Commentary / Mani Shankar Aiyar

How simple it would be if corruption in our society both
originated in and ended with politicians

The Lakhubhai Pathak case might still become a paradigm for our times. Here is a millionaire magnate who says he tendered illegal gratification to an intermediary to get an illegitimate job done, and that a minister who neither received the money nor did the job should be held guilty of cheating because he, the minister, did not tell the bribe-giver to go to hell on being asked if he would help.

How simple it would be if corruption in our society both originated in and ended with politicians. Then politicians could bribe each other, cheat each other, dupe each other, browbeat each other and drag each other to court. The rest of us could get on with the business of earning a clean living. Unfortunately, life is not as simple as that.

For every bribe-taker, there is a bribe-giver; for every nepotistic favour done, there is a nepotistic favour asked. And for every bribe not taken and every act of nepotism not done, there is a price to be paid for high-mindedness.

Politics without favouritism presupposes a society in which shortages do not lead to rationing. Take the small matter of making a train reservation. In the West, few train journeys require reservations to be made. In India, virtually every train journey requires reservations. The economic rationale for that is that in the West there are more berths available than berth-seekers; in India, there are too many berth-seekers chasing too few berths.

The obvious answer is to increase the number of trains. That costs money. And although the number of trains -- and the comforts that go with them -- have vastly increased/improved over the years, the demand for train services has risen exponentially much faster over the same period. So, we keep running faster to stay at the same place. What is to be done?

One solution would be to increase the price of train travel so that fewer people are able to afford to travel. If the price is raised sufficiently high, the number of potential passengers would drop till demand came into equilibrium with supply. Also, railway revenues would rise so fast that Ram Vilas Paswan, flush with funds, would be enabled to buy more and better trains. There is only one hitch though to this scenario. Those who need to travel will not be able to so so.

Should the train services be run for those who need to travel -- or for those who can afford to travel -- or of those who can afford to travel? If your answer is the latter, then some auxiliary mechanism to the ruthless logic of the market has to be found. The only possible solution is rationing. Some technique other than purchasing tickets days in advance of the journey has to be devised. This is the Headquarters Reservation Quota.

The dispensing of seats under this quota is an essential part of the railway minister's job. However fairly he attempts to do it, at the end of the day discretion has to be exercised in such a manner that some are bound to find the exercise of such discretion arbitrary. That is where nepotism comes in and from nepotism to corruption is but one short jump.