I've spent not a little time thinking about what can be done. I know the problem (pretty much everybody knows the problem) - politicians suck. They're either corrupt and incompetent, or just corrupt. Problem is, we really really don't have any alternatives. There is absolutely no party, not even a small youth one that's not the same. We can barely trust non-political watchdog organizations - hell, after the last elections we don't really trust them either.
The media is... ok. Private for the most part, and so heavily politicized (yes, it makes sense here), but they don't pull punches when it comes to criticizing the government. They're pretty open with both obvious mistakes and obvious cases of corruption - but the problem is, nothing ever comes out of it.
In a working democracy this would be a case for the justice system. Well, we have two problems. First, the whole system is also corrupt as hell. Second, it's also (probably on purpose) extremely inefficient. All the reforms in the past years, including a ridiculously publicized new constitution a few years back only made things worse.
So yes, I know what we need. We need:
* to respect the now largely ignored law saying that public institutions, education and health are non-politic;
* justice system reform
* new and fresh options for the next elections
* untainted public organizations
The problem is no one is responsible if the citizen is not getting the promised services. We cannot see the status about why it is pending online, we don't know whom to contact online, no helpdesks. You just have to go to the office and wait and wait for turn only to be turned away without even getting a chance to speak.
If one person is made responsible for citizen satisfaction for services and he is like the manager in the office whose compensation is dependent on the rating the citizen gives for the services, then I think this will change.
How to make government officials answerable to the people? This is difficult, because a government is voted for a period of 5 yrs into power and they have 5 yrs to loot without doing anything and then bribe their way into power again. If this vicious cycle can be broken by clear communication about the government performance, so clear that people can't ignore, then they may vote for another government which is not much better than this. But by consistently projecting these metrics about corruption and government performance, we might give a chance for some party to fight on the plank of eliminating corruption.
Long answer.. hopefully there is some juice in it.
I think sometimes we hastily assume that a bribe is needed and are proactive about it. But I have to say that it still tickles me no end to think about the policeman who had come to our college for the express purpose of collecting bribes from us. He had come all the way from Lucknow to Kanpur a good 3 hour journey expecting to make a killing.
Just the look on his face when my friends refused...priceless !!
But a lot of the lack of transparency that you mention can now be tackled thanks to instruments like RTI (the Indian analogue of FOIA).
The corruption mostly moved higher. I had a coffee with a friend who works in a public institution a couple of weeks ago, and we talked about EU funds absorption. I'm a software guy, and I'd love to do projects for his institution (or any other). There's a huge need for software projects at every level - national and local. And there are lots of money available for this, provided by the EU. So why am I not working with the government (nor is anybody I know)?
Because things go like this. Say my friend wants to put something online in his institution. He has to get about 3 signatures, the last of which is pretty high in the ministry. And the guy in the ministry will invariably think something like: "if it's am idea worth doing, then we'll file it for when we can do it on a bigger scale with our boys".
So yeah. Like I said, main problems are 1. politicians up high and 2. the fact that institutions are now completely political, to the level where I can bet there's a doorman somewhere who's been hired just because his brother in law is in the right party.
We won't get out in the streets. We're not hungry enough, and we don't have a culture of protesting. We pretty much think the French are uncivilized when they burn cars in the street - civilized peoples solve their problems otherwise. But how?
It's be easier if the press was somehow keeping silent, but they're not. They're scathingly vocal, if somehow distracting. The future definitely looks a lot more like Brave New World then 1984...
So basically, he said that the culture of protest got a train ticket and left.
It's just that protesting wouldn't do any good. Say the current government falls... what do you replace it with? We tried it. We actually had something which looked like a "turning the tide" a few years ago. We voted in a completely new regime (including a new president), much preferred by the younger people, including myself. It started great... In the first 3 weeks they lowered and standardized taxes, and put a minister of justice straight from the NGOs. Dream come true. About a year later, the opposition got together, broke off a piece from the current government, and together tried to (rather illegally ) impeach the president with no good reason.
(you think you guess the rest of the story? guess again). The president managed to force a referendum on the issue, and proved he had the overwhelming support of the population. The impeachment failed. The parliamentary majority belonged to the opposition now, but somehow the good guys managed to name their own Prime Minister, and so in effect hold most of the power.
Fast forward to present time. The NGO Justice Minister is long gone, taxes are at a record high, the president is unanimously vilified, and his party is doing the hiring in every public institution and a few private companies as well. Plus they turned out to be much more incompetent then the previous guys.
There are no heroes in politics here.