Three-year-old Neeraj Berma (name changed) has a nerve protrusion on his neck and needs a surgery, but he has been told to go home and come back two years later.
“On October 2, we were asked to come back for surgery in September 2011,” said his mother Madhu Berma, 28, who lives in an unauthorized colony near the posh Maharani Bagh neighbourhood in South Delhi.
“I have a choice between letting my son suffer for two years or take him to a private hospital, where they will charge us at least Rs 80,000.”
The case of the Bermas is not an aberration. Three other patients who need neurosurgery were given dates between August and September 2010.
Two were asked to come the next day for a date, while two others were not offered any dates at all.
Muhammad Shagir (28) from Bulanshahar is one of them.
He needs a date for his newborn son’s spinal surgery but has been turned away six times in one month.
“I can’t get a surgery date till I don’t get an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) done. Today, I was given a date for MRI for November 11,” said Shagir, who works as a daily wage labourer in an embroidery factory.
“The nerve protrusion in my son’s spine is getting bigger every day. What if he does not survive till November?”
He earns about Rs 150 a day and supports a family of six. “The two-day trip (to Delhi) and other expenses will cost me at least Rs 5,000 and then another trip for surgery. From where will I get the money?” he said.

A cat and mouse game is now a regular feature at Uttar Pradesh’s Gorakhpur Station, 266 km east of Lucknow.

There are, on the one hand, human traffickers smuggling young girls from Nepal, and a group of individuals trying to stop the practice, on the other.

Though the issue has not figured in discussions between political leaders of the two countries, it has become so sensitive that it is inflaming anti-Indian sentiments in Nepal.

Maoists in Nepal, a political force to reckon with, have been demanding a ban on sale of liquor and girl trafficking. They had even made it known that anyone taking part in this would be humiliated publicly. And they want the Indian government to take concrete action.

“Earlier we used to rescue the girls at Gorakhpur Station itself. It is easy to identify them — scared, huddled together. But then some touts also started travelling by road to Deoria, about 100 km east of Gorakhpur, to board the trains (to escape us),” said Abhishek Shahi of the Childline Foundation, a central government organisation.

“The girls are picked up from Nepal on the promise of employment. They are handed over to touts operating on the Indian side. The tout would then take them to Delhi or Mumbai. He also helps in getting them a passport to go to other countries.”

In Mumbai, the girls are paraded before prospective buyers: the younger ones are sold to buyers in West Asia and the rest are sent to brothels across the country.

Traffickers and their agents trick young girls and their parents by promising them work and the pleasure of visiting spas and beauty parlours, only to push them into the sex trade.

Neither the parents nor the girls make much money from the deal. While the agent earns Rs 1-10 lakh, the parents end up with something like Rs 5,000, according to Shahi.

The Asian Development Bank estimates that 100,000-200,000 Nepalese women and girls, roughly 25 per cent of whom are less than 18, are held in Indian brothels.

A recent study by Maiti, a non-government organisation in Nepal, said: “There are about 70,000 Nepali women migrant workers working in various international foreign labour markets. Annually, Nepal receives approx $1.5 billion (Rs 7,200 crore) as remittances and the contribution of women migrants make up about 11 per cent to this figure. In total, remittance has more than 17 per cent contribution to the GDP of our country.”

Maiti has estimated that a significant number of such girls end up being sex workers.

“Earlier the girls were sold to Indian brothels, but now they are being sent to the Gulf. It’s nearly impossible to bring them back from there,” said Prabha Khanal, a regional manager of Maiti.

Maiti rescued 13 girls in August this year. While six of them were intercepted at Kalyan railway station near Mumbai, four of the repatriated girls were rescued from Sahara International Airport, Mumbai, and another three from a brothel in Mumbai.

Dava Bhuti Tamang Sherpa (21) was sent to Lebanon. On her return, she was handed over to Maiti by Nepal’s Tribhuvan International Airport Metropolitan police. She had lost vision in one eye; her hands were bruised and burnt. She did not get the promised $150 (Rs 7,200) a month either. The physical torture suffered at the hands of her clients was evident.

