It’s all about the perceptions
The one thing that is possibly more pervasive than corruption itself – anti-corruption sentiment. And capitalising on this sentiment seems to be the new ‘it’ thing to do politically. It is part of the Khan charm here at home and the thrust behind the Anna Hazare bandwagon in our neighbouring country. It is the issue that gets the traditionally apolitical, apathetic urban middle classes worked up. The issue is au courant and likely to remain so.
TI, whose methodology it must be said is not entirely beyond reproach, released its corruption scorecard and top honours went to the land department, the police and the income tax department. The usual suspects were all there but one not so usual suspect, the military, also inched up on the list. What needs to be stressed here is that this is a report on corruption perception and not an evaluation of how corrupt a department is in actuality. This could explain much of the list and its ordering.
Departments that the general public come in direct contact with, and hence the corruption that intrudes in their daily lives and irks them on a personal level, will rank higher on the list. Moreover, it is not just personal experience that is cardinal to perceptions but also the media machinery. That which attracts the sound and fury of our media pundits is also bound to be more hated by the wider public. Something that would explain why we think the political class as most crooked of the lot even though most corruption is administrative and apolitical (e.g. that of the civil bureaucracy).
Hence, what is perceived as a corrupter kind of corruption depends on many variables. For instance, the amount that a patwari charges a person for doing his job is probably peanuts compared to the killing made in military contracting. But the former will take top spot because it takes place in the public sphere and affects people on an individual level whereas the latter is more of an abstraction to the average Joe and also because it is well-kept under wraps and gets little airtime and printspace.
Corruption is indeed bad, very bad but some of it is endemic structurally and not easy to get rid of in 90-day programmes. Furthermore, the hefty kickback the minister got is also corruption but so is the fifty-rupee bribe the rehri-wallah paid to keep his cart on the road. They can’t be tarred with the same brush. Public perceptions of the issue are black-and-white and the grey area needs to be reintroduced. Not just on what corruption is and who does it but also on how it can be dealt with.