DON’T WAIT FOR MESSIAH TO END CORRUPTION

Corruption is scientifically defined as the process which corrodes or destroy a thing from inside. Likewise, Corruption in a country will destroy the nation's achievement from the inside and corrodes the development and upliftment goals of the nation.

More than Big and large corruption of corporations and politicians, rampant corruption in the middle and lower levels of the community will affect the country largely as this will corrode the spirit and behaviour of the large population and generation next to come.

Many movies have been taken on the core theme of corruption and how the protagonist single-handedly destroys it with radical actions. But, in the practical world, small and incremental changes that can be done by the administration and common citizens can develop the community fight against corruption and improves the Countries goal towards zero corruption.

Corruption has existed in some form when humans became civilised and will exist till the humans are destroyed. As far as some selfish human who wants to misuse his power for his well being, Corruption will exist. So the best way to reduce corruption is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the system instead of waiting for the Messiah who will clean the system and give good governance.

WHY THE MESSIAH WON’T COME

India is too large with a 1.3 billion population and with different languages and cultures all within the same name. It is not possible for One leader to change everything radically. Even if there was a Charismatic leader who is praised by 1.3 Billion born, in the process of climbing up the ladder, it is difficult for a person to sustain his virtues in this current system. Even according to Hitler’s sayings “Climb up the order and change the system”, he will fail to the system to sustain his power. The Messiah will appear only in the Utopian dreams without any possibility in the Contemporary world.

In the search for solutions to this Corruption, I have learnt and understood some solutions from my experience with Government office and Corporate culture.

LEARNERS’ LICENCE & PASSPORT

When I’ve applied for the learners’ license on my own without any help from the Driving school on the Parivahan website. It asked me to choose an appointment date to get my licence. I have gone through that process and went to the designated RTO office. The office was in a very old building and crowded, without any directions about where to get learners licence, whom to meet to get clarifications, what documents to bring and whether the documents I brought is correct. After searching for hours, I found out the place where they will give LLR and found that the authoritative officer is late. There was a huge line even before the officer arrived and representatives from Driving school was there to help the people applied through them. When my chance came, the officer rejected my application that there is no required documents for the process. Again I have to search what are the required documents and went to a xerox shop (a place that also acts as a Driving School) to know the details and warning that I will never get a Licence. I have to come on the next day to get my LLR.

There was no openness, transparency of information and these bureaucratic bottlenecks and red-tapism is cause for more middlemen like Driving school to cash in. Then the nexus of Bureaucracy and middlemen will give rise to the corporatisation of corruption, where the bribe will be given to officials from people through middlemen within a foolproof legal framework where you cannot find traces of corruption. It's indeed a Scientific Corruption.

Next week I went to the Passport office as I have an appointment similar to LLR, but I was shocked to see the governance in that office. There were clear directions on what to be done on a ‘first come first serve’ basis, xerox shop within the office, cafeteria in the seating area in a fully air-conditioned office. The process was even smoother as the correction in the documents are done simultaneously and everything was done within 20 minutes. When I left the office, I received a message stating that in two days you will be contacted for verification. There were no bottlenecks and red-tapism in the process, so there were no middlemen. There is a solution for the RTO problem in another government office itself, only we have to replicate the same bureaucracy.

This Passport office gave me hope that the solution is not always as radical as it seems in Movies. Small incremental changes will be the best thing that can be done to End Corruption.

SOME OF MY SOLUTIONS

1. Whether you bought an Item in Amazon or made a trip to Uber, the very next thing you will do is to rate for their services. Government is the largest service provider and providing the most essential services to all the people of the country, rating for your services will push the government officers to enhance their services providing.
2. Real-Time Data Collection: If the data on the process done is collected then analysis can be done to improve the process and reduce the bottlenecks and to provide insights to administrators. Intuition based governance should be replaced with Data-driven governance.
3. One App for All Grievance:4. Smart Governance: 5.Rewards and Punishment: Some other small changes that can be done in the government service providing offices that are known for rampant corruptions.. 1.Public Distribution System:2. Traffic Police: By merely fixing the camera and voice recorder in Uniforms, corruption can be reduced. Installing smart cameras in Traffic signals can be used to send automated penalties to their home. Technologies have improved but in PDS the rice and wheat are distributed in retail. If that has been packaged, the quality can be tremendously improved. Punishment must be given to the people who don’t follow the rule. Rewards must be given to good behaviour. Social Points can be introduced to achieve this. As soon as a child is born, the government should provide documents like Birth certificates and Aadhar and track the child for Immunisation and after 3 years whether the child has been admitted to the school. If this tracking is done efficiently then at the age of 18, the government should provide Electoral ID and Driving licence at their school after necessary verifications. This makes the governance smart and helps the citizen to get their services without any difficulties. If the grievances are reported easily and redressed effectively then the trust in the government services will be restored.

Finally, I’m going to finish this with a small story about how researchers used monkeys to establish an understanding of group behaviour.

MONKEY CLIMBING THE LADDER

There was an interesting story about how researchers used a group of 10 monkeys to analyse their behaviour. The Researchers dug the ground and put 10 monkeys into the pit and laid a ladder to climb up. When One monkey started to climb the ladder, every monkey was punished with a stone. At First, the monkey didn’t realize this, so when the next monkey tried to climb, they were punished again. Then the monkeys realized this and were conditioned not to climb the ladder. Now the Researchers replaced a new monkey in this environment which does not know this condition. When the new monkey started to climb the ladder, the old monkeys began to pull the new monkey. Now one by one the old monkey were replaced and the new monkeys started to accept this convention of pulling the monkey that was climbing without even going through the punishment. This repeated even after the many groups were replaced.

This is how Corruption in the present day is taking place, our grandfathers who went through the license raj era started to teach us that when you have to get something from the government, you have to bribe the government officials.

The problem that is bigger than corruption is this attitude that the young persons are conditioned to them and generalisation of wrongdoings that every government officer is corrupt and everyone has to bribe to get what one wanted from the government. This has to be put to an end by changing the way we perceive the working of Government offices.

Thank You.

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.