There should be no mercy for the corrupt

Corruption in the body politic has always been a subject of animated debate amid calls for state funding of elections and the need to keep tainted politicians away from the electoral arena. But what about the malaise in government departments and more so when corruption sinks its tentacles deep in the police wing? The recent incident in which three Bengaluru cops were booked for trying to extort a huge sum of money – Rs 20 lakh – from a Delhi-based businessman is a pointer to how corrupt practices have become enmeshed with the regular functioning of the police department.

In fact, the manner in which the accused policemen took a businessman to Delhi where they reportedly tried to defraud him, shows that shady deals and quid pro quos have become part and parcel of the functioning of every state wing including the police. Only a full-fledged inquiry will be able to prove how deep the extent of corruption runs and whether there are others in the police department involved in this messy affair.

But then it is not only business entities, the common man is perpetually at the mercy of touts and shady agents who are always lurking around government departments ready to get any paperwork done or proposal ‘passed’ at a price. There is nothing like a clean and well-oiled administrative machinery, for unless there are crisp currency notes to fund it, nothing moves in government departments.

Karnataka BJP bigwig KS Eshwarappa has already faced the heat over allegations of demanding commission from a Hubballi-based contractor for approving pending dues. More recently, a businessman who committed suicide over a failed deal had blamed another BJP MLA, Aravind Limbavali, in his suicide note that forced the cops to include his name in the FIR.

These murky incidents obviously bring up the pertinent question of how to go about erasing corruption from the system or at least make sure that we reduce it to the minimum, so that the people out there looking for succour from welfare schemes do not have to keep greasing palms all the way till they receive a pittance of an allowance? It’s only collective pressure of the people at large that can force officialdom to keep its act clean and make sure that there is no room for graft at any stage of their functioning.

Stringent punishment, raids at regular intervals at offices where the rot runs deep, call-in lines that people can dial and report a corrupt practice to without getting noticed or falling foul of bigwigs of the government, the boycott of the corrupt and a close public vigil on the functioning of every government wing are probably the only ways by which we can reduce the malady to the minimum possible. And most important of all, we will have to shed the ‘chalta hai’ attitude of turning a blind eye to corrupt deeds as long as we get our work done.