Padma Darai (23) was brought back from Saudi Arabia, almost mad.

“Often girls are simply sent back to Nepal after their utility is over,” said Khanal.

With tears in her eyes, Revti (name changed on request) narrated her experience of escape from a Mumbai brothel. “Life is miserable. We have to serve up to five customers a day. The payment varies from Rs 150 to 500 a customer. But the owner of the brothel pockets the money. We live on tips, which is Rs 5-25.”

Several NGOs have set up counters on all major points on the Indo-Nepal border to counsel girls against migration.

Volunteers sit near the two main border crossing points at Bahraich in central UP and Maharajganj in eastern UP to maintain close surveillance. They are also running awareness campaigns in Nepal to save vulnerable girls from traffickers and their agents.

NGOs in Nepal too are now working closely with their counterparts in India to check the menace. “If the touts have built a network, we are also building one to combat them,” said Shahi.

Education has lost its essence in the recent past. It has become a mere trade-off against money. The quantity has gained momentum whereas the quality has deteriorated. The education level of a child has become a matter of pride and honour for the parents. It’s role of empowering individuals, to be better human beings, is getting diminished with time.

Of late, the HRD Minister Kapil Sibal, declared UGC to be one of the most corrupt governing bodies in the country. Soon after that, there arose an ambiguity concerning the title of ‘Deemed University’.

The above steps have been taken to increase the transparency within this sector. These days, there is a flood of Institutions in the country, who claim to be the best among all . However, they are mere tuition centres, who charge huge amounts of fees ( that is charged by regular students of a University ) and provide degrees, whose validation is under question. Most of them donot even follow the norms setup by the Governing bodies to attain some minimum standards.

Moving from the prevalent scenario of higher education to that of the School level education, the decision that cannot be ignored is that of ‘ Scrapping of Class ten Board examinations’. The students of class 10 donot have to give Board Examinations. Rather, they would be marked through a year long process of Grades.

Reason behind such an action is to make the education system more practical and interesting for the students.

However, my question is that is it really happening ? Is the system able to impart values it is suppose to ? I donot think so.

NEW DELHI: Four years after the pioneering Right to Information regime came into force in India, many hurdles remain in the way of a citizen

accessing information. Just 27 people out of 100 get the information they ask for. And, even if an information commission rules in your favour, there is a 61% chance you won’t get the information because the rulings are not complied with.

These are some of the many interesting findings of the largest study conducted to assess the performance of Information Commissioners across India. Overturning many commonly held notions, the project led by RTI campaigner Arvind Kejariwal has ranked an unheard of information commissioner from Kerala, P Faziluddin, as the best in the country in terms of public satisfaction. Karnataka was found to have the best Information Commission.

The most public face of the Central Information Commission, its CIC Wajahat Habibullah, is placed fourth on the list in terms of public satisfaction while two IC’s from Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra bring up the bottom. Former CBI officer M L Sharma was found to be the least popular among CIC commissioners on the same count.

Apart from analyzing public satisfaction, the ranking also took into account ‘effectiveness’ (whether information was made available or not), ‘deterrent impact’ (imposing penalties for non-disclosures) and ‘pro-disclosure factor’ (which looked at whether the order was in favour of the applicant or not).

The study throws up other interesting results. Violence-racked regions like Assam and Chattisgarh are blazing new trails in ushering in transparency with Information Commissions of the two states passing 98% pro-disclosure rulings. IC Anil Joshi from Chattisgarh has ruled 100% in favour of transparency, the study, that browsed through more than 50,000 rulings, discloses.

And, despite the much reviled system of appointing retired bureaucrats as information commissioners, Kejariwal’s Public Cause Research Trust found all the best performing commissioners were retired babus. The only commissioner with a background in activism, Shailesh Gandhi, was ranked at the bottom of the rung on each of the four parameters.

While releasing the findings, Kejariwal said the rankings may change once more feedback starts flowing in from all parts of the country. “We are asking just one question: Did you finally get satisfactory information after approaching the Information Commission?” Kejariwal said, explaining how his team of researchers wrote to each applicant who got a favourable order to find out what they thought of the interface with information commissioners.

