Corruption as empowerment

By Pratap Bhanu Mehta

THE STANDARD definition of corruption as the use of public office for private gain scarcely captures the complex motivations and dispositions on display in the phenomenon. To attribute corruption merely to a desire for pecuniary gain, motivated and sustained by an amoral materialism is to capture only part of the phenomenon. Its roots and seductions lie much deeper in the quality of human relationships that characterise a society.

The simplest institutional explanation for corruption, as a form of rent extraction facilitated by the dominance of a state with few internal mechanisms of accountability and sanction, gives only a partial accounting of corruption. Although difficult to quantify, corruption is widespread in the private sector as well, in the sense that side payments have to be routinely made to have basic contractual obligations enforced. No doubt that corruption in the private sector is aided by poor contract enforcement mechanisms. But the pervasiveness of corruption in the private sector should cast some doubt on any complacent idea that rolling back the powers of the state will be sufficient to combat corruption.

On the institutional view, corruption is simply a consequence of the fact that the state has wide discretionary powers. Take away these powers, so the argument goes, and the state will have less to trade by way of favours. Such notions are reinforced by the fact that most of our attention and investigation of corruption is directed at sensational scandals involving large payoffs. Yet the insidiousness of corruption does not stem simply from the fact that huge payoffs are made when the state exercises its discretionary powers. It is rather the case that corruption has made the entire gamut of state functions discretionary. Every transaction where we are taxed, stamped, noted, registered, measured, assessed, licensed, authorised is a potential occasion for corruption. Our routine entitlements as citizens and consumers have been converted into discretionary acts. The institutional view rightly emphasizes the importance of incentive systems and sanctioning mechanisms in facilitating corruption. But it simplifies the complex of motivations that lie behind the phenomenon.

The motivations that produce and sustain corruption are of course complex. Avarice and ambition doubtless play an important part. In democracies, the distinctive incentive for corruption depends upon the organisation of elections, legislative practices and methods of campaign finance. Weak enforcement structures, themselves rendered ineffective by corrupt practices, can sustain a system of perverse incentives. Corruption stemming from these sources exists in all societies. But to explain the forms of corruption that exist in India simply through these arguments often disguises the depth of social complicity in corruption. By depth of social complicity I do not mean the simple claim that corruption comes to be socially accepted and is sustained because all of us go along with it in our individual capacities. Only the most obtuse moralists would insist that individuals ought not to pay bribes when the problems of collective action in reforming the system are enormous and there are few enforcement mechanisms one can appeal to. It seems rather that corruption, as Montesquieu and Rousseau emphasized, is sustained by the kinds of social relationships that characterise society.

The experience of both state and society in India is profoundly alienating in more ways than one can list and many forms of corruption stem directly from this experience. Indian society is profoundly inegalitarian. Vast disparities of income and power exist almost everywhere, but the depth, to which in India inequality has subjected individuals to a million humiliations, small and large, is almost unprecedented. These humiliations often are, though they need not necessarily be, consequent upon ascriptive status. Although the principles underlying the Indian state are, for the most part, an attempt to affirm the worth of each individual, its functioning is anything but. Even in the best of times, the Indian state is, for most ordinary citizens, still distant, inaccessible, and arbitrary and often simply a raw exercise in power. State institutions such as courts, police, bureaucracies, registries, and universities exemplify intransigence more than achievement. The state, rather than be a source of the affirmation of our own worth, is more a reminder of our powerlessness. The formal notion of equality before law is much frowned upon for a variety of reasons. Whatever its limits as a means of substantive empowerment, the notion of formal equality has important moral psychological functions. It is a way of affirming an individual's worth regardless of all other inequalities; indeed, precisely because society is inegalitarian, law is the only means to affirm one's worth. The idea was that law would provide an essential ingredient of self-respect by affirming the standing of an individual. But these moral psychological functions of law are rendered impossible by the functioning of the Indian state. Both state and society have this in common: they make the affirmation of one's own worth difficult. A state that does not empower, or affirm our proper worth will never be regarded as our own. The state will be seen, under these circumstances as nothing but an instrument of private power rather than a repository of public purpose. This view, once internalised, becomes self- fulfilling in its consequences.

An inegalitarian society where the social bases for self-respect are accessible only to a few will produce rampant corruption. The seductions of corruption are not simply the desire for money. It is rather the fact that on display in an act of corruption is an exercise of power and often of impunity. Impunity, in the sense that corruption is a way of asserting that one is above others, that there is no authority either of persons, or office, to which one is subordinate. Corruption may be seductive, because it gives those who are corrupt a sense of power. In a society which does not often acknowledge the worth and value of individuals, where the visible means of proving one's worth through substantial achievement are open only to a few, corruption is a way of saying that one is somebody. A society without reciprocal forms of mutual recognition is a prime candidate for being a corrupt society because people will compensate for their experience of powerlessness and lack of affirmation of their worth through a competitive exercise of power. This will afflict the privileged as well, since their status anxieties, will be even greater in such a society than those of the dispossessed.

If the above analysis is plausible it does not follow that we should not pay attention to institutional design or legal remedies. But it suggests that a punitive moralism that would take recourse to only punishments is unlikely to be sufficient. As Montesquieu, who knew a thing or two about corrupt regimes, observed: ``we inquire into the cause of all human corruptions, we shall find that they proceed from the impunity of criminals, and not from the moderation of punishments''. We have to ask what is it about our society that makes impunity the chief road to affirming one's worth and distinctiveness? And second, it suggests that institutional change alone is unlikely to bring about great change in the absence of a reformation of our social mores. But it also suggests that those who think corruption is simply about money are profoundly mistake. The desire for more money, in the larger scheme of things, is a relatively small sin. The exercise of numerous petty tyrannies is more insidious. Corruption somewhere has its roots in the experience of humiliation, and leads to individuals humiliating others to compensate in turn. Attributing corruption simply to materialism may be a way of our collectively denying our social complicity. We are too keen to forget the fact that a society and a state that does not know how to prevent people from feeling humiliated simply because of who they are will produce individuals who excel in the art of humiliating others in turn.

(The writer is Professor of Philosophy, JNU, New Delhi.)

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