Who Is The Irresponsible Voter?

Anna Hazare has an extremely poor opinion of Indian voters. He says they can be bought for as little as Rs 100, one saree or a bottle of alcohol. “They don’t understand the value of their vote,” he is reported to have said. His comment is finding resonance with a lot of people, especially the urban middle class voters, a fair chunk of which doesn’t vote at all.
Hazare’s comment is being seen as referring only to the poor, uneducated and illiterate voters. Why can’t it apply to the section that is concurring and even endorsing that statement?
Does this section believe that it alone votes in an enlightened manner, with national interest uppermost in its mind? That is bosh and nonsense. The educated urban middle class is as much prone to being bribed as the sections they sneer at.
This section will lament that no government will take action against slum clusters because of votebank politics. But when Jagmohan, who was urban development minister during the National Democratic Alliance government and who was a middle class hero when he razed or relocated slums in Delhi, dared touch encroachments by the middle class he was promptly voted out of the New Delhi parliamentary constituency.
Take also the issue subsidized LPG and petrol. Why is raising the prices of these in alignment with such a political hot potato and never attempted before the elections? Are these items of consumption of people who can be bribed by a saree, Rs 100 and a bottle of alcohol? Certainly not. It is the middle class who are the main consumers of these. National interest – the fiscal health of the country – may demand that subsidies on these are either withdrawn or hugely cut. But that will not be done in the name of the poor, though it is the middle class (the real beneficiary of this subsidy) vote that really worries any ruling party.
Who benefits from free power to farmers? It certainly isn’t the really small farmer or farm labourer who can barely make ends meet. It is the better off and prosperous farmer who can afford pumpsets. It is quite common for parties to come to power with promises of free power to farmers.
Aren’t these all instances of buying of votes? So it is okay for political parties to buy votes of the urban educated middle class, which barely votes, but not okay for it to buy votes of the poor?
Rs 100, a saree and a bottle of alcohol for an illiterate and uneducated group’s vote doesn’t cost the exchequer anything. But these freebies for the middle class and even the prosperous impoverish the exchequer. Will the middle class stop to think of this before it sneers at the poor and illiterate voter?

Combating Corruption

Social activist Anna Hazare is on a fast-unto-death. This fighter against corruption  (he is the founder of the Bhrashtachar Virodhi Jan Aandolan who returned his Padmashri award because the Maharashtra government did not take action against corrupt forest officials) and campaigner for the Right to Information Act wants the government to start work to enact a Jan Lokpal Bill. Apparently, close to 150 people have joined in, according to one newspaper report.
So why am I not impressed? And why am I amused when a newspaper says the fast has galvanised the nation's fight against corruption?
What fight, I want to know.
I live in a middle class locality of Delhi built by the Delhi Development Authority (DDA). DDA rules don't permit water tanks of more than 500 litres per flat on the terrace. Yet in the block I live in and in countless DDA flats across Delhi, people have installed 1000 litre tanks, endangering the structural stability of flats. Complaints are made, officials come to inspect and go away richer by a few hundreds or thousands. Unauthorised constructions abound, pavements have been encroached upon for gardens, motors installed on main water lines. In each case, ordinary middle class people - perfectly decent and respectable otherwise - have paid bribes so that they can flout the law.
When I was renovating my then recently acquired flat four years ago, a neighbour asked me if we could jointly build an extra room. I was agreeable till I found it was against the rules. When I mentioned this to his aged mother, she said, `don't worry, my son will take care of payment to the DDA officials. You don't have to talk to them." I put my foot down and said nothing doing.
These are the very same people who express shock at the various multi-crore scams our politicians and bureaucrats are involved in and rail against corruption in high places. They will praise Anna Hazare and maybe even go to see him. And when they are driving back, they will jump a red light and bribe the traffic cop.
Middle class people think it is okay for them to indulge in minor corruption but not for politicians to do the same on a grander scale. I had touched upon this in an earlier article, Morality of Middle Class Politics, where I had drawn a distinction between bribes that one is forced to give (to get perfectly legal things done) and the bribes that one gives willingly to do something that is patently illegal (unauthorised constructions and disobeying traffic rules, for example).
I feel it is possible to resist bribe demands of the first kind as well. After all, how long can someone hold back a death/birth/marriage certificate (believe me, this still happens) or an income tax refund or a completion certificate for a building.
Former chief justice of the Himachal Pradesh High Court, Leela Seth, in her book A Fine Balance, relates the incident about how an inspector in Noida kept delaying a completion certificate for her house, hinting at a bribe. Finally he came to her house and denied the certificate because some column was a couple of inches smaller than the rules permitted. There was again a hint of a bribe to ignore this. Seth spent far more than what a bribe would have cost her to get the column redone. Still the inspector delayed her certificate by over a year.
This may not be a practical option for many. I know a recent case where a newly-married couple had to pay a bribe to get their marriage certificate because the bride had to appear for a visa interview with the certificate. I pride myself on never having bribed but if I was in their position would I have been able to stick to my moral high ground?
But what about bribes paid for what are known to be illegal actions? Are people who pay these petty bribes any better than the politicians involved in mega-scams? I don't think so.
Also, political parties tend to make corruption an election issue? But is it an issue for the electorate at all? Known corrupt people keep getting elected all the time. Not in the badlands of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar but everywhere. Both the DMK and the AIADMK regimes in Tamil Nadu have always been marked by corruption. Yet one or the other party keeps getting elected.
Anna Hazare may succeed in getting the kind of Lokpal Bill he wants. But will that stop people from electing corrupt politicians to legislatures? Will that stop people from offering bribes for an extra floor or room that is not permitted, for flouting some rule that is based on logic and safety concerns?
Denying oneself of food is not going to stop corruption. Denying oneself some comforts that can be got only through bribes is the only way to fight it.

