Is India on the path of Redemption?

As a country, we have made progress in improving our position on the international Corruption Perception Index, although our absolute rankings could improve much further.

In the 1960s and 70s, it was an accepted fact that Indian politicians expected everyone to contribute to their private wealth. The ostensible reason for collecting money was for meeting their party's election expenses. But it was well-accepted that the fund-collecting politician would keep some of the collection for his own use and his family.

The existence of the licence-permit raj in that era facilitated this practice and it won't be an exaggeration to say that most private sector companies, including some of today's more respected business houses, found a way of obliging the demanding politicians, whose cooperation was essential for the smooth conduct of their business.

It was considered naïve, if not foolish, to not conform to this accepted practice among businessmen - as I can recall from personal experience.

In discussing such corruption, it is common to blame exclusively the politicians. The role of the "corruptor" businessman is equally deplorable. In that era, businessmen competed with one another in illegal contributions so as to get closer to the powers that be.

Many businessmen enjoyed flaunting their proximity to influential ministers and politicians by having them at family wedding functions, company occasions, etc. The politicians enjoyed these privileges and exploited them to gather more funds by building a network of such obliging businessmen.

Apart from all the obvious moral and ethical reasons for not making illegal contributions to politicians or political parties, there are some important business reasons for not doing so. First of all, in order to make illegal payments, which are usually preferred in cash by the recipient, the giver has to generate the cash. That will inevitably imply complicity of some of his own staff, usually in the purchasing department or the sales/distribution department and certainly in the finance department.

Once these staff members know that the top management is manipulating things to generate illegal cash, they are themselves emboldened to make their own private demands/arrangements with the same group of suppliers/distributors, secure in the knowledge that their senior management will find it very embarrassing and even damaging to their interests if they questioned or interfered with the process.

So the malaise spreads uninhibited through the different layers of the company, and this has contributed to the decline in ethical standards.

As India has reduced controls on business, and therefore the political interface with business, the scope for corruption has reduced. Tax rates have been lowered, so there is less provocation for tax evasion.

Price controls have mostly disappeared, so there is less black marketing. Imports can be done freely, and smuggling has been sharply reduced. In short, many features of the licence-permit raj are no longer with us, and this has reduced the scope for illegal activity and therefore corruption.

Fortunately, we also have a Prime Minister whom even his worst critics cannot accuse of corruption. He is probably the only political leader of a large country in the world who enjoys such an unsullied reputation.

Even George Bush and Tony Blair have had their share of scandal or allegations about improper business links (like cash for honours in Britain); and certainly there is no Japanese politician who can match Manmohan Singh's reputation for cleanliness.

Dr Singh's example has an echo in other, successful professionals who have made their own contribution to a clean public life. P Chidambaram, the finance minister, is an outstanding example. As a cabinet minister, he makes in a month what he would have made in a few hours with his legal practice! What we need are more people like them to enter politics and make corruption an exceptional and shameful practice among Indian politicians.

Among civil servants, corruption tends to become rarer as one moves up the ladder of seniority. The most senior ones are usually very clean and they are naturally eager to guard their reputation. But much more can and has to be done to protect them from ever-present temptations, and thereby to protect the integrity of the system.

Members of the old Indian Civil Service had an immense pride (sometimes bordering on arrogance) in their professional cadre. Today, senior civil servants are relatively poorly rewarded in comparison both with their ICS predecessors (after adjusting for inflation) and with senior executives in the private sector.

At the end of their years of service, power and status by themselves cannot sustain anyone in retirement. A retired officer needs an adequate pension, decent housing and medical cover, as large private sector companies provide for their senior managers in retirement.

Our senior civil servants deserve similar terms so that they do not have to stoop to unworthy temptations and become liaison officers for private sector companies.

The problem is more widespread in the lower bureaucracy, where petty corruption abounds in the form of speed money. The solution here is to introduce greater transparency into the government's functioning, and to make use of e-governance techniques, as some state governments and the tax department have done to good effect.

The new law on right to information is also a powerful tool that can be used as a check on corruption.

It is unfortunate therefore that some of the international press continues to play up the smallest aberrations in India while largely ignoring the progress that has been made. This is in sharp contrast to their uninhibited adulation for the achievements of China - whose record on corruption (or state brutality, for that matter) is certainly much worse than India's.

One can be cynical and say that in international politics, a nation's nuisance value can add to its stature and vice versa. Now that Russia has ceased to be a threat to the West, its status is diminished while that of China has improved.

India is not a threat to anyone because of the nature of its society and polity. In the end, what matters to a nation or an individual is the knowledge and confidence in oneself - not in what others think. In that respect, we as Indians have a lot to be thankful for in terms of the progress that has been made towards a cleaner public life.