Source: T.R. Raghunandan, The Hindu, After the Floods, Bengaluru Needs to Clean Up its Act

Practice Question: Corruption poses multi-layered challenges to the society. Comment.  

How does corruption cripple economic growth:

• Corruption transfers inordinate wealth to the undeserving.
• It creates a slew of vested interests, who resist anti-corruption process reforms.

Loopholes in the fight against corruption:

• Narrow, legal definition of corruption enables many in a corrupt system to escape culpability as private corruption is not criminalized.
• E-Governance is often not the effective solution as claimed. E-enabled systems often only relocate the locus of corruption; they do not solve all of it.

Anti-Corruption Strategies:

• Regular assessments and evaluations of ongoing anti-corruption measures.
• A genuine regime of whistle-blower protection is needed.
• There has to be a conscious move towards promoting ethical behaviour.

Important Quotes from the article:

• “Everybody decries corruption outwardly, but submits to it meekly.”
• …we must understand that the corrupt often use the honest to further their subversive agendas.”
• “If anti-corruption strategies are to be successful, the process needs enlightened leadership.”