Tackling Corruption in India

(GS Paper-4- Challenges of corruption) (GS Paper-2-Indian Polity & Corruption) (Public Administration Paper-2-Corruption and Administration) (Essay)

Political is perhaps the most straightforward component of anti-corruption policy

India’s corruption ecosystem

What are the underlying factors driving corruption in India?

How can one classify the surfeit of corrupt activities observed in India?

What remedies have proven effective to tackle corruption?

· The most common definition of corruption as the misuse of public office for private gain.

· Four drivers set the stage for the vast majority of corruption in contemporary India.

· The first two—lack of enforcement capacity and regulatory complexity—are deep causes, or foundational characteristics of India’s institutions.

· The other two—inadequate regulation of political finance and shortcomings in public sector recruitment and postings—are more proximate offshoots of India’s institutional infirmities.

These four drivers give rise to three distinct types of malfeasance:

· facilitative,

· collusive and

· extractive corruption.

Facilitative: Most Indians will immediately recognize facilitative corruption from their regular interaction with the state machinery: officials demanding bribes to perform or expedite the basic functions of their job, like issuing passports or ration cards.

Collusive Corruption involves bribes paid to circumvent regulations, kickbacks from government procurement, and bribes paid to illegitimately obtain government contracts or licences all fit into this category.

Extractive Corruption comprises diverse crimes, from embezzlement and harassment bribery to shirking and simply not showing up to work. The empirical evidence of these three categories of corrupt activities is widespread.

What can India do to decrease corruption?

From a policy perspective, the most relevant question is: what, if anything, can India do to decrease corruption?

· Fortunately, India’s federal system has been a hotbed of experimentation and states are slowly learning which innovative strategies work and which do not.

· Anti-corruption experiments have rigorously tested a broad range of tools, including: information provision and bottom-up monitoring, technological solutions, financial incentives, as well as legal and policy reform.

1. Information Provision

· Information provision is an important tool in the toolbox, but, on its own, it is not always an effective anti-graft strategy.

· Studies in India show that increasing the level of transparency about government performance produces the greatest returns when it is accompanied by reforms that enhance the bargaining power of ordinary citizens, improve coordination and collective action, or strengthen the State’s ability to punish impunity.

· For instance, when it comes to the persistence of criminal or corrupt actors in electoral politics, there is compelling evidence that the factors that give rise to this nexus have more to do with social divisions embedded within India’s weak-rule-of-law society than information asymmetries.

Technological approaches

· To tackling corruption are appealing but face their own set of challenges.

· Technological innovations still rely on higher levels of government to monitor and enforce punishments for malfeasance, which they may be loath to do for political economy reasons.

· Technology-based solutions work best with concerted institutional support, and when they decentralise enforcement, circumvent middlemen bureaucrats, and empower ordinary citizens.

Political reform

· Perhaps the most straightforward component of anti-corruption policy. In fact, a wide-ranging and sensible legislative agenda to reduce corruption already exists.

· With an assist from the government, Parliament should pursue it with greater vigour.

· The Election Commission has succeeded in minimising the most blatant forms of electoral fraud, but it has struggled to contain the flow of dirty money in politics.

· Amending the body’s legal authorities so it can insist on absolute transparency for political contributions and sanction would-be violators is an easy first step.

· In addition, pending measures such as the Right to Services and Public Procurement bills can constrain the abuse of government discretion and shift bargaining power in favour of ordinary citizens. While these bills are promising, they require more serious thinking about implementation capacity.

· For instance, a new right to services bill, which guarantees citizens’ right to a specified list of services in a fixed period of time, adds a new channel for redressing grievances to a system already overburdened with legislative mandates.

Reformers and legislators debate new ideas to counter corruption

· They should bear in mind that progress is only possible if the effort to pass new laws is accompanied by an equal effort to repeal outdated laws.

· It is both natural and politically convenient for legislators to focus on creating new anti-corruption regimes, but neglecting the less flashy task of streamlining India’s legal regime is short-sighted.

· The complexity and sheer volume of laws in India make both compliance and enforcement needlessly difficult.

· A simpler, more logical legal regime would reduce corrupt incentives.

Circumventing weak institutions

· It may be necessary to curb corruption today, but it is not a sustainable or even desirable state of affairs in the long term.

· At the end of the day, even the most immaculate laws require competent State institutions to enforce them and effective judiciaries to adjudicate disputes.

· The Right to Information law gives average Indians greater recourse to redressing grievances than ever before, but if government information officers remain in short supply and appeals processes remain backlogged, empowerment could quickly turn into disenchantment.

