The Hindu Business Line : Death for the corrupt in China

One can well imagine what a pleasurable sensation they would have on the victims in India of excruciating mental and financial torture at the hands of the corrupt at every turn for getting nothing more than their just entitlements, often in the form of basic services. The latest is the news of execution of an official who was the head of the Food and Drug Administration in Beijing from 1998-2005.

This was the punishment for taking bribes worth $850,000 and being party to malpractices by relatives and subordinates resulting in the approval of spurious medicines, with fatal effects in 10 cases. He was handed the sentence in May after a very short trial and it was carried out on July 10 without any protracted appeals and the like.

A similar sentence for corruption by another senior food and drug official overseeing the pharmaceutical registration department is temporarily on hold.

China has shown no mercy to corrupt officials, however high their rank. In recent years, a provincial vice-governor, and a former mayor and his deputy have also received death sentences after being convicted of corruption. The Chinese Government has repeatedly proclaimed its determination to be relentless and ruthless in fighting corruption.

It views clean government as an integral part of economic reforms process and as a means of acquiring legitimacy for `free market socialism' as also for the Communist Party itself. This stems from a realisation that unless reforms go hand in hand with enforcement of integrity in public officials, they will only backfire, plunging the country into misery.

The chief of China's Ministry of Supervision sometime ago said that though forms of corruption may vary from country to country, the effect was the same: Desecration of civilisation and destruction of human values. MODEL ENACTMENT Just this month, the Chinese Government intensified the drive by tightening the screws on the corrupt still further.

The new regulations enlarge the meaning of corruption to include cash, gifts and other favours, such as payments for pleasure trips, shares in companies, large discounts on houses and cars, and visits to gambling joints, given to family members or affiliates.

Officials will now face prosecution for corruption even if they do not directly receive a bribe themselves or if they receive bribes after they retire. As far as laws go, India needs to copy little from China.

The Prevention of Corruption Act is a model enactment which is unique in providing for prosecution for possessing disproportionate assets, apart from the familiar versions of corruption of the kind China is trying to combat. For certain categories of offences, Indian laws have even dispensed with the sacrosanct principle of `innocent until proved guilty' by laying the onus of proving innocence on the accused.

Despite the severity of the laws in India, not one high official, leave alone a Minister or Chief Minister, has spent time in prison for corruption. The corrupt are able to dodge their comeuppance by exploiting a variety of loopholes with the help of expensive legal teams.

When investigators and prosecutors find themselves helpless in getting even modest prison sentences meted out to the wicked and the venal, will making corruption a capital offence work any better in eradicating it?

Or, will it also be reduced to a dead letter as other lesser punishments have been? No harm, however, in taking a gamble and upping the ante, to savour the delectable prospect, even if it be once in a blue moon, of watching the noose put round the neck of the heartless tormentor and seeing him twist!

B. S. RAGHAVAN

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