We should live with corruption

It is time political parties stop promising that they would provide corruption-free government. We have seen that no government could achieve this in the last seven decades. Instead of corruption-free governments we now have free corruption whether any political party agrees or not.

Though we have several laws to curb corruption and many agencies to probe cases of graft, things have not changed or maybe they were not allowed to be changed. In this connection, one should admire the former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi who admitted on the floor of Parliament that corruption cannot be done away as it is a global phenomenon.

Just before every election, all political parties vow to root out corruption and give clean administration. Corruption does not only mean giving and taking bribe. There is corruption of thought as well. We have even seen leaders stating on the floor of the legislatures that they will not encourage practice floor crossing and if anyone wants to join their party he or she would have to resign from the membership of the legislature and if they do not do so, the Speaker should disqualify them. But in practice this never happened.

In process of presenting the Interim Budget for the fiscal year 2019-20 on February 1, Union Minister Piyush Goyal identified Modi Government as 'corrupt-free'. He said, "It's a new era of graft-free regulation by bringing out Real Estate regulation Act and Benami Act. We conducted a transparent transaction of natural resources, like coal. The Fugitive Economic Offenders Bill will prosecute economic offenders who have taken the money and never returned them and fled the country. Number of measures implemented to ensure clean banking, a resolution friendly mechanism has been instituted for the recovery of non-performing loans".

But then the big question is whether have we done away with corruption? Can changes in rules and regulations make the country free from corruption? To root out corruption would mean to change the system. And this cannot take place overnight. What we need is a revolution.

Corruption in India is rampant both in political field and in every department of the country and the people feel helpless and they give bribe to the officials to get the work done. The very fact that the Supreme Court has asked all the CJs of High Courts to head special benches and immediately hear long pending criminal cases against sitting and former legislators speaks volumes. These cases range from corruption to money laundering and all of them are among those who spoke against corruption.

Corruption cannot end unless we have government employees who have high moral values and who refuse to accept bribe. But now in certain states we are seeing officials who say "Our vote bank is safe". It seems the political system has made the officials forget the thin line between political executive and the administration. Can the NDA government led by Modi tackle such a situation?

We also need law makers who will refuse to break the law. We need to sensitise the people, particularly the youngsters. But that can be done only when the political and administrative system is flushed out corrupt elements. It is easy to preach that as responsible citizens, we should say NO to bribery. But when officials refuse to move the files unless their palms are greased, the honest person has either to suffer or fall in line and pay the money to get things done.

There should be complete transparency in official transactions. Structured anti-corruption laws need to be put in place. What is most important is we should have a strong political will to fight corruption. Perhaps in India this would amount to asking for the moon.