Corruption - Do it right!

If you've been keeping up to date on Indian affairs, you'll have seen the whole hullaballoo about corruption - the newspeople can't seem to get enough of it. First there was Anna Hazare, doing his Gandhi 2 thing. Now there's this Baba Ramdev character, sort of like Rasputin without the sexiness. He claims to be able to cure AIDS by breathing exercises or something of the sort. Surely, getting rid of corruption is child's play, then? Anyway, I'd love to see the government call their bluff - if you starve to death, we'll pass the anti-corruption bill. How's that for a bit of reverse blackmail?

What is corruption, though? At it's simplest, it's taking money to get something done. So how's that different from paying a plumber to unblock a drain? Because it's not stated up front. So maybe it should be stated up front. Think about it. Walk into a government office, and you'd see a tarriff of charges, for "special services", or "expedited delivery", to be paid "directly to functionary".

After all, that's how some governments deal with practices they don't like, but can't stamp out either - by legalising them. Like prostitution, in some countries. Can't beat 'em, so join 'em. And tax them, into the bargain. That way, everybody's happy. Of course, taking a cut from a prostitute's pay makes the government a pimp (or is it a madam?), but they've been called worse...

So let's legalise it. Everybody does it, might as well make it open, above board, and most importantly, taxable (let's avoid the issue of corrupt tax collectors for now...). Just imagine how much faster everything would move once everybody knows they need to pay a bribe to "expedite" matters. Companies could budget for it. Governent employees could set up bribe collection pools. Banks wwould have ATMs next to all government offices, dispensing cash briskly (and charge a premium for each withdrawal). Am I clever, or what?

And another thing - Why do countries like India always get a bad rap for corruption? I mean, I have to pay the telecom company here in the UK extra if I want faster broadband, although they advertise it like everybody's entitled to it. Or pay more to the parcel guys for "express delivery". Or pay more for a train ticket at the last minute, when I'm desperate to get somewhere. That's corruption too - taking advantage of someone's urgent need to pry some money out of them. The thing is, it's all institutionalised here in the west, with people working in an institutionally corrupt system. Whereas in countries like India, it's a cottage industry - every man for himself. And Indians are nothing if not entrepreneurs!

Racism and Hypocrisy

Went out for an “Indian” with a friend and some of his friends. Apparently, a common chat-up line for subcontinentals in the UK is “D’you like a good Indian?” Nice one, that. Suppose it wouldn’t work for anybody who wasn’t Indian, though. “D’you like a good Pakistani?” isn’t quite the same.

The friend’s friends were these good old guys, salt of the earth types. English earth, that is. Judge for yourself what they were like, based on these remarks – “You’re not turning Muslim, are you?” – in response to something about the drinks being delivered by a waiter, not waitress. Or “How was the bomb-making course, then?”, when said friend mentioned he read chemistry (He wasn’t Muslim, just for the record). Or again, about disliking Thai food “Just don’t like anything to do with slitty-eyed people”.

Now here’s the thing. These remarks were made openly, addressed to my friend and me, both of who are obviously of south Asian extraction. I’m confused about how to react. Or if I should react at all. From one angle, it’s as if we were part of the “inner circle”, where one could make remarks like that and get away with it. Certainly my friend acted like it.

From another angle, one could interpret it to mean that the people making those remarks were prejudiced about Muslims and East Asians, but not Indians (The fact that we were at an Indian eatery and all of them were Indian food fanatics lends weight to this theory). But how do you know that they wouldn’t make similarly erudite observations about my type of people when there weren’t any of us present? (Difficult though it is to get away from us these days).

Third, and here’s where I struggle a bit – is it sheer hypocrisy for me to be disturbed by this? Back home in India, racism as defined here is so casual as to be mainstream. “Chinkies”, “Mozzies” and “Kalloos” pepper our conversation, and belonging to an “upper” caste carries with it a feeling of smugness. So should I interpret tonight’s remarks as healthy, just like it was back home, or admit to myself that back home is a place that is truly rotten to the core?