India’s development and progress have been extra-ordinary during the past decade. India is well on its way to become a developed nation during our lifetime. India’s GDP has been increasing rapidly and it has been predicted that the GDP will grow to $17,000 by 2015. One of the biggest obstacles to India’s continued progress is rampant corruption. India’s existing public systems are among the most corrupted in the entire world. Common people are the victims of corruption day in and day out. People need to bribe officials to get anything done, big or small. I have come up with a five point agenda to curb corruption in India. I outline my scheme below.
1) Tough government regulation is the key to curb this practice among its officials. We need a law to make sure that if any official is found guilty of bribery, action such as the following will be taken mandatorily.
i) If found guilty, his or her PF or pension funds will be confiscated forever. ii) Fines are payable upfront; if not found guilty, fines will be refunded later. iii) Ensure temporary or permanent presence of CBI or other anti-corruption representatives in the most vulnerable departments. iv) Organize yearly town hall meetings to make awareness among its employees highlighting departmental mission, products and services. Byproducts will be more jobs in the departments, increase in government revenue, improvements in employee morale.
2) Systems at all levels of government need to be upgraded in such a way that interactions among government officials and the public become very minimal. This can be achieved by using Windows based systems in all government departments where possible. The overall office environment needs to be improved so that every transaction becomes more transparent. Government officers should interact with common public using counters like we see in banks in the US with officers on the other side of the window attending to public needs without delay.
Byproducts will be reduced traffic to the departments with the result
that government officers will be more productive.
3) Identify most corrupt departments and points of vulnerability, and install CCTV or surveillance cameras which will be run and operated by third party, preferably from the private sector. The CCTV or surveillance camera records will be analyzed and monitored by other government departments such Anti-corruption, and CBI.
Byproducts will be job creation for the private sector, revenue
stream for CBI or anti-corruption departments, etc.
4) Introduce one mandatory chapter on corruption, its consequences and the available laws in the country in social studies text books starting class 8th or sooner to raise awareness among the prospective citizen of our country.
Byproducts will be textbooks with useful and relevant information. 5)Identify each government department’s products and services and the time taken for each service and display these numbers in public places on a mandatory basis. Publish these once in a year in popular daily local newspapers.
By products will be a new revenue stream for the newspaper
industry. Contributed by Vavani Sarmah, Seattle, USA.
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