A Report On

Root Cause Of Corruption And How It Can Be Removed From Our System From The Smallest Level.

The deep concern and anger about the form and extent of corruption prevailing in our country was clearly manifested in the survey we did with 15 students and 5 faculty members of our college. However, it was disturbing to see every next person we interviewed added a new dimension of corruption in the existing system in India, he talked about corruption in a place no one else had spoken about in the survey before or after him, prima facie it was unfortunate to discover that corruption in India today is almost like God in one aspect : being Omnipresent ,it affects people from all walks of life and at all stages of life but brighter aspect that comes from that same exercise is that today the people of this nation especially the youth are able to pinpoint the different and almost all forms of corruption, the kind of awareness that the respondents in our survey had was really appreciable, they knew about their rights and most importantly they all had a solution, some had really out of the box solution, some had traditional rhetorical, some were utopian and others insufficient but nonetheless, everyone had a solution : they wanted to solve the biggest socio-economic and political problem that country faces today. They were not just complaining they were giving solutions and suggestion. It was also evident that because of the recent success( however little but nonetheless very important) of anti corruption movements, successes of civil society have instilled in the people a new hope, as majority of the respondents were found to be highly

optimistic about eradicating corruption those not very optimistic ,also agreed that it not impractical to propose we can at least reduce corruption to much lower scale than today. The opinion on the root cause of corruption the respondents basically pointed three reasons: a) Funding of elections: It was the most popular choice among the 20 respondents for the "Root Cause". The argument was the private funding or party of election generates a vicious circle of corruption, develops a nexus between politicians and industrialists, both giving each other undue benefits and privileges and starting corruption in system which later has trickledown effect in lower ranks of governance and administration. b)Moral Education, Degrading Values and Greed: This opinion was especially popular among the professors. They feel the moral stands in the society have seen a sharp decline in past few decades and marks this as the root cause. They expressed that the greed for material goods because of influence of marketing strategies, mall culture have increased the spending ultimately putting lot of pressure on the purses and this catalyses corruption. c) Lack of effective mechanisms and institutions to check corruption: Those proposing this said the basic cause is the current system is incapable of identifying and punishing guilty. First those involved in corruption are hardly identified, when identified because of nexus between the different organs of government hardly an even case is registered and in rare cases when the accused are brought to trial because of slow judicial process hardly any punishment is pronounced in any case. One of the respondents interestingly talked about glorification of corruption in society. He said that the problem is omnipresent because the cause is omnipresent: everyone today wants to be corrupt, mother

wants his son to be a politician so that he may earn millions, lakhs of dowry is given to an IAS officer, this all represents that we "Respect Corruption" and hence it so widespread. Among the solutions each respondent was very positive about the role of civil society and society in making government more and more accountable. Respondents talked about recent the taking back of ordinance protecting politicians, followed by disqualification of three MPs, they also pointed out where in recent campaigns we have seen a positive shift since today almost every party and leader is at least promising a corruption free government because of increased awareness and pressure from "Common Man". People also talked about including a compulsory subject on ethics in life in primary education and ethics in governance and public life in higher education Other major solution, which we obviously anticipated while doing a survey in a technical college was, increasing use of technology to increase accountability and transparency in governance thus reducing corruption. E-governance seemed to be thus a major suggestion. It was very encouraging to see each of the respondents being so enthusiastic to contribute, they passionately talked about the need to curb corruption, the role especially youth has to play in the coming years. An easy conclusion of our survey was however the corruption in India is one of the major problems facing country but seeing the willingness, passion and most importantly awareness to curb, it seems the days of corruption are numbered.