“These findings are just the beginning of a process. The hope is citizens will constantly assess the performance of high public officials as an integral part of an effective democracy,” the RTI campaigner hoped.

A few weeks back, P.Chidambaram, the home minister, asked Delhi-ites to mend their ways before the Commonwealth Games. “We must behave as citizens of a big, good international city,” he said. Clearly, Delhi Police thought it was not included. Joel Elliott, an award-winning American freelance journalist, working as a staff writer at Caravan magazine in Delhi since May this year, has  charged “six to seven hours of beating and torture” by Delhi Police, for intervening while the cops were thrashing another man. Delhi Police, on its part, insists that Elliot was drunk, trying to steal a taxi, and had beaten up a couple of police men and an elderly driver. Even if we go by the Delhi Police version, what  does it say about the rule of law in India’s capital city and the way its police metes out instant justice? Following is the full text of the signed statement of Joel Elliott about the night of Oct. 5 and the morning of Oct. 6.

Background:
I am a journalist working for The Caravan, a narrative journalism magazine run by Delhi Press. I also freelance for a number of publications, including The New York Times. The Christian Science Monitor. San Francisco Chronicle and Global Post. I hold a Bachelor of Science degree in Journalism from Toccoa Falls College in Georgia, USA. My work has won a number of state, regional and national awards in the United States.

Narrative:
On the evening of Oct 5, I visited the home of Kate Webb and Ryan Fletcher, two freelance journalist friends of mine who were flying out to London at 5 the next morning. My own flight, to the United States, would leave in a few days hence, and so we wanted l” spend one more evening together as we three would not see each other again for quite Some time. Their home is in Jangpura Extension, as is mine. We are separated by some six or seven blocks, perhaps eight.

I became tired sometime around 2 a.m. Oct 6, and set out on foot, atone, to my home As I was walking in the darkness, I came around the comer of a building and walked literally into the middle of an altercation between at least four Delhi Police Officers, in uniform, beating a person beside the street. As I had not been paying attention, one police officer’s baton struck me, perhaps by accident, while he was beating the other person on the ground. Startled. I shouted. When I realized what was happening to the person on the ground, I shouted again. The police officer closest to me turned and advanced, shouting something in a language I did not understand. I shouted back, saying they couldn’t just beat people in the street. In the middle of the exchange, the officer swung his baton and struck me in the left upper arm area and began to raise his baton to strike again. I struck him in the jaw, and as he reeled back, turned and fled, turning off of the way to my home, as the officers were in the way. They gave chase, but I had somewhat of head start, and it was quite dark, so I was able to evade their line of vision for a time. It took me a few moments to find my way back to a road that I recognized. The problem was that they could easily catch me in their mobile command post. I began searching for a hiding place, and the most obvious places were in the row of cars parked along the left hand side of the road. I slowed to a fast walk, trying door handles to see if one were unlocked. I was hoping I could hide inside one of the cars until the polite passed, since I was afraid they found me. Door after door I tried, to no avail. The last Car I tried was an Ambassador cab — I had been particularly hopeful about this car, because it had darkened windows. However, I had apparently chosen a car near Bhogal Marker that was parked next to a guard, or a driver, because someone came out of the shadows shouting. I tried to explain I wanted a hiding place, not to steal a car (after all my home was only five or six blocks away – why would I need a taxi?) But the man was shouting in a language I did not understand, and apparently did not understand me, either. His shouts alerted the police, who were already in pursuit, as was mentioned before, and they arrived quickly and surrounded me. Advancing quickly, they began beating me with their batons. In self-defense, I swung at, and connected, with a few of them, but I quickly went down beneath a rain of blows on my head, back, arms, thighs, shins, buttocks and ankles. The beating continued for some time after I had fallen.