· In reforming the state, the right balance must be struck between restraining the government’s worst excesses while simultaneously allowing government functionaries to do their jobs.

· For example, elements of the 1998 Prevention of Corruption Act are so poorly drafted that even the most upright bureaucrat can be charged with taking a decision that results in anyone obtaining “for himself or for any other person any valuable thing or pecuniary advantage”.

Conclusion / High stakes

Tackling corruption in India is a massive task, but the enormity of the challenge should not dampen reformers’ spirits. The stakes are high—left unchecked, corruption will hamper India’s ability to grow its economy and to provide opportunities for its young population. Worse, corruption also risks diminishing the faith ordinary Indians have in the rule of law and the democratic system; such distrust can trigger a negative spiral as even honest reform initiatives are viewed with suspicion and stymied. Reformers should take comfort in knowing that they are not forging a new path; the literature is replete with examples of effective, inexpensive and logistically simple solutions. India stands to gain immensely from combining these fixes with the more arduous task of strengthening important institutions and State capabilities. While the ability of these solutions to circumvent weak public sector institutions has its limits, the potential gains from reform suggest that such an agenda should be pursued with urgency.

Death by denial: harsh reality of inadequate medical infrastructure:

(GS Paper-2-Issues relating to Health)

Recently in news i.e. Children were died due to dengue in Delhi because of non-availability of beds in govt. Hospital.

What should India do to make a good infrastructure in medicals ?

· Issues in regard to public and private health infrastructure are different and both of them need attention but in different ways.
· Rural public infrastructure must remain in mainstay for wider access to health care for all without imposing undue burden on them.
· Side by side the existing set of public hospitals at district and sub-district levels must be supported by good management and with adequate funding and user fees and out contracting services, all as part of a functioning referral net work.
· This demands better routines more accountable staff and attention to promote quality.
· Many reputed public hospitals have suffered from lack of autonomy inadequate budgets for non-wage O&M leading to faltering and poorly motivated care.
· All these are being tackled in several states are part health sector reform, and will reduce the waste involved in simpler cases needlessly reaching tertiary hospitals direct These, attempts must persist without any wavering or policy changes or periodic denigration of their past working.
· More autonomy to large hospitals and district public health authorities will enable them to plan and implement decentralized and flexible and locally controlled services and remove the dichotomy between hospital and primary care services.
· Further. most preventive services can be delivered by down staging to a public health nurse much of what a doctor alone does now.
· Such long term commitment for demystification of medicme and down staging of professional help has been lost among the politicians bureaucracy and technocracy after the decline of the PHC movement.
· One consequence is the huge regional disparities between states which are getting stagnated in the transition at different stages and sometimes, polarized in the transition.
· Some feasible steps in revitalizing existing infrastructure are examined below drawn from successful experiences and therefore feasible elsewhere.

Fixing India’s farm failures:

(GS Paper-3-Issues relating to Agriculture)

· India needs to invest more in developing rural infrastructure

· After borrowing heavily for inputs such as seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, farmers in most parts of India wait for the monsoon. When the rain fails, the farmers’ agony begins.

· Forced migration to cities in search of manual work, distress sales of land and, in extreme cases, suicides are the way out.

· India has seen poor weather conditions hitting agriculture.

· These are not the only episodes of weather-induced distress; even a cursory look at monsoon data and output failures shows the country’s experience on this score is pretty regular.

· Yet, when trouble strikes, there are few worthwhile tools in the government’s policy toolkit.

· In the end, cheap diesel, higher minimum support prices (MSPs), easier availability of inputs and, more controversially, debt waivers, are the only responses.

· These crisis answers don’t help farmers in the long run. Some of them sow the seeds for future trouble—higher MSPs and debt waivers fall in this class.

· Small farmers are unable to muster working capital even if they are located in regions with irrigation; relatively large farmers (with lands in the 10-15 acre range) located in rainfed areas are totally at the mercy of the weather for survival. Price interventions alone in these situations are unlikely to be anything more than a sugar rush for a small run.

Three steps come to mind:

First will be to cut the fat layer of intermediaries between farmers and the bulk or industrial consumers of farm produce.

Two India needs to invest more in developing rural infrastructure, beginning with roads connecting villages to market towns. Instead of spending money on illusory welfare schemes, a much better option is to develop the transport and post-harvest crop storage infrastructure for farmers.

