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Corruption: Ethics
Impact On Development of A Country

Corruption! Now, round the world, corruption is a much known and a much spoken word. Everyone, both honest and dishonest persons, speak of corruption. The most vociferous persons on corruption are the most corrupt persons. But before getting into the topic of corruption, let us know briefly what the word ‘Corruption� means. The dictionary meanings of the word are:

Lack of integrity or honesty (especially susceptibility to bribery); use of a position of trust for dishonest gain.

Moral perversion; impairment of virtue and moral principles like:

“Moral degeneracy followed by intellectual degeneration�,
“its brothels; its opium parlors; its depravity�.

The latest addition to this list is in the field of Information Technology � ‘Corruption of Files�.

But the most common and popular definition is ‘Corruption is the abuse of power by a public official for private gain.� The common man only knows about the monitory corruption of public officials, mostly government and corporations under its control. But there are many varieties of corruption (viz) private corruption, bribery, nepotism, political corruption, judicial corruption, academic corruption, sexual corruption and others. The wide diversity of corrupt actions implies that there may well need to be a correspondingly wide and diverse range of anti-corruption measures to combat corruption in its different forms, and indeed in its possibly very different contexts.

Corruption is nothing new. It has been in vogue ever since the beginning of mankind in some form or the other. The degree of corruption depends on the social values of societies of those times. As the people grow more and more money­minded, corruption also increases proportionately. Also, certain types of corruption are accepted by certain societies and governments. For example, up to 1977, the US Government allowed their multinational companies working abroad to give bribes to the concerned governments and others to get major contracts. This may be existing even now also. This practice may be true in case of other countries like India. This is not legally considered as corruption. In USA, there are lobbyists and lobbyist companies, to voice the points of view of various countries and their governments, in the Congress and the Senate. These lobbyists are heavily paid and maintained by the respective countries. This again is not considered corruption.

Though corruption existed earlier, it was on a small scale. Even those minor corruption cases were dealt with severely by the governments and other agencies, with the result that public servants were afraid to be corrupt. Over a period of time and with expansion of economy and globalization, corruption has become rampant and it has now become impossible to control corruption. Added to that, the corruption has gone up from petty officials to very senior officers and Heads of Departments, Government Secretariat, Members of Legislature, Members of Parliament and Ministers. Also the monetary value and levels of corruption have gone up thousand fold. It now looks impossible to control corruption, not to speak of its eradication. In fact corruption has become the ‘Way of Life� in India and in many parts of the world. It may be interesting to go into how the values of life have fallen low and how the levels of corruption have gone up abnormally in the late 20th century and early 21st century in India and elsewhere.

When I think of corruption, my experiences in my long span of life of more than eight decades flash before me. In my boyhood days, children were taught by their mothers, fathers, grand parents and teachers about honesty and integrity, both at home and at school. In fact, there used to be “Moral Instruction Classes� every week in schools and colleges where high moral values like patriotism, honesty, integrity, hard work, behavior and other things were taught to students. Thus, honesty and integrity were ingrained in the blood of boys and girls at very early ages. This had lot of impact on their lives, as they grew up.

However, at that time, there was, in a small scale through, an accepted system called “Mamools�, which was not considered as corruption. My father who was an eminent lawyer used to feel it a prestige and honor to give mamools to the staff of the courts.

As I grew up, the first time I had encountered ‘Corruption�, was when I joined the Engineering College, Guindy, Madras (now Chennai) in the year 1943. After the end of the first semester, we had to go to our home towns for holidays. At that time, there were Railway Ticket concessions for students, if they went in groups of four or five. One of the students in the group suggested that I might give Rupees Two to the concerned officer at the office, so that he would approve and give the Railway pass quickly. I went to the MSM Railway office and met the concerned officer, an elderly gentleman dressed in a suit and a white turban, and gave application to him. He asked me to sit down and was looking at the application. At that time, I picked up two rupees from my pocket and pushed forward my hand towards him slowly. The elderly officer looked at it and looked at me sternly and asked me what it was. Innocently, I replied that it is for giving the Railway pass quickly. The elderly officer got very angry and asked me sternly “Are you trying to give a bribe?� He advised me to be honest and follow the values of life.

