Sunday, June 17, 2007

Ending the Never Ending Corruption in India

There has been a slow deterioration of processes and administration after the Britishers left India.

Now I do not want to harp on the 40 year old song sung by the Indian politicians. Every politician promises that and almost all fail to deliver. What is the issue? What can be done?

Given my experience in the industry ,I think corruption can be dealt with if some systemic measures are taken.

Here’s what I think can be done effectively to decisively curb corruption in India.

Citizen Identification Number :

India does not have any citizen identification system like US . This is a big problem as there is no way a person can be uniquely identified. This needs to be done , although government is making serious efforts in this direction . The gains are huge from such an exercise . Imagine every financial transaction that a person does can then be tracked so can be all the history of the person from certificates to criminal and land records. There is simply no way to escape!

Quality and standardization:


There is an urgent need to define the quality parameters and standardize all government related services like turn around time etc .This’ll reduce the scope for corruption.

One of the easiest way to achieve both the above objective is to have good IT systems in place.

Quality will also ensure that government focuses on exceptions rather than general day to day activities.

Training :

There is a huge need to train the staff at government and PSU's. A well trained staff is the only way to achieve sustainable processes.

Pragmatic Leadership :

Finally all the above just cannot be achieved without good leadership

2 comments:

Ashutosh Sovani said...

And the biggest question is, WHO is going to effect all these changes? If you say, current batch of politicians, IAS officers, then that's a negative.

If India has to rise as a nation, it needs skilled and talented individuals - we could assume these are the ones like you and me, or for that matter, Most of our colleagues - to take up the responsibility and enter the administration ranks - either political or through IAS IPS etc. What do you say?

Tushar Anand Jiwane said...

Dear Ashutosh,

I have interacted personally for official work with a lot of IAS officers and to tell you frankly these are brilliant people so are the top politicians like Dr.Manmohan Singh ( he's a true genius or Advani or P Chidambaram ) .I do not do doubt their sincerity.
I also think that they know the solution as well - just what I have commented and as far as I know they are working on it as well.

The crucial issues here are priority and constraints (which we do not know). However I think in next 5-6 years we'll really see major steps being taken and fructify.

We do has success stories of Institutions best known being election commission, Supreme court, Railways, SEBI, RBI.There's no reason why this should not happen with the rest.

Finally some of the attitudes of nations can change only by generation change.