Corruption !!

7 out of 10 Indians replied CORRUPTION when they were asked about one malady they would like to tackle if they were in an influential position in Indian government.

But what is ‘corruption’? Dictionary entries suggest rottenness, perversion, and the defilement of something once pure and wholesome. But the most common definition in use today is ‘the abuse of entrusted power for private gain’. The gain may not be strictly personal – it may be to a group, company, political party.

According to corruption watchdog Transparency International, public perception is that the problem is growing. But that could be due to greater awareness and preparedness to talk about it.

Though corruption is notoriously hard to measure, the number-crunchers at the World Bank have been busy trying. They estimate that $1 trillion is paid in bribes a year while what they call ‘tainted procurement’ is worth around $1.5 trillion a year. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg, they say. On an average it is thought that five per cent of national budgets ‘go astray’.

But corruption is about more than money.

It saps the lifeblood of a society. It deepens inequality, the poorest and most vulnerable bearing the brunt of it. Usually it is they who, unable to pay the bribes, have to forgo the basic goods and services that should be free or at least affordable. Sometimes the clean water, the education, the basic health care to which they are entitled never reaches them. Funds have been ‘diverted’. Ultimately, and often, corruption kills. It is emphatically not, as some claim, a ‘victimless crime’.

Clearly it has to be tackled and many in the West think they have the answer: ‘good governance’. The reason that so many developing countries suffer from corruption, or so the thinking goes, is because they lack the good governance found in our western-style democracy.

Indeed the annual ‘global corruption’ survey conducted by Transparency International does show countries like Finland, Iceland, Sweden and New Zealand winning the ‘least corrupt’ beauty contest. While the performances of India, Bangladesh, Chad or Uzbekistan are usually, well, dismal. So, what do we do?

Answer is simple, sign a deal with McKinsey or any other ‘consultant’ - Poor; illiterates in India don’t have to think much now. They will tell us how to change our lives for better; they will show us how to get clean. If this is not enough they will tell us where to put our money, what to produce and whom to sell it. The Westerners are here to sanitize you, your economy, and your governance! You just have to toss a million as a fee…

That’s what I call a paid servitude!