Many of the lower level personnel in Government were honest. Even if some lower level personnel were dishonest, it was not completely for their personal gain. Most of that money was again spent on the inevitable and minor expenditure for making arrangements for camps of senior officers and others. Nearly 98% of these senior officers were honest. During their camps in districts, they used to pay for their stay in Inspection Bungalows, their food and other expenditure, without burdening the local staff. They used to get their own cooks and the material for cooking their food. They even carried their camp cots and mosquito nets.

At the time of retirement, the officers were not left with anything except their meagre pension of l/3rd their average pay and a little money, if any, under General Provident fund. Very few people had houses of their own when they retired. Many officers died in harness after retirement.

Over a period of time, the scene has changed, changed fast and substantially. With the dawn of independence and taking up of development works in the country, the society and the social values changed. Money took precedence over the values. Earning and making money and more money have become the prime movers of men and women. With the higher-ups getting corrupt, the lower rungs had no fear and ruled the roost. The higher-ups for some time were not taking bribes directly. They were taking bribes through their subordinates.

Later they were taking directly. This has slowly spread to the Heads of Departments and high officials in the Secretariat and there was no end.

It did not take long for politicians to catch up. The farmers, public and others used to approach the Legislators and Members of Parliament for their work. The lower level government employees and officers also were going to these legislators for getting their transfers to lucrative places and for their promotions. For doing their jobs and for travel and stay, the politicians used to take money from them. Slowly, this has gone up to the level of Ministers and Chief Ministers. This has gone further and spread to the Members of Parliament, some of whom were taking money from public for raising questions in the Parliament on issues / pseudo issues of public interest. With this hierarchy in corruption, the money involved had become very huge. All this money has to come from the government, with the result that the standards in works and in services in the states have gone down substantially, inconveniencing and hurting the interests of the common man. The social values in the society have also substantially gone down. In earlier days, it was difficult in services to find a corrupt officer. We have come to a stage now that it is very difficult to find an honest officer in government.

Another feature has cropped up now. If an officer or politician is corrupt and takes money directly from the person, who wants some work to be done, that is one thing and ends with that. In such cases, the magnitude of corruption is less. Now the culture is developed at the highest levels that they do not want to deal with such matters directly. They deal only with the person immediately below him. He in turn entrusts the job to his subordinates and the chain goes on to the lowest level.

I am told of an interesting case in this regard. On a call from higher politicians at New Delhi, a Chief Minister of a state calls one of his Ministers (Minister in charge of Public Works) and tells him to arrange for Rs. 10 lakhs, to be sent to his party chiefs in Delhi. The Minister in turn calls his five Chief Engineers and tells them to collect Rs. 10 lakhs each, as it is to be given to the Chief Minister. Each of the Chief Engineers calls their 4 Superintending Engineers and asks them to collect Rs. 10 lakhs each and the chain goes on to Executive Engineers, Deputy Executive Engineers, Assistant Executive Engineers and others. Finally, the total amount collected comes to crores of Rupees. All this money is finally collected from the contractors and the public in the name of the Chief Minister. But the actual money that reaches the hands of Chief Minister is only Rs. 10 lakhs. The rest of the money is eaten away by politicians and officers at different levels. In the bargain, the Chief Minister gets a very bad name of being highly corrupt. Instead of this hierarchy, if the Chief Minister had dealt with one person and taken money directly, he would not have got such a bad name and also the Government and the public would have been saved of hundreds of lakhs of Rupees, which were swindled by the officers on line at various levels.

Corruption has no levels and no ends. We have heard of a story where one stock broker went to the Prime Minister’s office at New Delhi and left a suitcase. When the suitcase was opened, it contained currency worth one crore of Rupees. The stock broker said it was meant to be given to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister’s office denied and said it was all false. The stock broker was arrested and a police case followed. The result of the case was as expected.

Another alarming social aspect has come up in this regard. Money is not the only thing that makes a man corrupt. There are many other ways in which a man can be corrupted. One of the effective ways is the age-old sex. For getting any work done, sex is used as a tool. Women are arranged as prey to the officers and politicians and others to get their works done. Some officers and others fall prey to this and get corrupted. There are instances, where women are used as tools of sex, to get highly confidential Central Government and Defense information from the senior Secretary level officers of Government of India and politicians and pass it on to other alien countries to the detriment of our country. So, this type of corruption leads a man to go to any extent and even to sell away the country.

