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Governance and corruption

By Supriya RoyChowdhury

The office of Lokayukta is a positive intervention in re-establishing popular faith in democratic governance.

FROM THE 1990s onwards both policymakers and academics have been greatly concerned with the concept of governance, and programmes of governance reform. This concern has generated several changes in our thinking about political systems, particularly in keeping with market-oriented economic reforms. Thus, governance reform talks of structural change such as decentralisation, or changing the scope of Government, such as rolling back the state.

In most such exercises, corruption as a problem of governance has either been overlooked, or has been looked at within the framework of what is known as "rent-seeking" activities, that is, a subset of problems associated with over-active states, which can, by implication, be taken care of when the state withdraws from many of its regulatory activities. Corruption, then, appears as incidental and aberrant, rather than, as systemic behaviour. There is comparatively little attention to the fact that pervasive corruption in politics and administration can pretty much defeat the purpose of any governance reform.

In this context, attempts by some States in India to create the office of a Lokayukta needs to be seen as an innovative exercise in governance reform. At least in principle, the Lokayukta can initiate investigations into the conduct of Government personnel at all levels, including that of the Chief Minister. In this sense, therefore, in instituting the office of the Lokayukta, there is an explicit recognition by the state of the corruptibility of state officials, and an institutionalised attempt to reform itself from within.

This impulse is not new. As early as in 1966 the Administrative Reforms Commission, appointed by the Central Government, had recommended the creation of an office of the Lok Pal at the Centre and of the Lokayukta in the States. As the subsequent history of administrative and political malfunctioning would bear out, these offices have obviously been powerless to correct some of the basic flaws in our governance system that generate misuse of power by government servants for personal gain. In recent years, as popular disillusionment and cynicism over corruption at all levels of Government has escalated, several States have enacted or re-enacted Lokayukta Acts in an effort to stem the tide of governmental corruptibility.

The Karnataka Lokayukta Act (1984) is remarkable both for the wide scope of application of the Lokayukta's investigative powers, and also for the instruments available to him to initiate legal prosecution against agencies or officials whom he deems to be guilty of misuse of power. The Lokayukta has the authority to issue warrants for search and seizure. Second, the Lokayukta need not wait for the Government's sanction to initiate disciplinary action. According to Section 14 of the Karnataka Lokayukta Act (1984), "if the Lokayukta is satisfied that the public servant has committed any criminal offence, then he may initiate prosecution of the public servant concerned". In this sense therefore the Lokayukta in Karnataka has been set up almost as a parallel state system to penalise erring state officials.

Despite the authority given to the Lokayukta in law, the potential scope of the Lokayukta's activities depends greatly on the incumbent office holder. Thus in Karnataka, it was with the appointment of the present incumbent, Justice Venkatachala, that the office of the Lokayukta shot into public vision in an unprecedented manner. Particularly in recent months, an extraordinary spate of investigations into malpracticing Government functionaries have been reported, covering a wide range of activities, from public health to taxation.

For example, in November 2001, a resident of Nanjangudi Taluk in Mysore district registered a complaint against officials of the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (SPCB) as well as other Government officials. The essence of the complaint was that the trade effluents from a company called Gemini Distilleries, located in the area, had for many years contaminated the sources of drinking and agricultural water in the Taluk, causing great harm to people and cattle, as well as rendering the agricultural land uncultivable. Despite repeated complaints, however, the SPCB had failed to take any steps to contain the environmental pollution being perpetuated by Gemini Distilleries. The Lokayukta's report underlined that officials of the SPCB had acted in total disregard of the Water Act, and had done so in connivance with the company concerned. The report recommended to the Government that immediate steps should be taken to reverse the harm that had been done and compensation paid to the villagers. It needs to be noted that the struggle of the villagers against Gemini Distilleries is a long-standing one. The Lokayukta's underlining of the company's ability to influence officers of the SPCB through its local power and influence is remarkable for its explicit acknowledgement of the vulnerability of state officials to private money and power.

In another remarkable case, in response to a complaint lodged in early 2002 by a resident of Bidar district, the Lokayukta's investigations found that tenders invited for 11 road repair projects in Bidar were cancelled on insubstantial grounds. Subsequently, through a process of re-tendering, the contract for the projects were granted to contractors whom top ranking engineers in the PWD wished to favour.

This exercise, whereby higher tenders were accepted, cost the Government additional expenditure running into several lakhs of rupees.

Many of these investigations reveal a simple truth, known to a large majority of the citizenry: that Government servants accept bribes, in order to grant undue favours, and frequently even as a condition for performing their normal functions. The uniqueness of the Karnataka Lokayukta's investigative activities and findings is underlined by the fact that a majority of recent investigations have been conducted in response to complaints registered by ordinary citizens. These complaints typically emerge from aggrieved citizens, or an individual or group acting on their behalf. The office of Lokayukta is a positive intervention in re-establishing popular faith in democratic governance. For the Lokayukta serves two purposes: one, where citizens who suffer the consequences of official corruption have no means of redress, the Lokayukta is the final court of appeal, so to speak. Second, in having the authority to initiate investigations against government officials, regardless of rank and power, the Lokayukta serves to make transparent what are typically opaque processes of Government functioning.

The questions to ask, obviously, are: how often would a typical Lokayukta initiate investigations against powerful Government functionaries? What would happen if the Lokayukta happened to unravel evidence that could implicate a State's Chief Minister or other Cabinet-rank Ministers? Second, the issue is not only of bringing corrupt officials to book, but also of addressing the question of the genesis of large-scale corruption. Can public ethics be a function of continuous policing? The threat of negative sanction cannot enforce continuous and generalised adherence to public ethics, just as law-abiding behaviour must be a matter of consent and habit rather than of enforcement.

Governance reform programmes have systematically failed to address this question. These considerations suggest limits that necessarily beset a Lokayukta's functioning, without detracting from the fact that in the current scenario the Lokayukta's office performs an indispensable function, that of looking into citizens' grievances resulting from official corruption.

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