That we are among the most corrupt societies in the world needs little reiteration.  But that's not the real bad news. The real bad news is that our corruption has several layers - in fact layers upon layers - which may make it all but impossible to tackle corruption seriously in the foreseeable future or even within the next generation. This is because, in order to address the corruption at one level, we need to peal the corruption at the next level and then again at the next level and so on. Let us get to understand what we mean by several layers of corruption.

When a politician or a civil servant or a judge or a policeman or a journalist is corrupt, that is bad of course. But it is not the kind of bad that cannot be addressed in a well functioning society. In South Korea, Japan, China and elsewhere in the world for example, corrupt politicians or civil servants are routinely brought to book. This happens because while the individuals may be corrupt, the system is not. The system works without corruption and is held accountable.

In India on the other hand, not merely the individuals, but the systems governing those individuals, and the systems governing those systems and so on, are all flawed or corrupt. Consider the ED and CBI which are the agencies supposed to investigate, say some corrupt politician or bureaucrat.  Now these agencies have deliberately been kept under the control of the ruling government and hence the ruling political party.


Needless to say, a corrupt politician, civil servant or a top policeman will be investigated by this ED or CBI, at the whim of the controlling government or polity. Now, if the law of the land itself is so structured (ED and CBI as the hand-maidens of the government) as to not permit the law of the land to take its course, then that amounts to an additional layer of corruption - a layer of a corrupt system superimposed over a layer of corrupt individuals. This problem is capable of being fixed by providing ED or CBI with constitutional roles not subservient to the Government. Doing so could ensure that the guilty individuals are brought to book and punished under the laws of the land. In other words, if we want to fix the corrupt individuals, we must first fix the corrupt system of accountability of our enforcement agencies.

In the same vein, consider again the convoluted but institutionalized systems of 'auctioning' of various positions of power in the Government. Once a cop or a customs official or an octroi inspector has bought the position, it stands to reason that he must recover the 'investment'. So if you wish to crack the corruption of these officials, you must first crack the upper layer of the corrupt system of posting these officials. Similarly, the bureaucrats have perfected the system of deliberately leaving loose ends, grey areas and ambivalence in the drafting of policies to give themselves more ways to exploit their power through corruption.  One could go on.

On top of it all is the layer involving the funding political parties. It should be conceptually possible to bring about changes in the system such that transparent, tax deductible contribution to political parties becomes possible. But this is not in the interest of the majority of self-serving politicians in cahoots with officials, who brazenly make millions or even billions in the name to collecting money for the parties. And as is well known, it is this corrupt system that leads to corruption further down the line, as the political masters set a target to their civil servants, bank chairmen, public sector heads, police top brass and other power brokers, who in turn set sub-targets down the line, leading to the phenomenon we are all witnessing and suffering from.

See what I mean by layers of corruption? That is why none from the CWG scam, even if they looted the exchequer by tens of thousands of crores, will ever really be brought to book. That's why no one may really have to answer for the 2G scam running into lakhs of crores. That's why generals stealing apartments from Kargil Widows may romp home free. That's why it may be par for the course for judges to steal PF money from class IV employees. That's why a Yedurappa may cock a snook at the ruling party at the centre. They have rigged the system itself to be deliberately flawed or skewed or corrupt. If you want to tackle corruption at individual level, first you will have to address the issue of corrupt system.  When you wish to address that layer, you may have to first address the layer of corrupt system of political funding.

Our politicians have nurtured these corrupt systems deliberately with the help of obsequious bureaucrats for decades in order to best serve their vested interests.  In fact legislature is the only institution available in a democracy to change these systems, but ironically, they see little incentive to do so, given that the welfare of the nation as a whole was never their incentive for getting into politics in the first place.

So we run a democracy in which corrupt politicians are saved by brother politicians, corrupt IAS officers by brother IAS officers; corrupt Army men by brother officers; corrupt judges by brother judges; corrupt cops by brother cops and so on, so that all the big fish are effectively cocooned by their own kind. The system is so rigged that only petty officials and citizens can ever be really brought to book. The system is not without a sense of humour though, considering not too long ago, I read a report in the Times of India according to which a government doctor was given a six month sentence because 25 years ago, he had charged Rs 25 from a school teacher for issuing a fake medical certificate - ah, the long arm and majesty of law!