While this is so in India, USA does not seem to be very much different. There are umpteen cases of heavy corruption of senior officials and also of powerful members of Congress, by major contractors of government works. It has come in a daily Newspaper in the Bay area recently, that a Defense contractor hosted fancy dinner parties and chartered jets for powerful members of Congress, while his company was racking up more than $100 million in Government contracts. The contractor is going on trial to fight the federal charges that he funneled more than $700,000 in bribes to a law maker in the form of cash and perks including the services of two prostitutes at high end Hawaiian resort.

I have recently come across a report “My Years as Vigilance Commissioner of Andhra Pradesh� by Mr. R. C. Samal IAS (Retd), Former Vigilance Commissioner of Government of Andhra Pradesh, who recently retired. It is a 40 page report and there are very interesting revelations in this about corruption in Andhra Pradesh State and the country.

The observations of Mr. R. C. Samal confirm my views as to the high levels at which corruption is now present in the country. As I said before, corruption has become a way of life in India and democracy cannot survive any longer without corruption and indiscriminate and high level corruption.

But, many times, people like and prefer a corrupt but efficient and dynamic officer or a contractor to an honest but inefficient and ineffective officer or contractor, who cannot deliver the goods and in time.

Now, India is developing very fast, especially with the globalization of economy. Lots of investments are coming in from internal sources and also from developed countries outside like US, Japan and Germany and from World Bank, Asian Development Bank and other organizations. With these huge monies, the Government of India and the State Governments have taken up large number of Irrigation, Power, Roads and Industrial projects. All these projects are taken up on a war footing with the available personnel and machinery. They are all working hard. But some people and political parties are regularly raising a hue and cry about the corruption in the execution of the projects. They are very nearly stalling the projects or delaying the projects. As I said, some people may be corrupt. But they are highly exaggerated. In execution of works, there are two things: 1. Corruption 2. Irregularities. Irregularities arise out of not following the set rules of the department. Most of the time irregularities are committed in the interest of the project, in order to save money and save time of execution. Irregularities are to be ratified by the higher officials or governments, which are mostly done.

Healthy criticism is good. But criticizing and opposing every thing that government does for the sake of criticism and for political advantage is not healthy for the state and the people. It will only stall the progress and development of the country. When once these great Irrigation and Power projects and industries are completed, vast benefits will accrue to the people and the country.

I am not supporting corruption. I would like to reiterate that Corruption is morally and ethically bad, unhealthy and wrong. The social values themselves have changed very much. Corruption has gone beyond the control of anybody. It has gone to every field of activity. As I said, corruption has become a way of life in India and other countries round the world. You cannot now stop it or reduce it. It looks as though democracy itself cannot survive without corruption. Probably we have to live with it and still see that the country develops and progresses. Let us watch, let us see, how the country goes!

* Excerpts from the Lecture delivered by Sri M.L. Swamy at the 90th Meet of FOSWL (Friends On Same Wave Length), India Community Center, Cupertino, California on 08 October 2007.
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Exchange of Gifts between Edison and Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy, the Russian writer exchanged friendly greetings and ‘intellectual products�. One of the inventions of Tolstoy (who was deaf) was the Phonograph, the speaking machine which could record speeches. It worked on wax cylinders. The Editor of New York Times, Stephen Bonsal who visited Tolstoy at his residence was impressed with his hospitality. As he came to know about Tolstoy’s interest in the Phonograph, he promised to get him the latest one from America. Bonsal knew that Edison’s Phonograph was being used by a million people in America. When Edison came to know that the phonograph was for Tolstoy, he gave it as a gift without charging money.

However, Edison requested Tolstoy to send his message recorded on it so that a million people would benefit by it. Tolstoy sent two English messages recorded on it, with a note: “The most powerful thing in the world is thought.�

Thus Edison’s gift to Tolstoy was his phonograph and Tolstoy’s gift to Edison was a record of his voice with a message in English. When his son Count Tolstoy visited Edison after his father’s death, Edison allowed him as a special case to meet him in his famous private room (Room 12) which bears the sign “This room is not open to any visitors on any pretext whatever.�
–Courtesy ‘The Hindu� dated 1-3-2008