Three price interventions need to be organized better. Higher MSPs are of no use if the government cannot procure crops. The government certainly cannot buy every last grain offered by the farmers. A more effective way to ensure a price floor is to pay farmers the gap between the rate at which they sell and the average price of the crop in the local market.

There are other, far more pressing, questions that need resolution. Water scarcity—both due to poor rains and depleted aquifers—is now a reality in large parts of India. Mechanisms for better allocation between farmers and other users, and between farmers themselves, now need urgent attention. Soon, water will determine what crops India can produce and how much. Instead of quibbling over farm prices, it is water pricing that needs resolution.

How to check onion prices? (Agriculture related issues)-GS Paper-3

· In this fluctuating onion price story, factors such as excess demand, supply shocks, speculative storage or hoarding, poor market infrastructure, weak supply chains and trade controls can be held responsible for explaining the price shocks.

· With dependence on rainfall, the production, and consequent delays in market arrival, and future expectations also fuel speculative activity in onions.

· An interesting aspect of the onion story is the degree of market integration.

· Inefficiencies in marketing infrastructure and high transportation costs also hurt the market in mitigating rising prices.

· A natural consequence of integration is the transmission of price signals between markets, which can transmit market specific shocks across states.

· Despite many short-term measures to curb prices, a multi-pronged strategy needs to be evolved to stabilize the price of onions. Since volatility in onion prices is an outcome of speculative storage, it is, therefore, important to closely monitor market behaviour, regulate storage and check unscrupulous trade practices in the axis markets from which price signals emerge. Incentivize farmer producer organizations for onion production and processing in different agro-ecological zones to maintain a regular supply of onions and check speculative behaviour of market functionaries.

· Efforts are needed to build a system for production forecasts and market intelligence that would facilitate timely policy decisions on exports and/or imports of onions.

· It is also time to look into the dehydrated onions market, which may help arrest price volatility to some extent.

· Investment in dehydration facilities will help in the utilization of the existing stock.

· Finally, it is important to develop varieties, technologies and cultivation practices suited to varied environments so as to dilute regional concentration in production and marketing. This will provide not only income stability to farmers and thereby increase productivity (with enhanced investment) but also much-needed price stability to consumers.

Tunnel effect and caste reservations:

(GS Paper-1:Social Empowerment)

· Democracy has ensured that the socioeconomically backward communities emerge as large voting blocs

· First, classify envy from differential mobility into desperation and aspiration: the Maoist uprising is an act of recognizable desperation, the Patel mobilization one of pure aspiration.

· Second, introduce instruments of dissent—social media, adult franchise, bandhs and maybe revolution.

· A legitimate question then is, when does the tunnel effect wear off, and thence what form does it take? A second related question, prequel to the first, is under what circumstances does the tunnel effect last for a substantial period of time? And can governments design for the tunnel effect as a tool for development?

· That the Patidars are a rather affluent caste is well documented. However, as some have pointed out, the wealth distribution amongst them is skewed towards the very rich, giving an illusion of riches across the board. Even controlling for this fact, it is hard to see how the Patidars will qualify as a backward caste based on the formula prescribed by the Mandal Commission.

· One can argue at the outset that the introduction of reservations for Dalits and Adivasis in educational institutions and jobs was a masterstroke by the Constitution makers that allowed the tunnel effect to first kick in and then stay prolonged. To see some in your community break through keeps hopes alive. However, Mandal reintroduced reservations as a political rather than social instrument of change. The method adopted by Patidars is a legacy of Mandal.

· It is important to note that the tunnel effect, and designing for it, is not necessarily bad.

· Many eminent economists have argued that is impossible to avoid inequality in the quest for growth; the extent of it though is what separates success from failure.

· If growth and equity are the two principal tasks facing a country, these can be solved sequentially if endowed with a strong tunnel effect.

Solutions:

· Solving these simultaneously “is a difficult enterprise that requires institutions wholly different than those appropriate to the sequential case”. Not to say simultaneity is impossible; modern non-homogenous capitalist nation states haven’t shown so far that it can be done.

· The tunnel effect has been found to be empirically hard to implement in countries with significant ethnic, religious or linguistic diversities.

· It requires empathy from the immobile towards the ones that are advancing, and a mechanism to repeatedly address the emerging inequalities.

· Democracy has ensured that the socioeconomically backward communities emerge as large voting blocs. This has brought them political power, a key sustainer of the tunnel effect.

· The 21st century has brought problems of identity and aspirations, and hopefully, concomitantly evolving mechanisms for addressing them.

