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| Mr Arun Bhatia (Former Municipal Commissioner, PMC) |
“It is important for me to be empowered to be able to lead the citizens’ movement. That is the reason I will be contesting the elections. As an MP I will have access to resources and the media."
-Arun Bhatia on his plans of contesting the central elections.
Corruption in the Corporation
What is the scale of corruption in the public bodies?
Out of the annual PMC budget, 60 per cent goes in salaries and like administrative expenses. The remaining 40 per cent is left for development work.
Out of this 40 per cent, one third is siphoned off through corruption. When you calculate the total money stolen and gone in the pockets of politicians and bureaucrats in the past 58 years (since independence) - 17 years of development budget has gone down the drain (one third of the total budget of the last 58 years).
So, if you see the infrastructure that we have now could have been there 17 years back. We are behind time by 17 long years.
Citizens’ movement
What can be done to make the PMC accountable for the taxpayer’s money?
Citizens must get involved in the governance of the city. Improvement will not happen through the politicians and the bureaucrats but from the initiative of citizens. For example, citizens can capture this year’s PMC budget:
- Form groups and study it in terms of priorities given to different projects. Money is usually allocated for projects which would fetch maximum bribe.
- Demand for physical audit instead of paper audit. This would clearly show the discrepancies between what appears on papers and the actual implementation.
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| In India, you cannot fulfil your mandate by not confronting the system. Honesty means to enforce honesty in the system. Referring to the various sting operations and phone tapping cases, I don’t think that the means adopted were wrong and unjustified. If you are a public figure, there is no question of impinging your privacy. |
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By citizens’ groups, do you mean committees like the Mohalla committees?
By citizens groups, I do not mean the Mohalla committees as they usually have their own agenda to fulfil. Instead groups which are involved in concerns related to the whole city.
For e.g., you cannot expect one citizen to go through the entire 500 pages of the budget. Forming groups and clubs to study the budget would be a more practical and effective thing to do.
It is the politician’s job to enlighten the citizens and to create awareness but that is not happening. Hence, it will have to be a citizens’ movement who are committed to the goals of transparency and accountability.
Why are the citizens so complacent? Corruption has been accepted as a way of life. Your comments.
There are two myths surrounding corruption. First, that corruption isn’t all that much. Second, there is no link between corruption and development, that corruption does not retard development. These myths have been widely propagated by the politicians for their vested interests.
The complacency of citizens is because of two reasons:
First, they do not know the scale at which corruption is taking place. They don’t realise that it’s pulling them back. Second, an average citizen is scared of confronting the politicians who are considered to be the real rulers of the city.
Role of RTI in fighting corruption
Do you see the Right to Information act (RTI), 2005 as a potent weapon in checking corruption?
RTI has its own use and is a step in the right direction. But in order to be effective, other parallel reforms have to be introduced in conjunction with the RTI like protection for witnesses and whistle-blowers by enacting the necessary acts. In the absence of such protection, one will only be hitting at soft targets and not dare to take on the big goons and the mafia.
All these acts have been introduced in the West years ago. In our country, forget the fact that there is no protection for a whistle-blower; our political and administrative culture looks down upon the whistle-blowers. He is treated as a traitor.
What can a citizen do after obtaining information under the RTI act?
The next step could be to expose the matter in the media and go to the court. Unfortunately, we have a weak and conservative Judiciary in India.
Frequent debates that the Judiciary should not interfere in Executive functions are totally conservative. The concept of a welfare state is embodied in the Directive Principles of State Policy in the Constitution of India.
There have to be strong independent institutions. For e.g., the Judiciary should be made independent from the executive control, the anti-corruption department should be made free from police control. So, it has to be a comprehensive body of reforms.
- Interview by Amita Makhija
18th March, 2006
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