They shackled my arms behind my back, so tight that to this date I have drastically reduced sensation in my left thumb. Then they shackled my ankles together and threw me bodily into the back of the mobile command vehicle. Three officers climbed into the rear compartment with me and resumed beating me, this time with their fists. They also slammed my face into the seat and into the floor, which action I was unable to resist, since my hands were shackled behind my back.

After some rime we arrived at what I later learned was the AIIMS Hospital. At the time, however. I was not aware of location, became the officers had continually slammed my head do»n and I was unable to see out of the windows for some time. They threw me from the rear of the truck and I landed on the asphalt hard, without being able to catch myself. Unable to walk, I found the skin being removed from my knees and lower body as the officers hoisted me up by my arms behind my back and dragged me into the hospital entry way. Again, at this point I had no way of knowing where I was; I believed I was in the police station. When a nurse emerged with a hypodermic needle, I began screaming for help and for someone to call the US Embassy. After the officers’ rough treatment of me, I was afraid of what the syringe contained As far as I knew. the woman was an employee of the polite department. No one explained to me in English what was happening. I struggled, the officers held me down, and I finally was forced to be injected by an unknown substance — one that later turned out to be a sedative. When the injection was complete, the officer again picked up my upper body and dragged me across ihe concrete floor and parking lot back lo the truck.

Once inside the truck, the three officers in the rear continued to strike mc in ihe fate and head as we rolled to the police station.

At ihe police station, the officers hauled me out of the rear of the truck and tossed me to the ground, still shackled. I began again streaming for someone to call the US Embassy to report this beating and continued torture. I lay like this for perhaps two hours.

After 15 or 20 minutes of my shouting for help, an officer came out and began kicking me, apparently angered by my calls for help. He did this one or two more times, as I still continued calling for help. After an hour or two had passed, several officers came out and dragged me into the police station, still scraping my lower body across the concrete. They threw me into a holding room with a concrete floor. I lay like this for perhaps a couple of hours, still shouting for someone to call the US Embassy.

Two officers came in two or three times and kicked me while I was lying on the floor, apparently to make me be quiet. In between these instances, they targeted the other person in the room, a young Indian man of perhaps 17 who had been sitting quietly near a table along the wall. One two or three occasion, two officers entered the room, and one held him down on the table while the other beat the soles of his feet with a baton. The young man screamed, but the beating went on and on

I am not sure whethcr this was the same young man I saw being beaten earlier in the morning.

Around 9 a.m., the polite asked for my street address and called for my flatmate to come and get me. At no point during the six or seven hours they had held me did they offer me any food or water. At no point did they offer me the Opportunity make a phone call. At no point until my release did they unshackle me. At no point did they contact the US Embassy, according to the Embassy itself. The police are required to notify the US Embassy the moment a foreigner is arrested.

My flatmate took me to the hospital for treatment. I was covered in blood from head to toe from the police beating. My pants, which were still on me. were torn to shreds, and covered in blood. My shirt had been torn from my body. The hospital staff, concerned about the gaping wound to the side of my head and blood clots in my right eye, combined with the massive bruising across the whole of my body, kept me at AIIMS Hospital for two days and one night. I received five stitches to my eyebrow

Conclusion:
I request a thorough inquiry into the six to seven hours of beating and torture I endured at the hands, feet and batons of Delhi Police. I request that the police officers responsible be removed ftom their positions

Further, I seek $500,000 US dollars in compensation for pain and suffering and mental anguish the Delhi Police inflicted upon me.

Date: October 8, 2009
Time: 4 p.m
Place: New Delhi

India address:
Second floor, N-31 B, Jungpura Extension, New Delhi

Now that India is playing an ever larger role in the world economy, the issue of corruption, in both the private and public sectors, is coming into sharper focus. Two scenarios are possible: As India’s multinational corporations develop both economic and political muscle, they may act as a broom, sweeping corruption from the economic sphere.

On the other hand, entrenched practices may prove the stronger force, and corruption could end up being a significant brake on India’s economic rise.

The License Raj and the Spoils System

One strand in the knot of corruption is the legacy of the License Raj, which ended in the early 1990s. The system created bureaucracies that were all but self-perpetuating. In a context where government workers were routinely underpaid, graft became an industry all its own. Civil servants were, and remain, anything but disinterested administrators.

