Comments on India Development Blog: "Pareto-Optimal" Bribery?

Appeal to Public, Press & Government Instead ...

2009-10-04T10:16:19.864+05:30

Appeal to Public, Press & Government

Instead of killing me in police encounters, my services may be utilized to recover not less than rupees 250000 millions [ Available even in the Government records so far looted by the Government machinery ] within the exiting policies without formation of any new acts,

Since my entry into the Government services as Asst Executive Engineer in Irrigation department of AP , I used to question the corruption, bribery & misappropriation of lacks to crores of rupees whenever I observe in & around the Government departments. Instead of appreciation of my efforts , so far I am arrested 17 times while exposing me as BLACKMAILER by letting the challenges to murder me in police encounters . And also I am awarded Rowdee - Sheet by registering eleven criminal cases in Kadapa and inhumanly got tortured five & half days in police lock up and 68 days in the punishment cells of Kadapa Central Prison at the moment when I represented for Vigilance enquiries into the misappropriation of not less than 500 crores in the KC Canal Modernisation & Sri Guru Raghavendra Project works.

The Vigilance department proved the said misappropriation only after the intervention of High Court of AP in the Writ Petition No: 3794/2004 . But the same Vigilance granted clean chit prior to the above directions . Again I am arrested on 09-01-2007 and tortured in lock up of Chilakalaguda police station for four & half days and 23 days in Chenchalguda Central Prison , since the proposal of 74 engineers suspension published in the news papers on 07-01-2007 in this regards. But no one is considered for suspension till now although ninety percent of works are washed away in the floods of 2007. Print & Electronic media too exposed the facts in detail .

Although cases are registered in the National Human Rights Commission & AP State Human Rights Commission , no action is proposed yet. Hence it my sincere prayer to utilize my services in the interest of public justice.

With regards
Yours truly

A SIVA PRASAD
11-3-315/5 Flat No 3,Karthik Apartments
Mylargadda , Sec’bad 500061
Mobile :9912503844 , Email : ajpjngo@gmail.com

Corruption by Traffic police is surely just one bl...

2009-02-02T02:05:00.000+05:30

Corruption by Traffic police is surely just one block of the whole corruption puzzle and rather a smaller block. But that does not mean that we should justify it my any means. All types of corruption should be targeted parallely.

Your point about dismal salaries of police staff (or govt. officials in general) is of utmost importance and should be targeted. We need to get our govt. machinery professionally assessed and lighten the overstaffed departments. Schemes like VRS can be handy. Money thus saved in medium to long term need to be invested in better salary structure clubbed with sth like performance based bonuses.

Lets invest all our great creative minds in coming out with newer innovative ideas to handle corruption and other such evils rather than justifying them with our skillful arguments.

Selvan
And then here is always the moral cost o...

2008-09-20T15:33:00.000+05:30

Selvan
And then here is always the moral cost of corruption as well. It is similar to the moral cost of committing a petty crime. If the criminal gets away with it, then in his mind he rationalizes that the act is justifiable. This further emboldens him to take crime to the next higher level. It is the same with bribery
The other, and perhaps more damaging aspect of the moral cost is the effect on the people who offer the bribe. In their mind too, bribery is gradually legitmized not just for a traffic violation but for other more serious crimes as well.
Let us not make the mistake of tricking ourselves into justifying a social phenomenon just because right now we have no solution to put a stop to it

Nilesh,

Thank you for your thoughts. I abs...

2008-09-19T19:06:00.000+05:30

Nilesh,

Thank you for your thoughts. I absolutely agree that corruption can (and usually does) have negative distributional consequences. For example, a person who is rich, powerful, or politically well-connected need only to drop the name of one of their high-ranking contacts in the police in order to be exempt from paying the bribe. Also, the tendency for police to extract money from people with little recourse (such as informal shopowners, rickshaw pullers, hawkers, prostitutes, etc) is undeniable.

It's interesting that you suggest "institutionalization" of bribes in the manner that you did. The police, usually lacking the funds necessary even to do legitimate policework, often rely on "community contributions" from wealthy businessmen and such. I have no rigorous proof to offer, but it seems that most such contributions are not offered purely out of a sense of civic duty - no favor like that tends to go unrewarded in India. So one assumes that this is a channel by which the rich and powerful can manipulate the workings of the police.

On the police project, we actually proposed as an intervention a signboard that would be posted outside each police station listing the source of all community contributions, under the assumption that exposure to public scrutiny would make explicit patronage less acute. Unfortunately, the police themselves did not acquiesce to the idea (which might perhaps be a sign that it would have worked well). But this is exactly along the lines of what you propose.

Regarding ways to rigorously evaluate corruption, we relied mainly on decoy visits, where surveyors would visit police stations and attempt to have policework done and then record if bribes were demanded and such. We also ran a survey of local businesses regarding payment of bribes to police on a business level (though this was never scaled up due to sampling difficulties).

Selvan,

Thanks for the post, here are some ...

2008-09-08T22:43:00.000+05:30

Selvan,

Thanks for the post, here are some thoughts:

1.) I tend to agree that low-level bureaucratic corruption probably gets more attention than it deserves, vis-a-vis political corruption (siphoning off funds from 'white elephants' and such), but the lack of data makes these phenomena somewhat difficult to compare, and decide on the relative costs & benefits (there's a decent paper by Mauro [1998] on the composition of government expenditure & corruption)

2.) I do think that even low-level bureaucratic corruption, while 'greasing the wheels', so to speak, can have negative distributive consequences. For instance, if there's a necessary bribe that one must pay to get a driver's license, folks with reduced ability to pay may suffer from a reduced set of opportunities, that is fixed by the state at some affordable level.

3.) A broader argument (on the basis of pareto-optimality, for instance) becomes difficult because of a multiplicity corrupt contracts, viz. even if traffic bribes are socially efficient, bribing a customs officer to smuggle in arms could have far more serious social costs: Shliefer & Vishny have a good paper on this (entitled, "Corruption"), they talk about corruption with and without theft.

This exercise is further complicated by a lack of data on higher-level govt corruption, as to the possible counter-factual use of the funds.

4.) Perhaps the solution is to formally institutionalize the receipt of bribes in some manner (I think lobbyist contributions in the US are tantamount to this; at least the public has more information in this case).

Perhaps more serious offenses could require higher reporting standards together with higher payoffs for cops. This would hopefully keep them honest in what they fine for, and the incentive to directly benefit from the enforcement of laws may make them more vigilant.

In general, I tend to think exposing such phenomena to the public eye makes thing more amenable to analysis and consensus.

--

Since you're ex-Police project, I'm curious to hear of any ways to rigorously analyze this.

Comments on India Development Blog: "Pareto-Optimal" Bribery?

Appeal to Public, Press & Government Instead ...

Corruption by Traffic police is surely just one bl...

SelvanAnd then here is always the moral cost o...

Nilesh,Thank you for your thoughts. I abs...

Selvan,Thanks for the post, here are some ...

Selvan
And then here is always the moral cost o...

Nilesh,

Thank you for your thoughts. I abs...

Selvan,

Thanks for the post, here are some ...