Reflections on Corruption and Lokpal bills

Attempts to solve the problem through bills like the Lokpal bill, of whichever hue, ignore the fundamental questions of why corruption exists in the first place in a country like India. Any solution that does not get to the root will deliver only cosmetics..
• A feudal tradition, hijacked and co-opted by politicians, and renamed Democracy (see Pavan Varma’s Being Indian, for a nice exposition)
• A populace who accepts, and is willing to work with, the system because the system also protects its privileges
• Enormous power in the hands of people who are paid very little
• A highly decentralized system where the buck stops at every desk
All these almost guarantee corruption.
The feudal tradition, the most deep-seated of these factors, goes back centuries if not millennia. It may take at least a generation to shake off.
One way to reduce the pain is to ensure that Government approval is required for as few things as possible (which, in turn, will lead to the kinds of eco-disasters we are seeing all over India). Another way is to drastically increase the salaries of bureaucrats – can we afford it? and will it solve the problem, if the mind-set is not changed? Maybe it will result only in further looting of the (re)public….
At the height of the Emergency, corruption was probably lower than it is in today’s freer times- but at what cost? As Easterly points out in ‘The White Man’s Burden’, a centralized dictatorship exercises greater restraint in matters of corruption because it does not want to kill off the goose that lays the golden eggs.. surely, nobody wants a return to those bad old days..
The fact is, all economies, including the US and Russia, have gone through this wrenching period of high corruption and looting at inflexion points when the economy was suddenly freed up and incomes rose. Why should India be any different?
Surely the Lokpal bill is no answer, and Anna Hazare’s movement is not going to address any of these issues – but, on the other hand… I wonder.. we have to start somewhere.. maybe this is the start..?