I believe it was Marx that said in his terse but elegant thesis on Feuerbach, “The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of changed circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that the educator must himself be educated.” It is through this prism that I will attempt to analyze the current and future role of young generation of my country, India, against the omnipresent and fiercely nuanced specters of corruption.
The first impression when speaking to young men in India about the question of what is corruption invariably leads to a very monochromatic response of ‘bribery’, or some sort of illegal rent seeking activity coupled with semi-sophisticated response on political overreach. The underlying association (and assumption) highlighted in these definitions is of a purely monetary nature. This is a direct result of a very unstructured and myopic dialectic that tends to dominate discussions in the public sphere. However, it is very important to realize that the nature of corruption has its own ‘50 shades of black’.
My own experience in understandings the phenomenon of corruption began when I interned with Transparency International India. The most illuminating aspect of the internship was when I was given the reigns of managing the anti-corruption hotline, with my role being advising the victim on their possible options in pursuit of vindication. Receiving over two hundred calls a day I was understandably overwhelmed. From the mundane to the masochistic stemming from pure apathy, I was not only getting feedback on the event but the direct consequences of these events. To take an example, I remember this old widow that had once called me to share her plight. Her son was a convicted murderer serving life imprisonment for around fifteen years. Recently the she was diagnosed with cancer and had asked for her son to be given a leave for a short duration of time on compassionate grounds in order to be admitted to the hospital. A reasonable request one would say, especially considering the social standing of widows in Indian society and the obtuse loneliness and ostracism they suffer. However, the warden (whose discretion the decision depended on) flatly refused on what she believed were caste grounds.
Nicholas Dirks wrote a fantastic book called ‘Castes of Mind’ in which he explored the creation and entrenching of caste identities in Indian society. Corruption in India seems to follow a similar pattern in the sense, first there is creation of identities (and not just caste identities) followed by an entrenching of corrupt practices on those latitudes. For identities grant the power of exclusion. Indeed, this is not an overarching criterion for corruption but one of the dominant ones.
So the first idea that the young of India intent on fighting corruption should grasp is the latitudes of identity that are created and corruption associated with them.
The next issue that needs to be addressed is a far more general malaise in psychology. The disease of cynicism, and worse: acceptance. A feeling that corruption is intrinsic to the system and cannot be curtailed or cured. This unnecessarily prevalent school of thought tends to turn the rhetoric on the problem very sclerotic. Public opinion on every societal institution in India seems to be one of malfeasance and reaction on reforms rather lugubrious.
To take just one example, the highly polarizing food security bill that the current Indian government wants to pass was written off as a new vehicle of corruption before it was even introduced. Rather than addressing the issue of how to reform PDS (Public Distribution System) in India, which is the main bone of contention, the cynics preferred to reject the bill in entirety while millions starved. Neither, in my mind was it a surprise that the media wrote off the reforms presented even before it was passed purely on the basis of the fact that the institution presenting the reforms, i.e. the government was not a trusted one to begin with. This is the cynicism of association that stems from a lack of public trust. Although, some may argue that the cynicism is justified considering the government’s disgraceful conduct even in well meaning reforms such as NREGA (National Rural Employment Guarantee Act), it is also important to realize that the trigger of inquisition against corrupt practices lies in the hands of each and every citizen as a member of a young but powerful democracy. Tools such as voting in elections, right to information act, free media, freedom to hold peaceful demonstrations, and a generally liberal secular society are powerful agents of ensuring accountability and change. However, instead of a proactive pursuit of ensuring people are held accountable for their actions, you see a sense of inure, or an acceptance of the status quo. Perhaps from a lazy proposition that human nature cannot be changed.
The second point that young of India need to keep in mind is have hope (anti-thesis of cynicism) and dream for bettering the system because all the tools needed to correct it are right in front of it. The fight to have these social tools of institutional reform has already been won in the struggle for independence. The fight to educate and apply these tools is next.
