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By Rashme Sehgal An interview with Admiral R H Tahiliani (Retd), chairperson of Transparency International India and architect of India's largest ever corruption survey
'Yatha raja, tatha praja' (what the king does, the public does too) are words that Admiral R H Tahiliani (Retd), chairperson of Transparency International India (TII), uses very frequently in his conversation. And for good reason. Having conducted India's largest ever corruption survey, he believes corruption in public service will end only if the common man succeeds in putting pressure on the government to clean up the system. Why did TII decide to undertake a corruption survey?
Last year, the Berlin-based Transparency International (TI) bracketed India as the 72nd most corrupt nation in the world. It surveyed 102 nations. The Corruption Perception Index for India was 2.7 out of 10. The index relates to how corrupt the people perceive public officials and politicians to be. Finland ranked as the cleanest nation in the world, with a score of 9.9. Denmark came second with a score of 9.5. We decided to take this a step further and figure out just what was happening on the ground in India. The India Corruption Study, undertaken by us, interviewed a sample of 14,405 respondents spread across 20 states. In all we covered 151 cities and 306 villages, and, on average, interviewed between 525-950 respondents from each state. The study concluded that common citizens in India pay bribes totalling Rs 21,0168 crore every year in order to avail of one or more of 11 public services. The services we looked at were the police, schools, subordinate judiciary, land administration, municipal services and government hospitals, electricity, the public distribution system (PDS), income tax, water supply and credit to farmers. We left out customs and excise because not too many people interact with these departments. The number of people interacting on a daily basis with the police, hospitals and schools is huge. Was it your organisation that conducted the study?
No, we are much too small to undertake such a mammoth study. The actual work was done by the Centre for Media Studies (CMS), and they used a combination of methodologies to carry out the survey. These included household surveys and exit polls to capture the experiences of service-users coming out of hospitals and police stations. The police was found to be the most corrupt service; 80% of respondents interviewed admitted to having paid a bribe. The judiciary was found to be the second most corrupt service, with 41% of people admitting to having paid a bribe to influence a judgement, and another 31% admitting to paying a bribe to delay judgement. Another 28% paid bribes for routine things like getting cases listed or getting copies of documents. Unfortunately, corruption is on the rise. A majority of respondents believed that corruption had shot up substantially in the last year (2004-2005) and would continue to rise in the future unless strong steps were taken to curb it. How much did you spend on the survey?
A total of Rs 60 lakh was spent on conducting the survey. These expenses were shared between TII and the CMS. How did you arrive at the figure of Rs 21,0168 crore having been spent on bribes?
The people we interviewed did not hesitate to disclose how much they had spent on bribes. The amounts they had paid up were then expostulated for the rest of the country. We are now in the process of releasing detailed reports on each of the government departments. The idea is to show just how much harassment the common man faces today. We had undertaken a similar corruption study earlier, conducted by ORG-MARG. In this study, 500 citizens were interviewed. Here too the police was found to be the most corrupt. I must point out that we do not focus on individual cases of corruption. We are working to ensure the system changes so that the public can live in a more transparent social environment. Our aim is to empower the common man, and this can be done once we start using the Right to Information Act. We have also prepared citizens charters, which set standards in order to improve the quality of the individual's life. Britain, for example, has over ten thousand charters providing information about the performance of schools, hospitals, the police, fire services and other local authorities. In our listing of 20 states, Bihar was found to be the most corrupt with Jammu and Kashmir coming second. Aren't you being too idealistic?
We don't think so. Last month, the defence minister Pranab Mukherjee introduced new procurement guidelines for the purchase of defence equipment. The pact specifies that all deals over Rs 300 crore will be assessed by an independent monitor. Both buyer and seller have to sign the pact in order to ensure that nothing happens behind the scenes. The defence ministry felt there was a need for this and went ahead and accepted it. We are working closely with the chief vigilance commissioner to ensure that things work both at the state and central level. Corruption highest in government schools: Rs 4,137 crore paid in bribes According to Transparency International's detailed report on corruption in India , the education sector alone accounts for corruption amounting to Rs 4,137 crore. Says Naveen Surapaneni of the Centre for Media Studies (CMS), that carried out the study, "the quantum of corruption in education is equal to what the government is trying to raise (around Rs 5,000 crore) through the 2% education cess". Surprisingly it's government schools, which cater to over 70% of India 's schoolchildren, and not private schools that top the bribe charts. The study focussed on bribes paid by parents to schools to educate their children up to Class XII. According to the report, 18% of households that interacted with educational institutions said they had paid bribes amounting to 4,137 crore. Respondents say bribes need to be paid more often to obtain documents like school-leaving certificates and merit certificates. Every year, parents are asked for money to pay for improving educational programmes, maintaining school buildings and buying equipment and supplies. Parents comply, afraid their children will suffer if they don't. The study found that 33% of bribes involved additional school fees, 28% related to obtaining certificates and 26% was admission-related. "The sad part of this," says Surapaneni, "is that the sufferers are those who don't have access to and cannot afford public school education." Seventy per cent of those asked for bribes had an average monthly household income of less than Rs 10,000. Another 24% of bribe-givers had monthly incomes of less than Rs 5,000. Bribe-giving, it turned out, is more widespread in rural areas than in urban localities. Over 77% of the rural population is dependent on government schools. Corruption tends to be higher in states with low educational development. The report offers some suggestions on reducing corruption in the education sector: fund allocations to schools should be linked to enrolment rates, attendance, dropout rates and students' grades. And regulations for registering private schools eased. Source: The Indian Express , July 14, 2005 (Rashme Sehgal is a writer and journalist based in Delhi) InfoChange News & Features, July 2005
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