· It is to the government’s advantage that the Patidars have been a robust electoral base for the last few decades. Given that reservations seem unjustifiable, they need to come up with a new mechanism of channelling these and similar aspirations.

Lessons from India’s castes:

(GS Paper-1: Social Empowerment)

· Quota should be based on persistent inequality, measured in terms of poverty and access to educational institutions:

· In India, the Constitution affirmatively enshrines preferences in employment and education for members of historically disfavoured castes, and amendments to the constitution have entrenched and intensified the practice.
· India’s forms of discrimination go back millennia and are grounded in religious and cultural tradition, not just naked racial bias.
· The contemporary Indian situation is particularly fascinating. The latest public movement against caste preferences comes from the Patel community, whose members were traditionally village leaders and landowners.
· The Patels’ historical position puts them outside the schedule of traditionally disfavoured castes who qualify for preferences. Their protest can therefore be tentatively compared to the anti-affirmative-action sentiments of white, male, middle-class Americans who think that the practice denies them equal opportunity.
· In India, where quotas are explicit, it’s much easier to make that determination definitively.
· The reason for caste preferences in the Indian Constitution goes back to the founders of the modern nation, particularly from Jawaharlal Nehru’s Congress party. Their aspiration, inspired in part by Mahatma Gandhi, was to counteract the extreme class distinctions wrought by caste, especially under British imperial rule. Under these circumstances, it made sense to single out particular disfavoured groups in the constitution.
· The inequality was so pervasive that it would’ve been absurd to say the law must treat everyone equally. Facial neutrality would’ve continued the structure of inequality.
· later amendments to the Constitution that deepened the effects of caste preferences have been equally asymmetric, but less justified.
· Permanently enshrining caste distinctions can create sub-classes of privileged members of formerly disadvantaged castes.
· The solution, if there is one, is means-testing. If quotas are to be used in India, they should be based on existing, persistent inequality, measured in terms of poverty and access to educational institutions
· That’s a real cost, although one that’s rarely acknowledged. Do we want a system of affirmative action that wouldn’t give an extra push to a young Barack Obama, who wasn’t raised in poverty?
· One possible solution is to introduce an economic component to race-based affirmative action gradually, over generations.
· In India, changing existing arrangements will be difficult.
· Members of previously disadvantaged castes form a highly significant interest group.
· Entrenched political preferences can’t easily be changed without a major political cost. And the constitutional status of the preferences makes it even harder to change the status quo.
· But there’s an important lesson here for the Supreme Court: Don’t freeze the affirmative-action issue unnecessarily by declaring the practice unconstitutional.
· Righting past social wrongs requires creative and dynamic social programs. Once something is interpreted as being in a constitution—whether as obligatory or as prohibited—it becomes much more difficult to effect change.

Who will suffer most from climate change?

(GS Paper-3: Environmental Issues)

Rising temperatures in the decades ahead will lead to major disruptions in agriculture, particularly in tropical zones.

Problems:

· Farmers don’t have access to improved seeds, fertilizer, irrigation systems, and other beneficial technologies, as farmers in rich countries do—and no crop insurance, either, to protect themselves against losses.

· Just one stroke of bad fortune—a drought, a flood, or an illness—is enough for them to tumble deeper into poverty and hunger.

· Rising temperatures in the decades ahead will lead to major disruptions in agriculture, particularly in tropical zones.

· Crops won’t grow because of too little rain or too much rain. Pests will thrive in the warmer climate and destroy crops.

· Farmers in wealthier countries will experience changes, too. But they have the tools and supports to manage these risks. The world’s poorest farmers show up for work each day for the most part empty-handed. That’s why of all the people who will suffer from climate change, they are likely to suffer the most.

· Poor farmers will feel the sting of these changes at the same time the world needs their help to feed a growing population.

Solutions:

· There’s an urgent need for governments to invest in new clean-energy innovations that will dramatically reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and halt rising temperatures.

· At the same time, we need to recognize that it’s already too late to stop all of the impacts of hotter temperatures.

· Even if the world discovered a cheap, clean energy source next week, it would take time for it to kick its fossil fuel-powered habits and shift to a carbon-free future. That’s why it’s critical for the world to invest in efforts to help the poorest adapt.

· Many of the tools they’ll need are quite basic—things that they need anyway to grow more food and earn more income: access to financing, better seeds, fertilizer, training, and markets where they can sell what they grow.

· Other tools are new and tailored to the demands of a changing climate.