Wharton management professor Jitendra Singh and Ravi Ramamurti, professor of international business at Northeastern University, have been studying the emergence of multinational corporations in emerging economies such as India. In late June, they organized a conference on this topic in Boston; the conference’s papers will form the core of an edited volume which is planned for publication in 2008.

“In the bad old days,” Singh said in an interview, “particularly pre-1991, when the License Raj held sway, and by design, all kinds of free market mechanisms were hobbled or stymied, and corruption emerged almost as an illegitimate price mechanism, a shadowy quasi-market, such that scarce resources could still be allocated within the economy, and decisions could get made.

“Of course, this does not in any way condone the occurrence of such corruption. The shameful part of all this was that while value was captured by some people at the expense of others, it did not go to those who created the value, as it should in a fair and equitable system.”

The real failing, he said, “was a distortion of incentives within the economy, such that people began expending efforts toward fundamentally unproductive behaviors because they saw that such behaviors could lead to short-term gains. Thus, cultivating those in positions of power who could bestow favors became more important than coming up with an innovative product design. The latter was not as important, anyway, because most markets were closed to foreign competition–automobiles, for example–and if you had a product, no matter how uncompetitive compared to global peers’, it would sell.

“These were largely distortions created by the politico-economic regime. While a sea change has occurred in the years following 1991, some of the distorted cultural norms that took hold during the earlier period are slowly being repaired by the sheer forces of competition. The process will be long and slow, however. It will not change overnight.”

The costs of corruption are manifest in various parts of the economy. Inadequate infrastructure, of course, is widely recognized as a serious impediment to India’s advancement. Producing valuable goods is of limited utility if they cannot be transported in a timely fashion, for example. Transparency International estimates that Indian truckers pay something in the neighborhood of $5 billion annually in bribes to keep freight flowing. “Corruption is a large tax on Indian growth,” Ramamurti said in an interview after the conference. “It delays execution, raises costs and destroys the moral fiber.”

Corruption also cripples the effort to ameliorate poverty in India and to improve the country’s stock of “human capital.” The rate at which this happens varies tremendously from region to region. Edward Luce, for example, author of In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India, notes that “Rates of theft vary widely from state to state in India, with the better states, such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu, getting more than 80% of subsidized government food to their poor. Meanwhile, in the northern state of Bihar, India’s second poorest with a population of 75 million, more than 80% of the food is stolen.”

Indian MNC’s as Change Agents

“A few Indian companies,” Ramamurti said, “such as the Tata group or Wipro, have taken the high road, but most firms find it impossible to get anything done without greasing palms.” Wipro, headed by Azim Premji, is India’s third-biggest global tech services provider (behind Tata Consultancy Services (other-otc: TACSF – news - people ) and Infosys).

In Bangalore Tiger: How Indian Tech Upstart Wipro Is Rewriting the Rules of Global Competition, business journalist Steve Hamm writes that “Wipro is not just a company, it’s a quest.” That quest, according to some observers, is as much about moral rectitude as it is about business success. For example, according to Hamm, the company pays no bribes and has a zero tolerance policy for corruption.

“The paradox,” Ramamurti said, “is that even though India’s faster growth in recent years is the result of fewer government controls, most Indian managers would tell you that corruption has increased, not decreased, in tandem.

“How could this be? The explanation is that faster growth has created new choke points at which politicians and bureaucrats can extract payments, such as land regulation, spectrum allocation or college admissions–all of which have become much more valuable in [this century]. Faster growth has also raised the economic cost to firms of delays in public approvals, giving officials that much more ‘hold-up’ leverage over private investors.”

Bribery in the World Bank’s lending methods is as rampant as ever, says a former Bank official who has written a book on this corruption.

Steve Berkman contends that Indian IT majors Satyam [Get Quote] and Wipro [Get Quote], who were barred from World Bank projects for offering their stock to Bank officials, represent a miniscule problem compared to the kickbacks and commissions that go to government officials for approval of Bank projects.

