I have been doing some thinking recently on the corruption rampant in India. Why is nobody doing anything about it ? It is not that we lack the infrastructure to deal with it. Far from it. What we lack is in my opinion the will to police it. So, the real question is why are we not policing it ? After much thought on this matter, I have come to the conclusion that till now corruption was in the National security interest. Till now. Recent events tell us that it has lost that quality and hence, corruption will become punishable once again. Let me explain.
Fig 1. Fictitious 'National average bribe taken' around the time of 1993 Bombay blasts.
Imagine you are responsible for finding out terrorist or insurgency activities. How would you go about it ? You cannot have information about all the citizens of any country at your disposal. So, the easier way out is to have some kind of statistical test which will predict if terrorist activity is going to happen soon. How would you do that ? Here comes the genius part. Imagine the 1993 Bombay blasts, and the period immediately before that. What happened ? Many people were bribed 'higher than usual' to keep things quiet. The operative word here is 'higher than usual' in other words, if you plot the National average bribe taken in a month, lets say, then the period before 1993 Blasts might look like what is given in Fig1. So, the blip you see there has predictive value. It could also mean a big government contract, but these things the government would know. So, a blip in the chart would show that higher than average bribes are being taken, which could mean a big operation.
For along time I thought, how could one monitor the 'average bribe' taken ? Surely, people would be secretive about it, so how the hell can we do it ? Then, the answer came to me in a flash of brilliance. Of course, the government has been lenient towards corrupt officials since a long time. Why ? In the interst of national security. So, by being lenient, they have cleverly made everyone belive that they can safely deposit their black money in banks and since banks were computerised much before anything else, so getting such statistics is no big deal. The crucial question one must ask is, why is the government taking a tough stance against corruption now ? Again it is simplicity itself. Take a look at the 26/11 incident. No bribes given, no bribes taken. All planning done in Pakistan and funded by its agencies (govt and non-govt). So, we did not have access to the blips in their national average bribes. So, bribery has ceased to have any predictive value. And as everyone knows, bribery hurts the economy, so we are being sensible now. Unless..... The frankestein monster created by the government comes back to bite its ass.
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