Corruption : Tat vam asi

Over the past few years, there has been an uproar over rising corruption levels in India. It is undoubtedly an evil that is crippling our society. However in its current state, there is also a divine blessing hidden in it.

If any of our leaders could see it and use it wisely,  a lot can be done using the same "evil" and it will turn into a very constructive force for change. Let me elaborate.

As a result of corruption at various levels, citizens pay a high price either through bribes or wasted time and resources for accomplishing any work related to or in concert with a government department or agency. These costs are now routinely factored into daily life- for example the costing of a vada pao on a roadside platform now includes the cost of hafta for the beat cop.

As corruption has increased, these costs have also increased so much so that everyone knows they are paying a hefty price for everything and is accustomed to doing so.  Many times this fee is 10 times or an even higher  multiple of the official fee. Since the citizens are used to paying high prices, the government needs to  officially introduce high prices services for quick service at the same price as it is done unofficially by creating a tatkaal option for as many government services as possible. Simultaneously the government should offer same services at a lower price albeit at a slower speed also so that poorer citizens also are served properly and benefit from the system. The poorer citizens still benefit as the abuses from "discretionary powers" and inefficiency from poor workflow management are eliminated thereby vastly improving service delivery.

Before doing this, the government should implement technology platforms for these services so that all these services will be speeded up, the abuse of powers curbed by creating a clear  workflow  that can be tracked online in real-time  and monitored. The productivity of the government employees will also go up and more private organizations could be inducted into service delivery thus saving the government from taking on permanently tenured employees.  In this way, the government would only need to hire higher senior level officers and could offer much better compensation to attract a better quality staff into government at senior levels  Over time, this will also eliminate one of the problems of the government namely too many overpaid low level employees who never want to leave their jobs and underpaid senior level employees with skills who tend to leave their jobs for greener pastures.

The higher revenues gathered from the official tatkaal services will pay back all investments made into the technology platform very quickly and will also help government offer much better services to poorer citizens at a lower cost.

The Passport Seva Kendra which recently celebrated the issuance of the 1 crore passport is an example. One key success factor is that these technology enabled service delivery reduces the "discretionary powers" of most of the Government officers and thereby speeds up delivery.  It also substantially reduces cost of delivery as there are very few tenured government officers, very few peons/clarks hired for this process. Due to outsourcing of the project, bulk of the services purchased for delivery of the services are actually sourced by TCS the vendor for passport seva kendra thereby eliminating corruption in managing the facility, recruitment, overheads etc.

Once the technology investments are made, there should be a gradual reduction of the price of these services so that they are in line with the real costs. This way the evil of corruption can be milked for all it worth to build a good system.

The following services could be easily added to tatkaal.
1. Building plan permissions
2. Property registrations


One of the great strengths of our society has been the ability to recognize the divinity in everything around us. The mahavakya Tat vam asi illustrates this aspect of our society.

Can we recognize the "Tat vam asi"  prevalent in corruption in every aspect of our society and build government services delivery using that ?

If w  could do it, we would  turn our worst curse into our greatest blessing.