· To see these farmers double or triple their harvests and their incomes when they have access to the advances farmers in the rich world take for granted. This new prosperity allows them to improve their diets, invest in their farms, and send their children to school.

· It also pulls their lives back from the razor’s edge, giving them a sense of security even if they have a bad harvest.

· To be prepared, the world needs to accelerate research into seeds and supports for smallholder farmers.

· One of the most exciting innovations to help farmers is satellite technology. In Africa, researchers are using satellite images to create detailed soil maps, which can inform farmers about what varieties will thrive on their land.

A financial early warning system:

(GS Paper-3: Economic)

A warning system for financial tsunamis may be difficult to create, but we need one today more than ever

Ratings agencies wait too long to spot risks and downgrade countries, while investors behave like herds, often ignoring the build-up of risk for too long, before shifting gears abruptly and causing exaggerated market swings.

Reasons and Solutions:

· Ratings agencies and analysts who misjudged the repayment ability of debtors—including governments—have gotten off too lightly.
· Credit ratings are based on statistical models of past defaults; in practice, however, with few national defaults having actually occurred, sovereign ratings are often a subjective affair.
· Analysts at ratings agencies follow developments in the country for which they are responsible and, when necessary, travel there to review the situation.
· Ratings are often backward-looking, downgrades occur too late, and countries are typically rerated based on when analysts visit, rather than when fundamentals change.
· Moreover, ratings agencies lack the tools to track consistently vital factors such as changes in social inclusion, the country’s ability to innovate, and private-sector balance-sheet risk.
· Given the problems with ratings agencies, investors and regulators recognize the need for a different approach.
· A comprehensive assessment of a country’s macro investment risk requires looking systematically at the stocks and flows of the national account to capture all dangers, including risk in the financial system and the real economy, as well as wider risk issues.
· As we have seen in recent crises, private risk-taking and debt are socialized when a crisis occurs. So, even when public deficits and debt are low before a crisis, they can rise sharply after one erupts. Governments that looked fiscally sound suddenly appear insolvent.
· An assessment of sovereign risk that is systematic and data-driven could help to spot the risks that changing global headwinds imply. To that extent, it provides exactly what the world needs now: an approach that removes the need to rely on the ad hoc and slow-moving approach of ratings agencies and the noisy and volatile signals coming from markets.

Enabling strategic agility in organizations:

(GS Paper-3: Technological Advancement)

Processes and technologies enable short-term responsiveness, while culture-related factors like people and principles enable the long-term thinking.

Companies can do this by focusing on four enablers of strategic agility: people, principles, processes and technologies.

Processes:

· Processes become central in enabling strategic agility.
· Processes such as those concerning human resource policies or corporate governance drive the slow-moving long-term performance of organizations, while production-oriented processes which react to the dynamics of operating environments drive short-term performance.
· Processes actualize a company’s principles and ideologies.
· A comprehensive system of policies, processes, and leader behaviours that are aligned and internally consistent with its innovative culture.

Technologies:

· Technologies enable processes, but, more critically, they allow different ways of executing a process.
· Technology can also boost resilience and agility.
· In the commercial banking industry, for example, when compared with a human teller, ATM and Internet technologies increase productivity and reduce transaction costs dramatically. At the same time, by providing additional channels through which the bank can deliver service to its customers, these technologies improve the resilience and agility of the bank.
· The introduction of technology creates a platform that enables innovation of business processes and products.
· Technologies can be used not only to innovate, but also transform their respective industries.

People:

· For instance, when visionary chief executives are in place for a long time, it creates stability and direction within the organization, and not surprisingly, such companies enjoy enduring success.

· Individuals and their interactions primarily determine the ethos of the company—the collective habits that generate the spirit of the organization and govern its response to rapidly evolving situations. Thus, a company’s ability to nurture employees and to foster collective spirit drives strategic agility.

Principles:

· Principles articulate the character of a company.
· They becomes the Standard Operating Procedures of not only the ethical make-up of a company, but also reflect its commitments such as “customer-centric” or “innovation-driven”.
· An unwavering adherence to principles develops “character” both in individuals and in organizations, and creates what becomes known as “the company’s way” of doing things. Whether the principles are connected to ethics (being honest, following fair practices) or are more business-centric
· Principles portray to the world how the company perceives it, and the world in turn reciprocates this perception.
· Processes and technologies enable short-term responsiveness, while culture-related factors like people and principles enable the long-term thinking. To become strategically agile, companies need to develop all these four enablers of strategic agility.
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