Corruption in Mumbai

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Corruption in India exists in various forms. It is basically a symptom of misgovernance. There are many ways to stop it temporarily in the short term, the two main ones being

  1. Improving law enforcement, sentencing and punishment/correction via the home ministry and the judiciary; and/or
  2. Improving transparency in the taxation regime and tax compliance through reform of the finance ministries at the center and the state.

Both these functions have been sabotaged very well. The imbalance of power between the haves and the havenots has led to increased misgovernance. Overlapping laws have to be reduced and simplified to a manageable and publicly understood size. Parliament and state legislatures should have no items under the concurrent list finally. All items should either be under the state list or the central list so that passing the buck does not occur.

Legislatures sole duty should be to simplify and rationalise laws incrementally in such a way that they can be easily and universally understood and efficiently implemented. This can only happen when the legislature sets some targets and the people monitor its output or lack of output in this direction.

Contents

[edit] Problems faced in reporting corruption

  • Lack of awareness about the fight against corruption in a regular manner.
  • Lack of convenience --Till now there was no easy way of reporting petty corruption conveniently such as a website or a voice recording machine. This has been partly rectified via internet sites such as Praja (municipal problems) or Reporting corruption to the anti corruption bureau But these sites have to be PUBLICISED and are not known. The number 1090 for Convenient interaction with the Police, 1916 for municipal complaints and 22633333 for Crimefighting complaints also need to be PUBLICISED and made well known.
  • Procedures are cumbersome and exhausting. A similar case in point is this blog of a person in Bangalore
  • Money is locked up. Time and energy put in by the complainant are not considered at all. The complainant is treated very poorly and his turning hostile later is conveniently reported against him though the fault lies with the authorities in maintaining a non friendly system.
  • Poor logistical reach and infrastructure of the Anti Corruption organisations.
  • Poor track record of the Anti Corruption Bureau and lack of faith in the government.
  • Anonymous reports are always discarded.
  • Report by email or fax is not considered as proof.
  • Poor image built by the media and perception by word of mouth.
  • There is no whistle blower protection and institutionalised support by the state for complainants within the govt or in sensitive cases.

pls go to the blog... http://waragainstcorruption.blogspot.com/ this is against the builders corruption.

[edit] Problems faced in tackling corruption in Mumbai

  • Issue of misconduct which leads to corruption in the first place is not tackled at all. There is no dedicated site for ALL citizen charters for ALL state govt related organisations, departments and ministries. Though there is a site for the central govt's citizen charters
  • As of Nov 10, 2005 there is no political will for tackling corruption at higher levels of the government. e.g. implementing some of the recommendations of the National Police Commission Report
  • The key ministry dealing with corruption and misgovernance is the state Home Ministry headed by the Home Minister and the Home Secretary. This key organisation which deals with all crime in the state does not have a proper website as of Nov 10, 2005. The website does not have any mechanism to see list of departments under it, the citizens charters of those organisations, how to complain and how to follow up the complaint. It does not have any statistics for measuring its own performance. Tenure of the Home Secretary and other key officials is not fixed. Appointments to this key ministry are adhoc. Certain officials keep rotating in the same departments and the same locations for extended periods and have developed into big roadblocks for any reforms.
  • The Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) of the state Govt is not an independent statutory body but comes under the state home minister and senior bureaucrats. So it cannot take action against its own masters who sometimes are in the wrong themselves. There is no statutory state vigilance commission, which should be the role given to the ACB as is the case for the Central Vigilance Commission at the federal level.

