When it is notified, the Lok Pal structure will, in the first instance, focus on calibrating penalties to errant acts performed in the past, but if it does not reduce the number of such acts, it will have failed utterly. For the deterrence effect to work, there has to be a short time interval between the lodging of a complaint and action on the complaint. For that to happen, there has to be enough manpower so that allegations received can be investigated quickly and fairly.
But when the Bill is enacted and notified, unless some admissibility limits are placed, the tsunami of grievances will overwhelm whatever pace of processing the manpower strength of the appointed bodies will allow. A flood of cases is inevitable, because of the unreasonable expectations the movement has generated. If the time limits prescribed in the Bill are crossed as a result, perpetrators will know that a large volume of cases is their best protection against any specific case ever being brought to justice.
So the first few months are very critical. An initial delimitation could be that only cases within the preceding 12 months will be accepted for processing in the first year. In each such case, deterrence will call for focus not just on the individual wrongdoer, but on the corruption enabling feature of the transaction, and on how this can be disabled going forward. So cases will have to be clustered by type of office or functionary, and by the type of transaction.
One of the critical demands of the Anna Hazare team, acceptance of which paved the way for the final agreement with the government, was that the ambit should extend to the lower bureaucracy. Although the 2G scam and the Commonwealth Games scam were the headline events that drove the mass movement, and pulled in sections of society that do not normally encounter corruption on a daily basis, the larger support the movement draws is entirely because of extortion at the point at which the average citizen must interact with government. These are the gateways to caste certificates, death and marriage certificates, passports, ration cards and such, manned by the lower bureaucracy.
Complaints will have to be clustered by the type of office of the accused, taluk offices, or customs depots, or police stations, so that the deterrence wing of the Lok Pal can then demand a reform plan, of each such, within a short period of time. Thereafter, the reform plan will get implemented only if the entire staff of an office on which a reform notice is served will be penalised for any further complaints lodged against any individual member of it.
Clustering will also be needed by the type of complaint. The Indira Awaas Yojana (IAY), a Central Plan scheme which gives housing grants to selected beneficiaries below the poverty line (BPL), is one of many schemes involving cash payments, where payments to the gatekeeper are routine. For that matter, payments to contractors and suppliers are subject to the same malaise. The only variation over the country lies in the fraction deducted.
The basic source of corruption in payments to BPL beneficiaries is uncertainty about timing, so that beneficiaries are forced to make several trips before finally settling for a discounted sum. The remedy should be simple enough. If there is an announcement made at the start of the financial year, of the dates on which IAY payments will be made in various states, the problem should in principle be nipped in the bud. This kind of timetable will also help tighten the process for selection of beneficiaries at the local end.
The call for reform of Plan schemes, as distinct from particular types of offices, can therefore much precede enactment and notification of the Lok Pal. If this homework for all schemes involving payments to selected beneficiaries, whether in the central or state sector, is fully worked out, and payment dates duly announced, then complaints admitted can be confined to failure to adhere to the announced dates going forward. Past grievances can be shunted out with no damage to deterrence.
This might seem totally unfair. After all, if the Lok Pal is supposed to address corruption, should it not admit grievances of every kind that have happened in the past? The only possible justification is the need to keep the Lok Pal process sustainable, since IAY complaints alone could drown a Lok Pal in no time. The overriding importance of deterrence is served not by handling large numbers of cases all stemming from the same systemic cause, but by correcting that cause itself.
A public information campaign has to accompany the setting up of the Lok Pal, whereby the new machinery is not perceived as an instrument for the settling of individual scores. Corruption at the lower levels is often organised and directed from above, so that the person collecting the bribe does not necessarily keep the bribe, or not all of it. I have written on this before (“Tackling corruption”, Business Standard, May 7, 2011). Penalties served on past acts could therefore unjustly target small cogs in a larger wheel.
As for bribes for obtaining routine certificates, several states like Chhattisgarh have already outsourced the process to authorised personnel operating computer kiosks, subject to verification through a central server. These experiments could be recorded in a central database, perhaps the Inter-State Council, which the Lok Pal can access for its reform directives to states.
The primary intent of the Lok Pal has to be correction of enabling features of corruption currently in place. The correctives needed are simple and well-known, so the Lok Pal has to function as an enforcer of those correctives, as a macro-prudential body, rather than as a dispenser of micro-penalties. The rewards, in terms of growth with social justice, could be huge.
The author is honorary visiting professor, Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi
