Manu Joseph: India has become too rich to let petty clerks torment people

A lot of misery in India caused by petty corruption is unnecessary.
A lot of misery in India caused by petty corruption is unnecessary.

Summary

  • Middle-income countries tend to prosper by relieving people of petty pains. Signs of this happening in India, however, remain weak. Ask Aadhaar card seekers.

Every time I have to interact directly with the government, I wonder, “Why doesn’t it like me?" I usually avoid direct contact. But unfortunately, for nearly two months, I have been trying to get an Aadhaar number for a minor. After giving her biometrics, it has been a tale of torment.

I learnt that the site of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has been partially down for months.

The site would have been kinder to me if it were entirely down, but its cruelty is in drawing me to fill out all the numbers, including the exact second when biometric data was given, and then saying, “We’re unable to process your request due to temporary outages of our services."

For weeks, the same message. It’s a vital site, but has been this way for months.

Also read: Indian bureaucrats aren’t superhuman: Relieve them of stress

A tout told me that I would get an Aadhaar number if I paid 4,000. So, I wonder, though I have no evidence beyond the experience of being an Indian, if there is a connection between the site being partially down and the subterranean system that charges a fee to get the job done.

It is the same with many other government services, like the renewal of a driver’s licence. Everything is supposed to be ‘online,’ but nothing is. The link is always down, but a tout can get things done.

Also, I suspect that the poor are not as harassed as the upper-middle class because we can pay more in bribes. (A system that is corrupt for the rich but efficient for the poor could make it look as though the process is clean.)

I know people who have been denied Aadhaar on account of ‘glitches,’ which magically get sorted once they pay a bribe. One couple who tried to get a number for their minor son were told their documents were rejected because the school’s seal was a rectangle and not a circle.

Foreigners teaching in an international school who needed Aadhaar numbers to access their bank accounts ran around for weeks trying to get these, until they realized that someone had to be paid off.

Why are simple things so difficult in India? I can understand and even accept many of the consequences of living in a mostly poor country. In return for cheap labour that makes middle-class existence feel like affluence, we face third-world problems.

But I do feel that a lot of misery in India caused by petty corruption is unnecessary. No public hardship is necessary, but there is a natural sort caused by a paucity of funds and infrastructure. There is another sort of daily suffering Indians go through that is possible for India to abolish.

There was a time we could not have done it; India was too under-developed. But not anymore. There is no reason why petty clerks should be allowed to inflict so much misery.

There is a traffic signal in my neighbourhood that I am sure is also gamed. Its red light lasts 180 seconds, and its green light lasts for 20. Across the junction, cops hide behind objects.

They wait for an outraged motorist to violate a red light. I think there is a direct connection between the short green light and the hidden cops.

Also read: Another pay commission? The government should hold its horses

Many of India’s petty miseries that lower our quality of life are unnecessary, by which I mean that people in power can easily solve them without a drop in their material well-being. We can understand this better by thinking about the big problems that we cannot actually solve.

Some reforms seem almost impossible. For example, it routinely takes 90 minutes to two hours to commute between Delhi and Gurgaon. It is a problem that India cannot solve immediately because it was caused by an ingrained inability to plan well ahead of time.

Also, a smooth flow of traffic requires roads and metro systems that can cost thousands of crores, and policies that limit the use of private cars. The same goes for air pollution. These are complex problems that cannot be resolved quickly.

But many of our public miseries are not caused by India’s economic state. Our backwardness is not anymore caused by our low income.

There is, in fact, a region that does not have many of the problems that India faces, and it has a higher quality of life than most of the country in the form of clean air, food and healthcare; yet, it does not have an income level that is significantly higher than rest of the nation: Kerala.

If this state were a nation, it would be a proper middle-income Asian nation, with almost all its human indices outperforming India’s. Barring buses, Kerala’s public utilities are excellent, including government hospitals and schools.

One of the cleanest Olympic-sized swimming pools I have seen was a public pool in Thiruvananthapuram. And it cost almost nothing to swim there. In all of Kerala, there is cleanliness. Also, hygienic cheap food. The state has some problems, but they are not caused by government clerks.

As a nation progresses, a time comes when petty corruption ceases to exist without altering the prospects of the country’s most powerful people. In nations like China, the powerful were enriched by putting an end to petty corruption.

We can see a bit of this in how Indian politicians have generally moved up the value chain. In the Madras of my childhood, politicians controlled water tankers, bought land and ran marriage halls. Senior cops owned autorickshaw networks.

Also read: Jacks of all trades: India’s bureaucracy needs experts

Today, they have more sophisticated investments. As the powerful move up, they are supposed to clean up petty corruption at lower levels. This is not for ethical reasons, but out of self-interest. This is how advanced economies have prospered, and how smart middle-income nations are moving ahead.

India doesn’t do even corruption well.

 

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