Information Technology to Check Arbitrary Governance
These analysts believe that information technology is a sustainable and reliable tool to check corruption. Read this article to understand their viewpoints and how they can help control systemic corruption, if and when the unique identification system known as Aadhar will take us two steps ahead in the fight against graft.
Information technology is embedded with some obvious systemic advantages. This is capable of assuring automated updating of information, round-the-clock access, automated correspondence of a complaint/grievance among others. Deploying IT functionality in government processes can help enhance transparency and hence tackle corruption as put forth by two eminent personalities.
Nandan Nilekani, Chairman of Unique Identification Authority of India and Ashutosh Varshney, Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and Social Sciences at Brown University, are both proponents of Aadhaar (Unique Identification) as a means to tackle corruption. They have analysed the problem of corruption presently plaguing the country in their recently published articles.
According to Nandan Nilekani, the Aadhar initiative can help obliterate corruption existent in the forms of wholesale corruption (also known as large deal), retail/ petty corruption - this is what I Paid a Bribe focuses on, and tax evasion. In his opinion, infusing e–auction and e–procurement platforms can warrant greater transparency in government processes.
Ashutosh Varshney too advocates the use of the unique identification system to track and control petty corruption but disagrees with the same being used as a feasible tool to tackle corruption rampant at the political and bureaucratic level, which is wholesale corruption.
Leveraging information technology to make government processes more efficient will undoubtedly help confront retail corruption. Political corruption, on the other hand, involves a different set of dynamics. The scale of corruption in terms of money goes up multi-fold. This is as a result of skewed election processes and an ample room for money laundering due to various procedural loopholes present in governance. This sometimes acts as a leeway for our politicians to indulge in graft.
Kickbacks are a popular strategy that our politicians revert during elections and this is bound to lead to criminalization of politics. Corporate honchos firmly plant themselves by buying out politicians by funding their election campaigns. There is a need for transparency in the collection of funds by political parties and even the manner in which those funds are expended by them. Indian Election Commission’s resolution on mandatory disclosure of political parties’ accounts is a step in this direction. Further, the commission stresses that auditing of these funds are to be done by any firm of auditors approved by the Comptroller and Auditor General.
Regarding the issue of political corruption, Mr. Varshney adds, “That is why we need to change the incentives that politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen face. As a nation, India has not done enough thinking about what kind of institutional and policy change will alter incentive structures, reducing temptations for graft and making political and economic life cleaner, less brutish, less nasty”.
While taking a look at grassroots level corruption, demanding more transparency in polity itself can indeed guarantee decrease in levels of corruption. With the help of e-governance, information technology can be leveraged to bypass various stages and levels that involves direct human contact paving way to arbitrary governance. Eliminating human contact and converting government processes to online will help tackle petty corruption.