord

28 TOI may, 9,2013

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Laxman from Samuru Mountain , as he was not identifying the

Sanjeevani herb so he brought whole Mountain and produced

before Vaida who was treating the Lord Laxman ,similar is the

case with investigating officers of CBI as they do not know what

kind of evidence is relevant for purpose of charge against accusedand there by collects all available record and put it before the

court to segregate the evidence which is relevant to charge in

question and it is Herculean task for prosecutor to segregate and

present the relevant evidence before court. Prosecutor being

under administrative control of CBI authority, fear to take

decision independently as to what evidence he should present and

what he should drop. Therefore, there is need to separate and

make independent prosecution in CBI in light of section 25A of criminal procedure code. In this connection , I will like to share

case study of R C /AC 111/2/10 , CB I Delhi under section 8 of

PC Act, 1988. There are 52 witness cited by I O in this case

where as only 7 witnesses are sufficient to prove the charge but no

one in C B I is ready to hear on this aspect. speedy and effective

trial is not possible by large number of witness but only the

relevant evidence and proper presentation of evidence in a cases

during trial which will benefit in securing success of case and earlydisposal and by this we can save precious time of justice

delivery system and moreover human resource which is most

precious. Therefore ,CB I officers should be imparted training to

collect the only relevant evidence as per law and not put all the

seized material before court of law which have no relevancy. It

will help the administration of justice in quick dispensing of justice

which is main concern of all. Agency should also change its

faulty traditional method of presentation of case to court, when

investigation is over and decision is taken to launch prosecution, itis necessary to produce only evidence which is necessary to prove

the allegation sought to be proved and not all material collected

during investigation. Generally on some allegation / against some

persons decision to prosecute has not been taken but traditionally

investigating officers do not segregate the evidence necessary for

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proving the allegation / suspect for which prosecution is launched

and presently large number are cited and examined by prosecutor

which are not related to charge in question or relating to accused

facing trial and thus total wastage of time of justice delivery

system and human resources .

Besides above major suggestion few more remedies may be as

under:

(A) It can be only possible if people can understand and start to

believe the values of ethics and morality in their life. People willstart to believe that their life is accountable if they really start to

believe in GOD, in oneness of GOD and if they really start to live

life on the way which GOD has chosen for mankind.

GOD has given the wisdom to each and every human being, heart

of everyone telling him/her that the way he/she following to get

money is good/bad. The most important thing is person should

listen and follow the inner voice.

(b)Foolproof laws should be made so that there is no room for discretion for politicians and bureaucrats. The role of the politician

should be minimized.

(c) Cooperation of the people has to be obtained for successfully

eradicating corruption. People should have a right to recall the

elected representatives if they see them becoming indifferent to the

electorate.

(d) Funding of elections is at the core of political corruption.

Electoral reforms are crucial in this regard. Several reforms like:

State funding of election expenses for candidates; strictenforcement of statutory requirements like holding in-party

elections, making political parties get their accounts audited

regularly and filing income-tax returns; denying persons with

criminal records a chance to contest elections, should be brought

in.

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(e) Responsiveness, accountability and transparency are a must for

a clean system. Bureaucracy, the backbone of good governance,

should be made more citizen friendly, accountable, ethical and

transparent.

(f) Local bodies, Independent of the government, like Lokpals, Lok

adalats, CVCs and Vigilance Commissions should be formed to

provide speedy justice with low expenses.

Conclusion

Today , corruption in our country not only pose a grave danger to

the concept of constitutional governance , it also threatens the vary

foundation of Indian democracy and rule of law. The magnitude of corruption in our public life is incompatible with the concept of

socialist, secular democratic republic. It can not be disputed that

where corruption begins all rights end. Corruption devalues human

rights, chock development and undermine justice, liberty, equality,

fraternity which are core values in our constitution preamble.29

Therefore , the canker of venality, if not fought against all fronts

and at all levels , checked and eradicated, will destabilized and

debilitate the vary foundation of democracy ; wear away the ruleof law through moral decay and make the entire administration

ineffective and dysfunctional.30Mere rhetorical preaching of

apostolic sermons listing out the evils of corruption and raising

slogans with watch words are no use in absence of practical and

effective steps to eradicate them ; as EVIL TOLERATED IS EVIL

PROPORGATED

J S Rajawat

Spl.Public Prosecutor

29 Subramanian swamy v/s Manmohan singh 2012 CR L J 153930 J. Pandian in Haryana v/s Bhajan lal 1992 J 531

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corruption causes and its cure an article by js rajawat

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