Who says Indians are corrupt?

Introducing Cacofonix - The writer could have been a violinist, but succumbed instead to the drab world of engineering. Staying away from fixated views and beliefs, he seeks the mellifluous in the world of the cacophonous. And gets peeved enough occasionally to pen his thoughts.

I see a lot of despair in the minds and hearts of righteous citizens of India about corruption. There is a groundswell of opinion that this is the cancer that will spread inexorably, leading to the demise of our identity on the global stage as a nation to reckon with. I have thought this through, aided occasionally by a little tipple on the side, to arrive at this eminently elegant solution – legalise it! Because it’s too darned difficult to get rid of it. And modern management teaches us to be collaborative, not punitive.

We are very efficient at legalising things, so this should be easy. We build an extra floor on our house, we extend a balcony on to the neighbourhood park, we grow our gardens on the footpath in front of our house though it is not our property – and then, we get it ‘regularised’! Once ‘legal’, the judiciary no longer has a reason to frown on such excursions. All in exchange for a few measly rupees or a favour. Which we will no longer call a ‘bribe’, but the more appropriate and dignified, ‘facilitation fee’ (F2).

In fact, we will remove bribery and corruption from our lexicon altogether. We will write to Oxford and Cambridge, and whoever else that keep publishing all these dictionaries, and tell them they have to remove these words from their next edition for the Indian market. If they object, we will pay them an F2. Or break their legs by appointing someone appropriately qualified, through an F2.

This will have the immediate and hugely salutary effect of catapulting us up the perceptions index that Transparency International keeps publishing, always unfairly putting us near the bottom, below Burkina Faso and below Turkey. Thankfully, Pakistan is way below us. Let me illustrate my idea with a sample question. “Did you have to pay a bribe to get your passport done, even though you are a bonafide citizen with all the correct paperwork, address proof and a voter ID card (never mind they got your gender wrong)?” 20 years ago, my answer would have been “Yes”. It was a reluctant “Yes” because, when I refused to pay up the first time, my file got an “adverse noting” that no amount of follow up and visits to the RPO could reverse. With my idea implemented, the answer now would be “No”, because I would not recognise the word “bribe”. Pre-empted from unfavourable responses, the survey will leave us vying for the top spot with New Zealand as a country where things get done without underhand payments.


The F2 regime will ensure everything gets done. The University of Convivial Law Avoidance (UCLA), registered in Jharkhand, will offer a degree on F2. Besides, just think of all the waste we will eliminate – a brilliant demonstration of Lean Principles!

The Parliament will no longer be disrupted by charges of misappropriation of funds that each party discovers of the other party. No more getting reluctant people to protest against the Reddy brothers and their Bellary misadventure. No more suitcases being lugged around with risk of injury to their chaperones. Not clouded by negative perceptions, everyone will realise that Mayawati is merely living up to the literal meaning of her name – ‘The illusionist’. Votes of our MPs during no-trust motions will be secured through F2 payouts administered by lobbyists, something I am told is exercised in a better-dressed form in some advanced economies. This will also spare our MPs the blushes every time they have to give themselves a two-fold hike in salaries, because now there is a windfall of legal money from other quarters. It will feed more cash into the Indian economy because there would be no reason to put it in Swiss bank accounts. It will reduce cash transactions and remove all those ill-gotten bundles of 1000 and 500 rupee notes that still go around stapled, years after RBI banned stapling. Handling less cash will also eliminate millions of litres of human spit that go into the counting process, preserving our saliva for its intended use in our digestive system.

Economists will exult at the sustained double digit GDP growth that will result, because all the money going around will be legit, whether we look at expenditure, income or output. We crib that more than 60% of our GDP is driven by Services, not Infrastructure. The good news is that Infrastructure will bring in the highest F2 revenue. Contractors will no longer have to depend only on a Suresh Kalmadi – poor chap, nobody is talking about Shibu Soren anymore – but will have access to a bevy of honourable individuals whose kindness can be officially purchased, to build stadiums and sport complexes and flyovers and entire townships, let them be brought down by the rains, and build them again through fresh contracts, generating revenue, employing poor labourers and raising their standards of living. Of the labourers, I mean. Just as we do when laying roads. Or desilting the city’s drains. Or building schools in villages.

The RBI governor will no longer have the headache of monitoring market liquidity, because there is just too much of it anyway, and focus on minting less money in our mints. The Direct Tax Code will have progressively lower tax slabs as F2 income of a person rises. On the other hand, your F2 spending will be tax exempt. Tax compliance will shoot up. Lots of savings for the honest tax payer.

Money raised through auction of SHO posts at prime locations can go into a benevolent fund to be administered for post-retirement benefits to our police force. This will have trickle-down benefits in the form of lower haftas. Why, maybe even make haftas payable through an online portal so that legwork can be eliminated, releasing the time of beat constables for better things like beating up rickshaw and tonga pullers. More money in their hands will also mean lower F2 bills when you are caught jumping a red light, shooting someone in a bar, or running over some labourers.

Judges will no longer be harried about ‘revealing their assets’, a phrase that had me worrying endlessly about what I have to see on prime time TV – being a family man after all, and not holding a particularly high opinion about their fitness regime or manhood. With all graft cases removed from its backlog, the judiciary can quickly decide on things like getting buses to ply in bus lanes. F2 payouts to judges being legal, you can pick from an online menu of false accusations and their rates that you want to explore to send, say, your neighbour to some place far, far away.

The entertainment industry will have a glut of camera and reporting crew, freed up from all the gory reportage and sting operations, leading to a general improvement in the level of television and cinema that you see. The bahu may end up asking the saas, after clobbering her on the head, “kaisa lag raha hai aapko?” and the episode may get compered by someone who shouts “reporting live, from the studios of Bahujan Bahus and Manuwadi Saas” but that’s a small price to pay. Mayawati would be pleased that her politics, besides her hand bags and elephants, is getting the attention it deserves.

The country will free up a highly talented pool of individuals with the sharpest financial minds, once the F2 regime gets going. These are people thorough with the laws. These are people who have created wealth out of nothing. Just think where they can take us if we gave them something! $12 trillion, here we come.

I must start writing a book......