[edit] Internal Problems of the ACB

    • Appointments are adhoc and generally inconvenient officers are shunted here.
    • Tenure of the ACB boss or other officials posted to the ACB is not fixed.
    • A posting to the ACB is considered as a punishment posting as it is a deliberately crippled organisation. It is kept under strength. It has very few computers, vehicles or other resources such as communication facilities with the field offices or personnel on the move. The Mumbai office is the only office which is somewhat adequate. Consequently nobody wants to be posted outside Mumbai.
    • There is only one assistant public prosecutor attached to the entire ACB for the whole state of Maharashtra. One legal officer cannot take the burden of representing the organisation properly in courts.
    • Legal training is weak for the officials and the clerical/constabulary staff who are posted on an adhoc basis to the ACB.
    • The fight against corruption needs a dedicated cadre of personnel with special skills. Specially white collar corruption which is increasing day by day.
    • The ACB has only one field office location for the whole of Mumbai which has a population almost equal to that of Australia (16 million approximately)
    • The outdated Indian Evidence Act hampers a lot and new methods of collecting evidence using new technologies such as mikes and CCD cameras etc are non existent.
    • The track record of the anti corruption bureau is very poor. The conviction rate is not even 10% of the cases filed. Only 400 to 500 cases are made or filed annually though many cases are unreported or not taken up in a population of 6 crore plus and rampant corruption.
    • In case of a trap set by the ACB to catch the corrupt red handed, bribe money gets locked up due to the procedures involved in court and the victim of corruption is unduly harassed specially when he is poor. Change of procedures by producing the bribe amount as evidence in front of any magistrate within 5 days of the detection of the act of corruption (trap) will lead to less harassment of the general public and higher cooperation from the complainants. After recording the evidence, the magistrate's record should be accepted by the court in subsequent hearings and the money returned to the complainant immediately. A complainant's time and energy are not taken into consideration while fighting corruption. The fight against corruption needs to be made citizen centric instead of Govt centric at present OR the state should pay the complainant daily an equivalent amount which he loses due to delay by the state authorities after the case starts.
    • Statistics on all cases being fought on the war against corruption cannot be maintained due to lack of a single authority for this purpose. Cases relating to departmental misconduct in various state govt undertakings and organisations should also be reported in the filing system of the ACB so that corruption and action taken can be measured. Only proper measurement will lead to a better analysis of the problem and help the war against corruption.
    • The ACB website does not have a convenient way to check the status of a complaint by a complainant or any visitor. Plus a complainant cannot be informed easily or automatically via an email alert, an SMS message or a voice recording in case of being required to appear for a hearing or any other official matter. On the CVC website one can check the status of a complaint.
    • Profiles of key officials of the ACB are not available at the website unlike the case at the CVC website.
    • We have never heard of action being taken against corrupt ACB officials themselves who have diluted cases any number of times leading to the ACB"s own poor performance record.

[edit] External Problems of the ACB

    • The public prosecutor's office which also comes under the State Home Ministry does not cover special cases of high profile corruption. There is no provision for the ACB to have a special prosecutor for high profile cases such as in the US.
    • Permission needs to be taken for prosecuting any higher official from the state govt which is not easily forthcoming or is generally never given which destroys the case totally.
    • The Anti Corruption Bureau and the Central Bureau of Investigation do not coordinate properly and their functions are hardly known. The local CBI office contact details are not shown on the ACB's website nor can CBI be conveniently contacted. The ACB also does not have any links with the state CID.
    • Income tax deptt and the audit department of the state do not correspond or work with the ACB. The ACB has yet to have a dedicated arm for investigating cases of disproportionate assets. There is no formal linkup with the federal department of Revenue Intelligence. ( DRI) which comes under the union finance ministry.
    • No action is ever taken on the reports of the state audit department and its reports are not easy to get. The audit deptt is not a statutory body and its findings are never acted upon since the ACB has not got any legal sanction to go deeper into the matter of wastage of public monies as found by the auditor's reports on its own. If the ACB was a statutory body, it would have this freedom of action.
    • There is no computerised database which is accessible to the officers of the ACB for tracking benami properties and money laundering cases. For tracking financial transactions, the ACB has to depend on the state home ministry's police wing for white collar crimes which is known as the economic offences wing but is also seriously hampered. The federal income tax deptt and the DRI are not linked to the ACB. Nor is the state sales tax and excise deptt via the state finance ministry linked to the ACB for investigating disproportionate assets.

