Hey all, after a long break - i have come up with a blog here. Hope it serves you all with some food for thought
Corruption - is probably the most talked about topic all over India right now. One usually understands when a topic becomes a hot potato amongst people - when everybody has a opinion on it. Everyone you meet tends to give gyaan about corruption. Most of us i feel dont understand the root cause for corruption
Corruption in very literal terms means deviation from ideal. Deviation from moral grounds is generally attributed as corruption. One thing people fail to understand is - in India, people want corruption. Ya, you read it right !!! But the root cause of this kind of behavior i feel is somewhere else. Its in our upbringing, its in our way of living. We, Indians from childhood have been made to believe that - it's ok to cheat if you are looting the government. Do check the income tax rates in 70s and 80s - its mind-blogging.
Tax rates in India How has personal taxation evolved in India? If one were to look at the table on personal income tax rates in India, the trend is quite shocking. Imagine those who lived in the seventies paid up to 93% of their income in taxes! And to think of it, we complain that we pay high taxes. Anyway, with the continuous rationalization of tax rates, India is only moving closer to global standards when it comes to tax rates.
Source: Report of the Task Force July 2004, Ministry of Finance, Govt. of India |
Its root cause has been the demand-supply mismatch in India, children are taught from childhood to grab as much as they can whenever the opportunity arises. We always have been looking for loopholes in the system to exploit them & get special treatment. The problem here is people seem to forget all the moral high grounds they talk about, when the law or moral issues rest on them for closure.
One more problem in India is people respect a person even more if he can evade the authorities & break the laws without any casualty. One's status is estimated by the amount of laws one can break to suit it's own convenience. Everyone would like to have a friend who has contacts in administration, police, politics etc. This allows one to bend the rules/laws - in a sense to receive special treatment. How often you have seen some person brag about breaking rules & going scot-free in a social conversation? - I bet many times
I can give you many examples:- Tax Evasion - very normal phenomena in India, Govt. tenders, Crime scenes - trying to save your near or dear one from prosecution etc etc. The list can go on and on.
Its so much a part of our daily routine for e.g. - in chennai - its normal to have yourself looted by rickshaw-walas. The attitude now in chennai is very simple in case of rickshaws - dont focus on fighting with them, try to negotiate. This tedency to accept immoral behavior as normal & to start negotiating is from where the problem starts. Take one more example - If you are caught by a traffic police - you would like to get away with minimum casualty - negotiate - promote corruption. We all (at least most of us) are part of these promotional activities in India.
There has always been a two-prong strategy to control any kind of morally inappropriate behavior - carrot (incentive) & stick (punishment) approach. The problem with India is the carrot available for staying away from corruption is not juicy enough and on the other hand the stick is not powerful enough for people who do indulge in immoral behavior. For the matter of fact aspiring for the carrot in this case can lead to severe stick beatings - because no one wants a honest and morally sound person in the system of dishonest & immoral people. Here also a simple funda is followed for indulging in corruption - "Lead, follow or get out of the way"
I am not trying to lead a fight against corruption here, just trying to create a more clearer picture for all of you to ponder over this hot topic - "Corruption".
Do let me know your thoughts on this topic.. comments are welcome...
Although I do agree with some of your points but do not think the comparison in tax we used to give in seventies and now are by any measure appropriate and an indicator of taxation law in India. I myself am ready to given even half of my income as tax if I am assured that it will be utilized properly. One basic question which arises in my mind is where all the tax we give erodes when it comes to development and infrastructure?
ReplyDeleteCorruption never follows a bottom up approach. It percolates from higher administration. Who will be ready to give the money they have earned through hard labor to a government where half of it will be eaten away before any development project and half during and after the work with a total utilization of mere 10%? Every other day we see one or the other scam be it Karnataka land scam, Barak Missile Scandal, coffin scandal, Common wealth games scam to name a few. I have summarized some defamation scams below:
No. Project Name Amount (in Rs)
1 Share scam 1000 crores
2 Sugar scam 650 crores
3 Bofors scam 65 crores
4 Hawala case 65 crores
5 Housing scam 18 crores
6 M.P. trading 32 crores
7 Fertilizer scam 133 crores
8 Medicine Equipment scam 5000 crores
9 Telecom case 1200 crores
10 Newsprint case 20 crores
11 Indian bank scam 1336 crores
12 Fodder scam (Bihar) 1000 crores
13 Land scam (Bihar) 400 crores
14 Bitumen scam (Bihar) 100 crores
15 Medicine scam (Bihar) 100 crores
16 Forest case (Meghalaya) 300 crores
17 Ayurveda scam (UP) 32 crores
18 Dhoti-Saree scam (Tamil) 11 crores
19 Coal scam (Tamilnadu) 750 crores
20 Forest reserve scam (Meghalaya) 75 crores
21 Wakof Scam (West Bengal) 1600 crores
22 Dental College Case (Karnataka) 50 lakhs
Total of Rs. 13,93,70,00,00,000/-
Can you read out this figure?. I CANNOT! Its even more than India's Annual Budget
With all the scandals coming up one by one people are left with very less faith in the government and unless we have faith in the system we ought to neglect the system and tax will be taken as mere burden.
