Tough anti-corruption measures needed

Talking tough alone will not yield any result unless the deep rooted causes of corruption are identified and treated appropriately. Public Servants do not only get protection under Art. 311 but all the Service and Conduct Rules governing them also need relook and overhaul like making the written declaration of all the movable assets to the controlling authority also mandatory alongwith all the immovable assets so as to pre-empt their well known modus operandi of stashing the ill gotten cash, etc clandestinely which can be easily taken as proof in the absence of mismatch with such declarations. After all such hidden assets including scores of passbooks and other investment instruments are invariably unearthed in raids on the premises of detected corrupt officials, which are found undeclared. Therefore, there should be no hesitation in uniformly amending the relevant Service and Conduct rules since don’t the public servants need to be transparent as well, in the face of reasonable packages and compensation given to them? These lacunae should therefore be ruthlessly plugged to attract and retain the people of impeccable reputation only in the public service. Secondly, there is need to have fresh look at the anti-corruption laws in India, besides strengthening the anti-corruption agencies like CBI by addressing its manpower shortage problem in the face of country having plenty of educated unemployed youths. Probably the top brass in CBI and the Government also do not appear to be serious enough to address the issue of filling the cadre of investigators which too should be looked into and solved in view of corruption spreading far and wide like cancer, including in judiciary, despite scattered measures in place so far.