Friday 22 July 2011

Corruption - political compulsion in India

It will not be very wrong to say that to a large extent corruption takes place with the connivance of our political masters. Politicians have this compulsion of gathering money to achieve and maintain political power. Unless we tackle corruption perpetrated by politicians, no commission, committee or Jan Lokpal Bill can reduce corruption.

Basic question - why are our politicians corrupt (or like Manmohan Singh turn a blind eye towards corruption)? The roots of corruption lie in our political system. Any party needs 51% of elected representatives to form government, be it in state or centre. Since parties are not able to win 51% of the seats, they have to either buy MLAs/MPs (to make-up 51%) or form coalition Government. For buying MPs/MLAs parties need to generate black money and for forming coalition government parties have to offer posts of Ministers to their coalition partners, who wield immense power and cannot be checked by the Prime Minister or Chief Minister and make money while they can. Besides this, the Ruling party is unable to stick to its promised agenda because of arm twisting by its coalition partners.

To sum up, there is no way corruption can be reduced (forget about eradication) from India unless our political system is rectified. There are other systems followed in different countries which tackle this problem of 51% representation.

I am surprised, why no-body talks about correcting our political system, and we are wasting energy in devising inconsequential schemes for tackling corruption.

(Contributed by Tishya Kumar Bhatia, Ann Arbor, USA)