A Cancer Without Cure

I am a member of Delhi Traffic Police's Facebook page, along with 17000 others. In the initial month or so, whenever someone used to sneer about traffic policemen taking bribes, I used to admonish them - no one can force you to give a bribe; follow traffic rules and then you won't have to deal with bribes; when you are stopped and challaned, just pay the fine, don't plead to be let off as that opens the doors for bribes.

I have always had this holier-than-thou attitude towards bribes and `baksheesh'. When the postman who brought my passport asked for `chai-paani' I told him to take the passport back. I was convinced I could use RTI to get my passport. And I have once used RTI to get the DDA to redress a problem caused by bribe-giving neighbours.

But that attitude has taken a serious blow.

If one is stopped for a traffic violation, there are two alternatives. One can either pay the fine on the spot and get a receipt. If one doesn't have the money or wants to challenge the challan, one has to surrender the driving licence/registration certificate and go to court.

Simple and straightforward isn't it?

But no.

Several people have written in on the DTP page complaining about arbitrariness by traffic policemen. Violators are stopped and either higher penalties than what the offence warranted are slapped on them or they are told to pay the fine in court even if they are prepared to pay right then.

The purpose behind this? Psyche violators into pleading to be let off and succumbing to bribe demands. In some cases, they didn’t even wait for the offender to plead. The choice was given right away – pay us a bribe or pay the challan in court. Some succumbed, others didn't and had to do the rounds of courts or had more charges slapped against them.

Some incidents made my blood run cold.

One young man was stopped on the grounds of having jumped a red light. He pointed out that the traffic signal wasn't working properly. When another motorist stopped and supported him, the policemen tried to note his number so that they could slap a few challans on him!!

Another person was stopped and told to pay Rs 1000 fine for jumping the red light (though the fine is only Rs 100) or pay a bribe of Rs 200. When he protested, the lone constable added false charges of drunken driving and lack of documents. When the young man refused to sign the challan with these false charges, another offence of misbehaviour with a public servant was added. His driving licence was impounded and he had to make two trips to the court to get it back.

I had said on the page once that this is nothing but extortion and thuggery by the traffic policemen.

What is even more worrying is that I had raised a few broad questions for senior traffic police officials to answer – is there a policy to slap a Rs 1000 penalty for jumping the red light; if a person is willing to pay the challan on the spot can the policeman insist that it be paid in court; if one challenges a challan, what are the procedures? There has been total silence on this, though I have repeated these questions (though the special commissioner (traffic) has intervened in a couple of instances). Clearly the traffic police brass are either unwilling or unable to check their men on the street.

The only uplifting aspect of all this is a few people refusing to pay bribes and even those who have are coming out into the open and explaining the circumstances in which they paid the bribe and identifying the policemen. In each case, it shows up police bullying at its worst. It’s easy to say stand up to bullying but it’s far more difficult to practice.

The young man in the first incident decided to pay in court rather than pay a bribe. But one of the other page members said that in court, these cases are treated summarily, so the judge has no time to listen to one’s explanations. And as the second incident shows, the ordeal isn’t over in one day.

Paying the fine on a wrong charge and then contesting it also doesn’t help. The special commissioner traffic, intervening in one complaint of a wrong challan, told the complainant he could go meet a particular officer but there is no provision to refund a challan. The police holds all the aces; the people hold all the duds.

In 2004, I was part of a team that brought out a Liberal Budget. One criticism made was that there was nothing in the document to reduce or eliminate corruption. I had responded that we believe scope for corruption would fall dramatically if the state gets out of micro-managing the economy and red tape reduced. Indeed, examples are often cited of how there is no need for bribes to get a telephone connection merely because supply has increased.

But all this logic falls flat when one comes across the kind of extortion that Delhi’s traffic police are indulging in.

But why only the police?

Take income tax. A very well-respected economist, who had been with the Planning Commission long back, had some income coming in as consultant. Being honest to the core, he didn’t show false expenditures and his accounts were all in order. Nothing hanky panky at all But the assessing officer asked his chartered accountant for a bribe – he gave a list of things worth Rs 10,000. The accountant said he could not ask his client. He told the officer who the gentleman was, only to be told that the officer was sitting on a senior cabinet minister’s file! He told the accountant that if he could not ask his client, he should pay the bribe out of his own fees.

Jurist Leila Seth, in her memoirs, talks about how an inspector refused to give the completion certificate for her house, because she refused to bribe. After much pressure he came and said some essential construction was 4 inches less than the required measurement. Leila Seth spent double the amount he was asking as bribe to break down that particular element and reconstruct it. And the guy still took a year to give the certificate. When told who she was, he said I have made ministers and cabinet secretaries succumb.

My friend Sunil Varma’s angst-ridden Facebook status message -- "I'm convinced, we Indians are the most corrupt people in the world! p.s. - Any argument with me on this assertion is quite pointless..." – set off this post.

Sunil gives the example of his friend’s husband who tried to get a power connection for his factory through legitimate means. Apparently the electricity would be cut off every day on grounds of load shedding. The poor man finally had to succumb.

Increasing supply of goods and service providers could eliminate corruption in some areas. This gentleman may not have had to succumb to bribe demands if power distribution was not a monopoly. Technology can also help – it has reduced the role of touts in regional transport offices.

But what is the solution to the kind of extortion that we are seeing on Delhi's roads and in income tax offices? You can't have competition in law and order enforcement or in tax assessment and collection (though many of my libertarian friends may say yes, you can).

I just want to repeat something I said on Sunil's page - corruption is no longer something about which to feel sad about. It's bloody scary.