Berkman, who was an advisor to various project teams within the Bank on human resource issues and capacity building, retired from the Bank in 2002. He is the author of an expose on corruption in this multilateral institution titled, The World Bank and the Gods of Lending, based on his 16-year experience auditing Bank projects, including the $800 million loan to health sector projects in India.

While most of his experiences were in Africa and Latin America, he said the corruption “I’ve seen there (in India) is no different than what I’ve seen in Africa and other places.”

In an interview with rediff India Abroad, Berkman said he strongly believes that Paul Wolfowitz was pushed out of his position as World Bank president after an entrenched bureaucracy at the Bank disliked his anti-corruption campaign and not because of the mini-scandal about his girlfriend, which “was more of a side-show.”

The problems for Wolfowitz — a former Bush administration official — began in July 2005 when Berkman said he suspended the massive Bank loan for health sector projects in India because of allegations of corruption.

“My experience has been that — and again, one of the things I was trying to shed some light on in my book — is that almost always (corruption) emanated from government officials in these developing countries. In my experience, they have always been the catalysts for the corruption and the fraud.”

Berkman, now 75 and living a retired life in Leesburg, Virginia, near Washington, DC, says the gods of lending are the international bureaucrats who run the Bank and are the ones who conspired to nail Wolfowitz using the mini-scandal with his girlfriend to call for his ouster.

“Quite often,” he argued, “everybody seems to be talking about the companies that bribe these officials, but what never seems to come out is that in fact, it is the officials who are the catalysts for this and they are the ones that are more of less coercing the business. That if you want a contract you have to pay us — that kind of thing.”

In most developing countries, Berkman said, “the spectre of corruption throughout the governments in these countries — I mean nothing is done in some countries at all for the benefit of the people. It is merely for the benefit of the people who are running the show.”

“But as far as the Bank staff goes,” Berkman said, “for many years, I would have never believed that the Bank staff were also corrupt, but since the early 1990s, I think it has become obvious that we have some bad apples too.”

In his book, in a scathing castigation of senior Bank managers and board members — the so-called gods of lending — he writes that ‘they have created the myth that they are the “cutting edge” of development, while they hide the appalling number of failures within the Bank’s portfolio — failures that enrich the government elites of the Third World while creating mounds of debt that cannot be repaid.’

According to Berkman, ‘It is this single truth that exposes the hypocrisy of the whole business: The Bank pretends it is lending for noble purposes, while the borrowers pretend they will put the money to good use.’

Instead, he writes, how Bank funds are regularly ‘placed in the hands of officials with a history of looting national treasures.’

In the case of the $800 million loan to health sector projects in India, a team of investigators found dummy companies that were paid by the Bank for products and services that were never delivered and a plethora of bribes and kickbacks that went into the pockets of senior government officials. This was the basis of Wolfowitz’s suspension of the loan to India.

In the wake of allegations that by holding up a follow-up loan until the discrepancies in the earlier loan had been fully investigated and fixed he was ‘depriving the poor of needed health care,’ and that his actions smacked of political considerations, Wolfowitz told Newsmax that ‘The India example is particularly interesting because it refutes many of the objections that were commonly raised against the anti-corruption efforts.’

While acknowledging that India was indeed a close strategic partner of the US and a shining example of a successful developing democracy, Wolfowitz told Newsmax that it ‘didn’t make it right to turn a blind eye to corruption in World Bank health loans that were actually making people sick,’ because tainted pharmaceuticals had been bought by Bank funds and distributed to the public.

At the time a senior Bank official told rediff India Abroad that when Wolfowitz had written to then Indian finance minister Palaniappan Chidambaram about the alleged corruption and the Bank’s concern over corruption in India projects, an angry Chidambaram, irritated by what he believed was the Bank president’s patronising tone, had curtly responded that India was as concerned or more about corruption and implying that New Delhi did not need lessons about fighting corruption from ‘a holier than thou’ Wolfowitz.

India is the largest beneficiary of World Bank lending.

