Corruption can’t be tackled legally

Last week, while addressing officers of the CBI and anti-corruption bureaus in New Delhi, the Prime Minister once more revisited the theme of corruption, pointing at the practice of the private sector giving bribes which, he felt, should be made an equally cognisable offence as bribe-taking by public servants.

Theoretically, this makes good sense, because, at the end of it all, bribery per se is a consensual activity irrespective of whether the bribe-giver — that is, in this case the private sector — has been forced to engage in the activity or not.

It is not just an issue of abetment but direct participation in an activity which, in every case, interferes with established practices and procedures and leads to a loss, notional or otherwise, to the public exchequer.

Too Great an expectation

However, by making the suggestion, the Prime Minister has admitted the abject failure of the Government to effectively fight the scourge of corruption in the country.

Indeed, the very fact that there is a Prevention of Corruption Act for public servants (and not for the private sector) implies that, historically, the onus for corrupt behaviour was seen to lie with public officials, who were expected to set an example.

That the Prime Minister now wants to extend the coverage of the Act to the private sector suggests that the expectation was misplaced.

Will the extension of the anti-corruption law’s coverage produce the expected result?

On paper, the authorities will be empowered to haul up those in the private sector who engage in bribe-giving and send them to prison.

This, ordinarily, should have the effect of checking bribery. But there is something terribly naive about all this. What is especially disconcerting is the fact that the Prime Minister is a player in this charade.

Those who indulge in corrupt behaviour are thick-skinned, who will stop at nothing to get what they want. If one assumes, not unreasonably, that corrupt behaviour has deeply penetrated the official machinery, extension of the law to the private sector may quickly be turned on its head and be made to become an even more productive money-spinner for corrupt public servants, whose business it is to catch people violating the law.

Basu’s suggestion

Incidentally, the Prime Minister’s proposal goes against the suggestion made by Kaushik Basu in his March 2011 monograph Why, for a Class of Bribes, the Act of Giving a Bribe should be Treated as Legal (http://goo.gl/yITz9), where the former Chief Economic Adviser argued that even for what he termed as “non-harassment bribes” (that is, situations where the bribe-giver gets to enjoy a command over resources, etc., which he does not deserve in the ordinary course), there should be “an asymmetric treatment of the bribe-taker and the giver” which would weaken “the collusive bond between the bribe-taker and the giver...and the bribe-giver will be more likely to cooperate with the judiciary in exposing the crime than under the current circumstances.”

But even Basu agrees that laws to tackle corruption can only scratch the surface of the problem. He writes: “If we want to really get at corruption, what we need to build up are values of honesty and integrity in society.”

The million-dollar question is: how do we go about it today? Where do we begin?

Among other things, do we require more political outfits such as India Against Corruption which, with time, are likely to be drowned in the swirling ocean of corruption all around us — unless, of course, the young citizens take the upper hand? They must, if the republic is to be saved from even more degradation in the future.

COMMENT NOW