Comparing the tax policy with other nations although we are at par in collecting taxes (30-40% as corporate tax, 10-30% as individual tax, 12.5% as VAT) , we are at much lesser pace in infrastructure development, no social security being offered, no scheme for unemployed, inflation rising day by day. I may think, what if I lose my job if another recession comes, which is quite natural? Will the government secure my future… Definitely NOT…. I myself need to save and secure any uncertainties in my future.
I quite get irritated with double taxation prevalent here. Income tax, road tax, VAT, entertainment tax etc etc … Out of every 100 Rs I pay 12.5 Rs is collected as tax (VAT)… Compare the same with UK and US where taxation policy is almost same and the percentage of tax spent on infrastructure development, roads, social security, benefits for senior citizen, medical insurance, allowances for unemployed they get.
ReplyDeleteBy all these I do not intend to say that we should promote corruption. All I am saying is corruption is never an individual phenomenon. Situation, surroundings and time makes you involve in one. With a salary of lacs in hand we can very well call a rikshaw wallah corrupt because he charges high money but tend to forget that we both live in the same world where food inflation is as high 16% and onion is sold at rate Rs 65. Each day that rikshaw wallah struggles to have proper food for himself and his family while we spend money in CCD and Pizza Hut in vain. Why is so? Only because he never had opportunity and money to study and become so called learned like us.
All I tend to say is that a simple phenomenon of demand supply gap, or not paying income tax or corruption alone is not sufficient to describe the current scenario. A larger picture for Inclusive India needs to be taken where inclusiveness is only in books… :)
@akansha - nice work dear.. good research i must say on the corruption figure.
ReplyDeleteI fully agree with your comment. But i think my blog had implied message on incapability of government to provide basic services even though it charged nearly 90% income tax.
Once people understood that paying government 90% of income is not making their life any easier or better, people started cheating - clear case of demand-supply gap.
This created a mentality of people - where looting government or evading taxes became way of life - and no one felt bad about it.
And i am not blaming rickshaw wallah for high charges - i am just saying its all a cycle. Rickshaw wala wont have to take corrupt means to earn that extra buck - if the government was competent enough to handle basic amenities which invariably leads to our mentality of tax evasion and black money and the cycle goes on.....
finally - what u wrote in your comment - is completely true, but my blog communicates a very basic message - questioning our current mentality which says - "Lead corruption, Follow corruption, if you can't lead or follow - than get out of the way"
@ Vicky: May be i was not able to understand the implied message.. :) The sentences in your blog like:
ReplyDelete"Its in our upbringing, its in our way of living. We, Indians from childhood have been made to believe that - it's ok to cheat if you are looting the government."
"Imagine those who lived in the seventies paid up to 93% of their income in taxes! And to think of it, we complain that we pay high taxes."
"One more problem in India is people respect a person even more if he can evade the authorities & break the laws without any casualty."
"This tedency to accept immoral behavior as normal & to start negotiating is from where the problem starts."
The above sentences altogether gave me a different impression about the message you were trying to convey...
Anyways Rightly said.... "Lead,follow or get away"... Only this is what a common man can do in INDIA...
I think its a multi-dimentional problem.
ReplyDeleteFirst, we live in a scarce environment, our needs are always been more than what we could earn. We surely will try a source which will give something extra. How far we will go will be decided by the severity of the need and how far we have come.
Second, Our inherit culture suggest us to take a short-cut. Even-if we will end-up paying the same amount to traffic police, we will still dont want to go court and pay money there, rather give it to the police wala.
Third, we are almost convinced that government is not doing anything for me and my family; and this feeling is getting stronger with all the scams coming up. So, we dont give respect to the governing bodies and that includes paying taxes also.
So this is a circle where all forces are adding into it and forces to remove them are not that strong.
The carrot and the stick can be stronger. But the given three parameters will find a way to make them weak. After all, we have the best brains in the world! So its basic instinct that is ruling the country than the ethics. Cant help it.
I know people who have made lot of money because they had to.. the post demands that. Cant leave the post as it feeds the family and cant oppose the others as individual becomes less powerful in that case. Also I read a figure in TOI one day, only around 6% of the people for whom corruption charges have made have been "convicted" guilty... so there is a feeling that "mostly i will be in that 94%". Strong stick is there (CVC/ROI/Court/ACB), but as i said earlier, we found a "short-cut" to get through it.
ReplyDelete@sanky - carrot and stick approach needs to be stronger i agree. I was suggesting about a third factor in this whole approach - "Lead, follow or get out of the way".
ReplyDeleteA honest person will most likely not survive in the current environment - he will be taken to the cleaners. Therefore the stick needs to identify the correct culprits rather than spanking the scapegoats.
Stronger carrot and stick approach will still have to battle this third factor i feel....
@Vicky: But here the factor is who will have that stick and how that carrot is given. Even if the juiciest carrot is given, there will be levels which sucks the juice out of it. Second, here there is no faith in stick-holder also. CVC him self is facing a case of corruption against him. Who will believe that the promises are not false?
ReplyDeleteAlso, with 'growing' India, people see there are many things which they desire to have, but cant afford it. And the disparity in earning standards lead others to take the share from others.
There is a strong feelings among all: Govt is not going to do anything for me, so I will do things which I feel is fair to me. And that leads all the things which follows till this state.