Kailash Pati Sharma
Corruption is a deep evil which brings the country or State down interms of the economy, causes culture dilution, trust deficit, uncertainty and causes huge dent on the developmental mind set.
India has climbed nine points to rank 76th in this year’s global corruption index launched in Berlin with watchdog Transparency International calling graft a global “blight”. According to Transparency International’s International Corruption Perceptions Index 2015, India is placed at 76th position along with Thailand, Brazil, Tunisia, Zambia and Burkina Faso out of 168 countries.India has improved its past year’s position of 85 and has a grade index score of 38 out of a possible 100 which indicates the least corrupt, said the report topped by Denmark.
J&K is second in the corruption index as per NCRB data and in our Jammu and Kashmir almost 90% of the accused were acquitted and this means that cases are getting registered and some of the brave people and officers had tried best by registering the cases but all accused (90%) were freed without any action. As per data from the J&K State Vigilance Organization website,from 2013 till Dec 2016,approx.172 cases of FIR were registered and still 151 cases are still under investigation without any conclusion and cases are running slow and many are waiting for getting justice. Shockingly more than 95 percent of the cases where challan were done are cases where FIRs are against low rank officers with complaint of receiving bribe of Rs 500 to Rs 5000. There is no single case against any big fish who have been making the system corrupt and reason might be that either is no one to register case against them due to the power and fear or if case is getting registered the justice is not coming.
The Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 (PCA) was enacted by Parliament as a special law to combat corruption. It covers all levels of Government across the country except the State of Jammu and Kashmir. J&K enacted its own anti-corruption laws, first, as part of the Ranbir Penal Code in 1932 and later a special law in 1949, all of which have been amended repeatedly over time to make them more stringent.Despite laws for preventing and penalizing corruption being in existence since the time of independence, there is very little information in the public domain in a consolidated manner about the impact of these laws. Thanks to the Government of India’s 2012 initiative in formulating the National Data Sharing.
Basis on some national surveys, State Vigilance Organization reports and feedbacks from the local residents. In Jammu and Kashmir, we have corruption cases in following areas: Please note that every employee or political leader is not corrupt and only one set of people create and flourish such corrupt system:
* Land records and registration-
* MNERGA -How much actual funds are getting spend in villages/infrastructure
* PHE/PWD/Projects (during floods even without repairing anything bills get produced, JE/AE asking 40 percent of repairing some cases etc.)
* Transfers corruption (transfers key source of corruption at key positions.
* Some political leader’s occupation of huge Govt land
* Some doctors (Just getting commissions from private companies for selling medicines)
* State Engineering Departments
* Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution (CAPD)
* Revenue and Police Departments.
In Jammu and Kashmir, we see that, how the net assets of some political leaders have gone up in last 10 years, you scan any leader in your area and see their property, cars, lifestyle, you will get the answer. We are observing that how some of the officers of some RTO Jammu have become so rich and have acquired so much property. Observe the wealth of some corrupt JEs and some Chief Engineers, some Patwaris, some doctors etc. Everyone is not corrupt and we are proud that we have so many good and clean doctors, political leaders, JE/RTO officers etc.
Corruption takes a huge toll on J&K ‘s economy and we have become dependent on the Central assistance to serve our State.Yes, we do have good resources and some pockets are helping us to generate revenue of the State. Our 2010 Corruption Barometer shows that corruption is also a daily burden for J&K /India’s citizens: 54 per cent of households paid a bribe in a 12 month period to receive basic services and 60 percent of the bribe money was paid by poor for getting basic services.
Finding solutions to corruption.
Laws alone will not stop corruption: political leadership and citizen participation are crucial. J&K vibrant democracy can be its best weapon against corruption.
* Communities and civil society groups can do much more when backed up by strong laws, and need to have faith that people who report corruption will be protected, and those reported on will be investigated. Rural families use their right to demand information from public officials as a weapon against bribery.Volunteers are trained to raise rural communities’ awareness of Right to Information laws and how these can be used to find out which services they are entitled to.
* Set up telephone help-lines to address the grievances of corruption victims in each district in Jammu and Kashmir and file the complaint and resolve them in time with transparency and keep this information under right to information purview.
* Digital payments instead of any cash payments to avoid any corruption in Govt transactions. Support demonetization and even add local digitization cells.
* E -files and E- systems to avoid any manual files movements and online files movement will bring more credibility and transparency in the system. Everyone can see his file movement on line digitally.
* Special anti- corruption cells at tehsil level to control the transparency in tehsils, police stations and patwaris circles. Awareness camps in villages for their rights.
* Online land registration. All records should have e-records like Karnataka.
* Political parties donations should be transparent and on line, visible to every single residents of the J&K
* Appeal to every resident to report the bribe cases on www.ipaidbribe.com., www.corruptionwatch.org, StateVigilance organization, etc.
Let’s all of us start a fight against corruption. Each one of us should to start taking action to kill the menace of corruption. If we stop taking or offering corruption, this devil of corruption will go away.
(The author is President Manav Utaan Mission and VP MNC, Member Skill Mission)
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