It takes 2 to make the bribe go right

When the nation's chief corruption watchdog is forced to step down and even Supreme Court judges face allegations of corruption — and compound the problem by resisting calls to open their assets to public scrutiny, it's easy to miss the forest for the trees.

Yes, Open magazine is right to demand that the Supreme Court stop indulging a double-standard when it comes to probity — going hammer and tongs after Central Vigilance Commissioner PJ Thomas while fighting tooth and nail against measures to make the court itself more transparent. But it doesn't stop with the court. 

The 2G spectrum scam has brought some mild criticism down on the corporate bigwigs accused of bribing the telecom minister to (allegedly) allocate licenses improperly. But the brief finger wagging was only an interlude in the cheering of the "entrepreneurs" who are in the driver's seat for India's growth story. And while politicians like A. Raja (the former telecom minister) inspire vituperative disgust, show me a pompous windbag brimming with criticism for an Indian politician, and I'll show you a guy who uses his own money and influence to jump the queue whenever and wherever he can.

Full disclosure: It's contagious, and seems unavoidable. I tried to get a driving license the legal way (after several years driving with a foreign license….). I waited in line for 5 hours. Then I caved. When I went for the SECOND TRIP (5 hours was not enough), I first joined an "automobile association" whose principal role, as far as I can tell, is to grease the wheels at the licensing bureau.  It still took way longer than necessary, by the way, and my first license had a picture of an Indian dude on it, and the young guys who run the computers at the licensing bureau were actually spurred into faster action by the humor of the situation than by the "fixer."

But after that long digression…How can society seriously expect its leaders to be clean if regular folks are so ready to cheat the system? 

A few months ago some leading Indians wrote an open letter to the government calling for an end to graft, for instance. All of them have impeccable reputations, so far be it for me to suggest that they have bribed anybody in the past or the organizations that they represent have benefited from "arrangements" to get building approvals etc. But I could not help but think there was a far more powerful tool at their disposal than an open letter:

Even if none of them has ever paid a bribe before, they could have publicly banded together and pledged that neither they themselves or any organization where they held a leadership role would pay a bribe, even at the lowest level. And they might have challenged other powerful individuals and corporations to do the same. Because, you see, it's not only the politicians, judges and bureaucrats who are corrupt. It's you and me and everybody else.

It takes two to make the bribe go right.