This happens all over India. There was a time when getting dollars was very hard. An honest relative of mine had to sell his Indian home and take his money back to Australia (he was a citizen there). When the Indian government blocked him from taking his own money out of India, what did he do?
Many of our laws are stupid this way. We make it illegal for someone to be gay. We make it excruciatingly difficult for someone to open a new mine. We make it impossible for someone to open a new factory. Our rules are so bad that our entrepreneurs either have to look abroad for growth or bribe.
When laws are stupid and complex, even honest people will ignore them. When an honest man is forced to break laws on a daily basis, society decays.
In 1992, Manmohan Singh destroyed the gold smuggling business overnight. He didn't use big armies or police or courts. He just made it legal for honest people to bring gold into the country. Since the early 2000s, Hawala has gone out of vogue among the good people due to RBI reforms. Never have an unnecessary rule in your book that neither makes sense nor can be enforced.
Simplify, simplify, simplify.
* * *
Reduce Scarcity
Ask the people of 1960s and 70s of what it was like to get a phone line or a scooter in their time. Most people would have bribed someone to get these basic things. Now, you pay bribes neither to get a phone line nor to get a motorbike. You don't pay bribes to get ahead of the employment queue in employment exchange either.
Make it easy for honest and rational people to get their basic needs and desires satisfied in a straightforward way. There is a reason why all the nordic countries became so egalitarian and corruption-free (although brutal crimes were very common in the previous centuries). Prosperity is good!
The movie - Guru - ends well on this idea. Ambani could have not broken the rules and not enrich the economy. Or he could break the rules and enrich the economy. Notable economist, Swami Iyer, calls this the efficient corruption vs. inefficient corruption.
In an ideal society, such a distinction should vanish and there should be no necessity for a good businessman to bribe.
* * *
Rule of Law -> Destroy a Culture of Fear
This is the fundamental duty of the government. Setting up the rule of law so that the good guys are not afraid to talk the truth. That means anyone who threatens, hurts, or murders a journalist, judge, government servant, or a whistleblower must be treated mercilessly. Once you bring the murderers and gangs to justice with tailor-made laws and fast-track courts, the culture of fear disappears. Once good people stop being afraid, they will be more open to whistleblow. This is a classic law and order issue.
On a related note, governments should also stop scaring people with misuse of slander and libel laws. Anyone in public life should not be given the right to hide behind slander laws.
* * *
Reduce Government Involvement and Destroy Monopolies
When governments are too involved in the economy, you create power-centers that become above the law. The government agencies become monopolies and laws would get written around them. You create these "babus" who become too powerful to impact your life. There is a concept called "rent seeking" where these powerful people will take "rent" for any economic activity you do (like selling vegetables on the road).
Get rid of these babus and get rid of any kind of monopolies - government or private. When there are multiple companies vying to provide services to the people, corruption becomes less necessary.
Most of the world's most corrupted countries have too much government involvement or are run by oligarchs/autocratics.
* * *
Provide Better Wages to Cops and Other Civil Servants
In most parts of India, cops get peanuts as official salary. This makes it impossible for a honest person to get in and survive. As the good apples exit, rotten apples replace them. As it is practically impossible to survive on the government salary, bribe-taking becomes a very simple and straightforward option.
Pay the cops well and be merciless when they take a bribe. When they are paid well, they have a lot to lose when breaking the rules.
* * *
Broken Window Theory - Create Clean Zones
In public policy, there is a concept called broken-window theory. In a street, if there are windows broken by miscreants and not acted upon, it sends signals to the other baddies that rule-enforcement is weak. Crimes will fester in those areas. In the same way, you tend to put garbage in those areas where there are already piles of garbage. You are less likely to throw garbage in a clean mall.
Like a lot of crimes, corruption is a disease in that it can spread easily if there are no antibodies. To solve corruption, we need to create zones of "cleanliness" - where rules are both straightforward and strongly enforced .
