When you no longer have to bribe govt officials to get your due

An empowered India to me, and to each one of us, is where the common citizen is able to get what he is entitled to without having to pay any bribe and without having to supplicate before an indifferent and corrupt bureaucracy. Without achieving this through tangible and perceptible improvement in the quality of governance, all talk of an India occupying a high position in the comity of nations, as a strong economic power cannot but ring empty and hollow.

I do believe the situation is not beyond redemption or hope. The Central Vigilance Commission over the years has identified and suggested a number of simple measures which could achieve dramatic improvement in the current state of affairs. I am listing a few of the important measures below:

• Since the common man comes into contact mostly with public service organisations at the panchayat and state level, there is need for making the State Vigilance set-up independent and powerful. The guidelines set out by the Supreme Court in the Vineet Narain judgement need to be extended and made applicable to the States. This would include ensuring autonomy and independence of the State Anti-Corruption Bureau.

• Delay is the root cause of corruption. It is necessary to discourage delays on the part of officials in dealing with cases of public importance. The electronic file tracking system and regular publication of information on the processing of cases in departments and the time taken at various levels including the highest, will discourage such delays and make the public servants really responsible and accountable.

• Exercise of discretionary powers by public servants is another area to be checked. Discretion should be minimised, if not eliminated. All exercise of discretionary powers along with the public interest served by such exercise should be regularly put on the website of the organisations for all to see. This would deter arbitrary exercise of such power.

• Elimination of personal contact of the common citizens with bureaucracy has been found to be a simple and effective measure to improve the quality of service and eliminate harassment. e-Governance is now recognised and accepted by Governments at all levels. This should be extended to cover all areas of public service in a time-bound manner.

• Citizen’s charters are invaluable in making public servants accountable but there is need for all citizen charters in existence to be redrafted with sharper focus on deliverables and also making them more customer-centric.

• Redressal of grievance is an area crying for improvement. There is need for appointment of empowered ombudsmen in all departments and organisations with significant public contact.

• The right to information is perhaps the most potent tool to eliminate corruption and improve governance. However, in order that the use of this right is not confined to matters of personal concern, there is need for NGOs to study each major Government department and come up with guidelines for effective use of RTI in larger public interest.

• Public procurement is perhaps the single largest source of corruption and leakage of public revenues. Procedures for purchases by Government departments and public sector enterprises should be made more transparent and time-bound. Apart from publication of all tenders on the website along with downloading of tender forms, the tender results should also be made public within a reasonable period say, four weeks of the concluding day. Delays in deciding tenders should, without fail, attract vigilance investigation.

• Ministerial/departmental interference in the day-to-day functioning of the public sector enterprises needs to be checked. The recommendations of the Study Group headed by Shri Arjun Sengupta requires to be acted upon immediately. The PSUs should be totally left to the Boards of Directors for management and control. Such boards should be filled with competent professionals with expertise and men of integrity and credibility. Any talk of freeing the PSUs and Banks from the purview of CAG or the CVC without such empowerment of the Boards will only further stoke corruption and not achieve anything else.

• Action against public servants identified by the vigilance as responsible for specific misconduct need to be severe and swift. Delays in taking action in vigilance matters should attract stringent penalties. The advice of the CVC in such matters should be binding on the disciplinary authority concerned and non-compliance should meet with the same kind of penalties as specified in the RTI Act.

• NGOs have a great role to play in making institutions like the CVC or the Information Commission really useful and effective in tackling the problems faced by the common man. In fact, they should serve as bridges between the citizens and public service institutions and replace the widely prevalent intermediaries.

I have confined myself to corruption in the officialdom and deliberately omitted to talk about political corruption or corruption in the judiciary. It is true that the empowerment, which we talk about, cannot come about without corresponding improvements in these areas. But I believe the electoral reforms proposed by the Central Election Commission and vigorously championed by NGOs like the Lok Satta will sooner or later bring about the required improvements. Recent elections have certainly strengthened one’s feeling of optimism.

The judiciary at the highest level has also shown its mind in dealing with the problem of corruption in the judicial services. Several State High Courts have already started the exercise by showing the door to hundreds of corrupt judicial officials. My appeal to my erstwhile colleagues in the bureaucracy is, therefore, to do what we can to improve governance at our level and not plead helplessness and offer the excuse of corruption in the system as a whole.

Over the nearly 40 years of my public service, I have been fortunate to witness and be inspired by hundreds of dedicated colleagues who in their own humble way played according to the rules of the game and resisted all pressure from both within and outside the bureaucracy. I am sure, still there are hundreds, if not thousands, of such public servants who along with the dedicated band of public spirited NGOs will achieve the goal or dream of an India where standards of governance will be as high as anywhere in the world and where the common citizen does get value for money. I mean the taxes he pays.