[edit] Other bodies besides the ACB

  • The Lok Ayukta is supposed to tackle the aspect of political and higher level corruption but has also got a poor track record. Besides it does not have any good linkage with the ACB or the state CID.
    • There are structural problems with getting sanction for persecution of MLAs/MLCs from the Speaker of the legislature.
    • The Lok Ayukta's powers, Act etc are not well known
    • There is no website yet, though an email address exists but is not an official address.
  • The State Chief Information Commissioner's website has yet to become functional.

etc

  • The media is not free though appearances are maintained. There are many media organisations controlled to varying degrees by the state and key politicians. Control is kept by employing a carrot and stick policy. Issues and solutions are deliberately frustrated from gaining momentum to usher in positive change through selective editing. Disinformation is rampant. Public monies are deliberately channeled to crony media organisations in very subtle ways.

[edit] Procedural Issues

  • System of checks and balances in the Indian constitution is not known to officials or the public.
  • List of Acts to combat corruption is not widely known.
  • Internet and Email are not encouraged to save time and energy either within government bodies at higher levels or between citizens and government.
  • Open Source software is being deliberately sidelined in ongoing computerisation and there is very little egovernance by re-engineering the old ways of working. Hence egovernance initiatives are mostly sham or being implemented at huge costs.
  • Reports of committees and commissions of enquiry are still not accessible in a convenient manner such as the internet. A few have been posted such as Sawant Commission report
  • The procedure for appointment of key officials of the agencies involved in the fight against corruption needs to be made more transparent to curb political interference.
  • The ordinance for controlling political interference in transfers of officials has not been made into an Act yet despite being promised since 1999 or before.
  • STRUCTURAL REFORMS --The city does not have an executive mayor form of civic govt which leads to too many problems and multiplicity of authorities . The executive ward committees in the municipal govt are constantly non transparent as a result since lip service continues to be paid to decentralisation of the govt behemoth with power being unnecessarily controlled in the hands of a few key executive ministers and secretaries at the state level.
  • Chairpersons of govt sponsored organisations and committees continues to grow.
  • Adhocism prevails in setting up of unnecessary newer organisations and govt bodies or schemes.
  • Instead of tackling and improving existing schemes, buildings, organisations etc, public money is being wasted on new schemes and populist measures.
  • Every political functionary and civil servant corners extra privileges such as chauffeur driven cars and unlimited mileage and other perks.
  • Financial laws and rules need to be simplified to reduce harassment.
  • Selective implementation and interpretation of laws is rampant and checks and balances have been weakened due to disinformation and breakup of communications.
  • The constitutional framework and the laws, rules and procedures are deliberately kept vast and vague to continue the present situation.
  • Financial deficit has continued to increase year by year.
  • Crony Capitalism prevails through various modified licence raj schemes.
  • People have yet to correlate the size of the govt with the costs of maintaining such a govt. The govt is top heavy and a lot of pruning in the form of hiving of its white elephants is the need of the hour.
  • Human resource development policy does not exist in govt-- no incentives or appreciation is given to those who do good work neither is any punishment given for no output. There are no 5 year or 3 year contracts. It is deliberately difficult to prune the organisations. The perception is that nothing can be changed under the existing personnel rules which is true. Therefore the personnel rules themselves need to be made coherent.

[edit] Reasons for hope

  • The movement for Right To Information (RTI)is gaining ground with the passage of the National RTI Act
  • New more powerful and better media organisations continue to come in which improves the communication problems and the disinformation of earlier periods
  • Dissatisfaction continues to grow and more people realise whats wrong and how it can be tackled or improved
  • The new ACB website is a good beginning and has been well made though it has a few drawbacks as mentioned above
  • More people are becoming aware through the use of the internet about possible solutions and awareness is likely to grow which will lead to increased pressure for implementing correct solutions.
  • Justice PB Sawant's report on corruption case allegation involving 3 ministers and a noted social worker has been put up at Sawant Commission Report
  • The Maharashtra Govt website is now becoming a little more user friendly in giving out information which was previously difficult to access
  • Other departments and undertakings are putting up their own websites which are slowly being improved though much remains to be done
  • The public is finally able to interact and act conveniently via the websites, weblogs and yahoogroups. Number of people interacting on governance and corruption issues is increasing and debates are getting more solution oriented.

[edit] Books written on the subject

Carnage of Angels by YP Singh

[edit] Attempting reformers

[edit] Other sites of Interest

Yahoogroups

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