Hindustan Times: Mumbai: Tuesday,
September 13, 2016.
The tweets by
comedian-actor Kapil Sharma about some civic officers asking him for a bribe in
connection with the construction of his office has kicked up a row. Sharma’s
reference to “achchhe din’’ has irked the followers of Prime Minister Narendra
Modi and the BJP. The revelation that the extension of his office was being
built illegally has now landed him in trouble.
Often
celebrities rely on their managers or the people who handle their personal work
and land in a soup if the latter goofs up. Sometimes they don’t care. Sometimes
they think their celebrity status is good enough for authorities to ignore any
illegal act. We don’t know which category Sharma fits in. However, it seems
like he will have to now deal with the authorities for the illegal extension of
his Andheri bungalow and some alterations in his Goregaon house. If he is on
the wrong side of the law, the officials will, of course, take care of the
same. Nobody would justify an illegal act of encroachment or construction
though one would find thousands of such examples in Mumbai or for that matter,
in any major city in India.
Still, there
is one aspect in this entire episode that should not be ignored retail
corruption. If some local municipal officers told Sharma or his people that
they would have to pay bribes to get an illegal extension, it must be probed.
We, the common people react angrily when we hear or read about scams worth
hundreds of crores of rupees. We curse the politician-contractor nexus when we
negotiate through pock-marked roads. However, what bothers us more in daily
life is the retail corruption at the local level at government and municipal
offices the points of interface between us and the state or city governments.
It could be
at the stamp duty and registration offices. It could be at the local civic
offices where citizens or their housing society representatives have to go for
civic issues. It could be obtaining a driving license or registering for new
vehicle at the regional transport office (RTO). It could be about government or
civic offices in connection with various certificates or NOCs one has to obtain.
Or it could about dealing with the traffic police. The situation in most of
these places has remained the same over years though the ruling parties kept
changing.
Retail
corruption can undermine the best efforts of a politician or an administrative
officer to provide good governance even though he/she has nothing to do with
it. At the end of the day, a citizen’s experience shapes his opinions about a
government or a ruling party.
According to
those who have been handling governance, the only way to prevent or reduce
(unlikely that it will go away completely) retail corruption is transparency
and a time-bound service delivery mechanism. The right to information (RTI) and
online or computer system based delivery system would reduce it drastically.
Passport offices are classic examples of what can be done. Today, getting a
passport has become hassle free. Similar experiments can be made in the RTO or
property registration offices.
Chief
minister Devendra Fadnavis took a good step in this direction by enacting a law
on the right to services. It has worked in some cases but needs tough
implementation in other places. Maybe, the Kapil Sharma controversy will prompt
him and his team to clamp down on retail corruption.
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