In the interview, Berkman acknowledged that since he left the Bank, it had “done a lot in terms of fighting corruption and dealing with it, but at the end of the day, I remain convinced that as much money is being stolen now through bribes and kickbacks and embezzlement as there was 10, 15 years ago.”

He said he did not believe “there has been any change although the Bank now talks openly about corruption and has taken some steps to deal with it.”

“I would be willing to bet that there is more money being stolen now than was stolen 10, 15 years ago,” he added.

In the wake of the Bank banning Satyam, Wipro and Megasoft Consultants Ltd for ‘providing improper benefits to bank staff,’ Berkman acknowledged that firms vying for Bank contracts may have devised new ways of bribing Bank officials through the offering of shares during Initial Public Offers and such.

“There are always ways to get around the system, but I don’t see any big fish being caught and that’s troublesome,” he said.

Berkman said the IPO offerings to Bank officials were “the least of the Bank’s problems. At the end of the day, whatever they may have gotten with stock options or whatever, I think is nothing compared to the rampant corruption that is being practiced on the Bank’s lending operations.”

“If one would just take 10 percent as the rate of corruption on Bank-funded projects — I think last year they disbursed almost $25 billion — then 10 percent is $2.5 billion,” Berkman said, “and in many countries the figure is much higher. When I worked in Nigeria, it was closer to 40 percent and most likely still is. That’s an awful lot of money.”

“So, in terms of where the Bank has come in the last 10 years, I feel that they have made some progress, but they still have a very long way to go — people are still robbing them blind.”

While senior Bank officials declare that things have changed and corruption is not as rampant as it was, Berkman said, “my observations lead me to conclude that things haven’t changed at all. In fact, in private conversations with a number of people who are still there, the general consensus is that things are worse — I mean worse in the sense that they still circle the wagons and they are more concerned with appearing to fight corruption than in doing anything about it.”

Although making the case that Wolfowitz was forced out because he came up against the ‘gods of lending’ with his anti-corruption efforts, Berkman said, “Wolfowitz was a bad choice anyway. I mean he came to the Bank with a lot of baggage. Let uss face it. He was not popular to begin with and then he touched a very sensitive nerve at the Bank.”

India’s main problem is it’s so-called “democracy”.

India adopted “democracy” before it was ready for it. Both corruption and overpopulation are symptoms of India’s main problem, and not the main causes.

What India needed was an early period of benign and unifying dictatorship that focussed on eliminating societal divisions, eradicating illiteracy and creating employment, thus readying its people for meaningful democracy.

The word “democracy” stands for “people’s rule”. This implies that the people in question are capable of ruling, or, in other words, capable of voting for the right people to rule. Proper voting requires a certain minimum level of social awareness and sense of responsibility.

If the vast majority of a population is illiterate and uneducated, social awareness is poor, and elections have little meaning. Also, if the vast majority of a population is poor, social responsibility is low. When a person does not know where his next meal is coming from or when, he can hardly be expected to understand or worry about his vote.

Votes are therefore cheap in India. Anyone can buy them. The right price could be as little as a food packet or a pair of thongs (footwear) on election day. Truckloads of such items can be seen moving around towns and villages in India on election day.

Democracy in India is therefore a game that is all about numbers; about getting a majority vote in elections. It is not about HOW these votes are obtained.

How does democracy destroy a country if introduced prematurely?

I. Poor Infrastructure
Indian politicians have discovered that investment in important infrastructure does not necessarily get them elected in the next election. Handing out small gifts to poor people on election day gets them elected. The number of rich people directly using that infrastructure and therefore voting for them is much smaller than the number of poor people who vote for election-day gift-givers. Indian politicians therefore do not waste their energy on building infrastructure when it is much simpler to distribute tiny gifts on election day. Infrastructure in India has therefore remained very poor even after over 60 years of independence from British rule. Ironically, the best infrastructure in India, the Indian Railways, was created by the British.

By contrast, a country that has poor people, but where leaders do not depend on votes, is free to go ahead with important infrastructure projects. Example: China

Lesson 1: If a country adopts democracy before it is ready for it, its infrastructure will suffer badly.