After understanding the foundations of corruption and acknowledging the tools of social reform, the next task at hand is finding a practical solution. The emphasis being on the word ‘practical’. In my brief experience on the topic of corruption, I have noticed that the best ideas to fight this phenomenon come from asking certain elementary questions. They are:
1) The first set of questions to ask, as explained earlier, is who are the actors involved and what is the power relationship between them. The example I gave is the jail warden and the widow with the power to temporarily release the son on mercy leave in the warden’s discretion.
2) The next set is concerned with what are the constraints (if any) that should have prevented an action like this from taking place and why is it they failed?
3) The third, and most important question is, what is the cost involved in implementing the solution, both social and monetary.
The last point is the gravamen behind the success of a solution. A recent look at India’s past will show that there have been many noble sentiments, movements and civil service groups crystallizing together with little success. The reason behind their failure is because the solution they put forward did not adequately take the social and monetary costs into account. The most famous example being of Anna Hazare’s Lokpal Bill (Anti-Corruption Bill) which was destined to failure for two reasons: the first is that the bill created a new pillar in constitution apart from the existing executive, legislature and judiciary: the jan lokpal. This would invariably lead to a re-shuffling of power between the three existing institutions with massive costs that will be required into re-defining the constitution. This may have been a fair price to pay except for the fact that nothing in the proposed bill inherently guarantees the end of corruption. It is by no means a silver bullet to the problem. Hence, the costs were too high and the returns too disproportionate for it to have success.
A more enlightened view of proportionality and cost can be obtained from one of Amartya Sen’s famous quips. The problem in question was over speeding. Although the conventional deterrent is a ticket it is not necessarily the most effective. The most effective solution to curb over speeding according to Sen, would be to catch just one person breaking the speed limit every three years and as punishment executing him. Just the thought of being caught at random and executed can be considered a very effective deterrent. The only problem here being, the cost of punishment (death) is disproportionate and unfair to the man committing the offense. Such a law tends to do more harm than good and tends to corrode public faith in the justice system.
The rule of thumb that I tend to follow in order to assess cost is a simple, but effective concept given by the great lawyer: Ronald Coase. The concept given by Coase is that of ‘transaction cost’. Transaction costs are those costs which go into completing an exchange. It consists of three individual costs of its own, namely: search cost, bargaining cost and monitoring cost. Any solution or law against corruption contains these three costs. The trick is to always ensure transaction cost is lower than benefits received from implementing the solution. In the case of Anna Hazare’s bill, the bargaining and monitoring cost involved in implementing it was much higher than any potential benefit the bill may have accrued.
Therefore, the third point that youth of India must keep in mind is the practicality of any solution against corruption is derived from the social and monetary cost needed to implement it. Only when benefits outweigh the cost will the solution be successful.
The last point I would like to shed light on is the question of leadership. There is a certain mixture of irony and pity that the “youth icons” of Indian politics are considered to be Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi aged 42 and 63 respectively or the noble but fraught campaign to pass anti corruption bill was attempted by a 76 year old Anna Hazare. All figures that don’t necessarily represent the youth of India.
There exists a great lacuna in India as far as youth movements by the youth are concerned. Why has Chile, a country smaller than India, with less youth population than India, produced two fantastic youth leaders in Camila Vallejo and Giorgio Jackson whereas India has produced none? This is a very difficult question that stares India’s youth. After all, it cannot be that India faces less corruption than Chile, or India lacks a similar ideological movement, or India’s youth are apathetic to the issues. Yes, the question is difficult but I suspect the answer could be deceptively simple. What may be lacking is a little bit of a proactive attitude.
The last and most simple point that India’s youth need to remember is – just lead rather than waiting to be led.
As Marx’s earlier quote said, it is men that change circumstances and not changed men are product of changed circumstances. Hence, it is up to the youth themselves to change their own circumstance. Whether it is for the better or worse will depend on how systematically they approach the issue, how they go about forming the solution, and what kind of a society they dream to live in.
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