Government could start this in specific departments (let us say the passport office) or specific areas (say North Delhi) and do a complete reset of the rules and enforcement. Make it impossible for anyone to break the small list of logical rules you set. Eradicate the disease in that zone, quarantine it, and go to the next zones.
* * *
Working against corruption is a complex, long slog. It involves everything from building a strong economy to creating the right policies that makes sense. It is not a switch that you can turn on and off. Even if you have honest cops and leaders, you cannot solve it without fixing the underlying problems. Even if you give a death sentence to bribe givers/takers, you cannot solve it.
When we complain of attitudes, we are copping out and taking an easy way. Attitudes are a reflection of the environment and is an adaptation. That means we need to change the environment and make it conducive to obey the rules. This will not eradicate corruption; like germs, corruption will continue to live, but can be turned powerless.
There is a famous dialogue in Kamal Hassan's movie - Indian/Hindustani. It goes into how bribes are present even in developed societies - but it is given to prevent the official from doing their duty. By the bad people. In India, bribes are necessary to get the official to even do their duty. Even by the good people.
Our focus should primarily be on how to prevent honest and rational people from bribing. This can be done by designing a better system. Once you get the honest people out of the corruption ring, you will get the strength of truth to fight the small fraction of real baddies.
Step 6: National Level Skill Development
In the next 20 years, we need to bring 500 million people out of agriculture as we climb the ladders of prosperity. I have said this many times. We don't need 600 million people working in farming. It is again simple math - if 600 million people are required to produce food for 1.2 billion people, we either have to drastically push up food prices or have the farmers live in poverty.
However, if 100 million people can produce food for 1.2 billion people, the farmer salaries can go up 6X without pushing up food inflation. And all developed economies have pulled this off. This is not rocket science.
Now, what will these 500 million people do for a living? This is where we need a national level skill development. Let us produce new industrial workers, new accountants, new doctors, new mechanics, new drivers... Millions of Indian businesses are suffering from not having access to quality people.
Step 7: This is Rocket Science
India went to mobile revolution, without touching landlines. We directly went into software before we even had factories or toilets. India needs to leapfrog, wherever it is possible. Let's leverage technology to the hilt.
Let us be the most efficient guys to go to space. Let us be the leader in online education. Let us be the leader in robotics, 3D manufacturing and Internet of things (IoT) - three things that are going to drastically alter the world's economy in the next 10 years.
Just like ISRO, we need to have a national center of robotics, national center for IoT and a national institute of 3D manufacturers. Get on to this before the world even realizes this. America and Britain full
y used Industrial revolution as they didn't have big industries before that and were able to leapfrog India and China. Now, it is time for the next cycle. We don't have many industries to lose now and this is when we can leapfrog.
Step 8: Tap Our Sun and Get Out of Foreign Energy
India can't forever depend on Saudi Arabia and other countries for our oil. Coal will kill our environment like it is doing to China. Hydro power will kill our forests. Thus, we need to use solar energy as a national priority. Even if it is expensive for now, we must put all our national efforts and get the economies of scale. This will give us the energy security and the one who has the energy will be one with metaphoric power.
India has 200,000sq km of deserts in the western side (Thar Desert and Rann of Kutch). These are hot almost throughout the year and in the summers can get as hot as 52C.
A big chunk of this desert is not really populated and the government owns a lot of it. What if we could take 400sq km of land out of it for solar power?
400sq km = 400,000,000sq m
A big chunk of Western India is capable of generating 2500 kWh/sq m. Thus, total production from the 400sq km =2.5 Mwh * 400 million = 1 PWh.This is the total electricity production of India. In short, with less than 0.2% of our desert, we can almost completely wean ourselves of foreign energy.
* * *
Miles to Go Before I Sleep
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
-Robert Frost in Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
* * *
References
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Chapter 2:
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Chapter 3:
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Chapter 4:
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Chapter 5:
The Report of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal with the decision. Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation. Retrieved from: http://wrmin.nic.in/writereaddata/Inter-StateWaterDisputes/Volume-I1920752696.pdf
From Tryst to Tendulkar: The History of Independent India Page 26