II. Divisions in society
At the time of independence from the British, India was already a society divided on various factors, like religion, caste and language. Politicians took advantage of these divisions. They found that encouraging and furthering such divisions created permanent “vote banks” for them. The “arithmetic” for them was therefore very simple:

a. Promise all kinds of benefits to their chosen vote banks.
b. Get elected based on such promises.
c. Use public funds to provide the promised special benefits to their chosen vote banks at the cost of the rest of the country.
d. Generate resentment among the other groups that did not get these benefits, and further divide society to their own advantage.

Lesson 2: If a country adopts democracy before it is ready for it, its society will get heavily divided along every possible division (including language, caste and religion).
III. Overpopulation
Elections are all about numbers. The greater the number of poor and uninformed voters available, the better. Reckless population growth is therefore welcomed by corrupt Indian politicians, and even encouraged, especially within their chosen “vote banks”. Hard to believe, but governments in some Indian states actually pay money to certain communities (their preferred vote banks) to produce more children! India is therefore faced with the catastrophe of an out-of-control population growth — and no one seems to care. By contrast, China introduced a one child per family policy, as its leaders do not require vast numbers of destitute people in order to remain in power.

Compare 2008 figures:
China population 1,330,045,000; population density 138.6

India population 1,147,996,000; population density 349.2 (almost three times that of China)

Lesson 3: If a country adopts democracy before it is ready for it, its population will grow very rapidly and out of control.
IV. Corruption
The vast numbers of people competing for all kinds of services, leading to demand hugely outstripping supply, coupled with people’s ignorance and therefore lack of power, enables corruption to flourish in India. Providers of any service can demand bribes for just doing their job, and the public are willing to pay “extra” to get that elusive service. In a society that is poor, unaware and divided, politicians can afford to launch all kinds of huge public projects, steal staggeringly large amounts of money, and leave the projects incomplete.

Lesson 4: If a country follows democracy before it is ready for it, its society will be highly corrupt.

V. A continuation of these problems

It can easily be seen that India will always continue to have large numbers of poor, uneducated and ignorant people, as the survival of its politicians depends on these people. Education for all will continue to be given low priority in India.

Corruption hurts everyone, and it harms the poor the most. Sometimes its devastating impact is obvious:

• · A father who must do without shoes because his meagre wages are used to pay a bribe to get his child into a supposedly free school.
• · The unsuspecting sick person who buys useless counterfeit drugs, putting their health in grave danger.
• · A small shop owner whose weekly bribe to the local inspector cuts severely into his modest earnings.
• · The family trapped for generations in poverty because a corrupt and autocratic leadership has systematically siphoned off a nation’s riches.

Other times corruption’s impact is less visible:

• · The prosperous multinational corporation that secured a contract by buying an unfair advantage in a competitive market through illegal kickbacks to corrupt government officials, at the expense of the honest companies who didn’t.
• · Post-disaster donations provided by compassionate people, directly or through their governments, that never reach the victims, callously diverted instead into the bank accounts of criminals.
• · The faulty buildings, built to lower safety standards because a bribe passed under the table in the construction process that collapse in an earthquake or hurricane.

Corruption has dire global consequences, trapping millions in poverty and misery and breeding social, economic and political unrest.

Corruption is both a cause of poverty, and a barrier to overcoming it. It is one of the most serious obstacles to reducing poverty.

Corruption denies poor people the basic means of survival, forcing them to spend more of their income on bribes. Human rights are denied where corruption is rife, because a fair trial comes with a hefty price tag where courts are corrupted.

Corruption undermines democracy and the rule of law.

Corruption distorts national and international trade.

Corruption jeopardises sound governance and ethics in the private sector.

Corruption threatens domestic and international security and the sustainability of natural resources.

Those with less power are particularly disadvantaged in corrupt systems, which typically reinforce gender discrimination.

Corruption compounds political exclusion: if votes can be bought, there is little incentive to change the system that sustains poverty.

The conclusion – Corruption hurts everyone.