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Comment by waveywaves | Hacker News Reader

This sounds like a great tool in theory for spreading awareness about bribery but solving systemic corruption won't necessarily be that easy (which is the root of this problem in India). Indian society is used to bribery and at times prefers it. It's a system where the primary source of income earned by people in power is through "under the table deals". The steps to fixing the corruption also have to be systemic which should include better wages for government employees and higher accountability of the funds allocated for government projects. AFAIK accounts, land records etc. still haven't been digitised completely in India. Once this process starts, there should be a noticeable change not just wrt corruption, but also in streamlining of govt. processes.

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Money is downstream from power. It is part of the human condition.

Indian corruption is propagated by beaurocrats because the middle-man beaurocracy has power. The US gives power to elected officials, so corrupt money is channeled through lobbying and cushy retirement jobs.

The best we can do is to increase visibility (eg: making campaign finances public) and remove points of friction. The other alternative is to go full Singapore and become authoritarian. Democratic govts. have limited power, so they can't ensure quantity and quality at the same time.

It has led me to conclude that small-but-strong govts are optimal for to deterring corruption.

An unintented? consequence of demonetization was digitization of the Indian financial system, which has enhanced visibility. The sell-off of non-performing PSUs is another great step. Hope the Govt. picks up the pace on these changes, but at least the general.direction is encouraging.

As a Singaporean I can assure you that becoming full authoritarian will not solve your corruption problem. China, Russia, North Korea for instance have wide spread corruption despite being far more authoritarian than us. The reason we have low corruption here is that society does not accept it and we pay our government officials (a bit too) decently. Punishments for corruption are stringent yes, but if you were to do a poll here people generally would agree with not accepting bribery. Essentially the punishment for being bribed is worse than the benefits one would get out of it. To put it in context the average indian police officer earns 33,561inr or an equivalent of 500 SGD vs 1780-2760 SGD for a junior police officer in singapore (this base pay ignores other allowances, sign on bonuses and scholarships given). Entry level inspectors can receive between $4000-$5000 (By comparison a junior SWE earns between $4000-$7000). The average Singaporean (or a relatively rich indian) can easily afford a one time bribe that is two times the salary of the indian police officer. I would have qualms bribing a Singaporean officer with two times his wage in singapore given that it would mean giving my whole months salary. Not to mention our punishments are much more severe if caught.

Rule by law countries use corruption charged as a way of getting rid of people they want to get rid of. If everyone is corrupt, then they all have that noose on their neck and so won’t step on toes they shouldn’t. Then the officials need only worry and get rid of those who aren’t corrupt (leading to a survival bias effect).

Modi is already pretty authoritarian, specially if you're Muslim.

> better wages for government employees

Corruption doesn't happen because people have less money. If that was true, the poorest would be the most corrupt and the richest would be the least corrupt. This is definitely not the case. It happens when there is no downside to it.

> higher accountability of the funds allocated for government projects

How? By having more government employees to monitor the existing ones? This is the exact kind of solution that would come from a seasoned bureaucrat. It serves the purpose of looking like a solution while adding to the problem.

What should be done is to remove most of the government employees and hire firms to do the job instead. That way, the individual activity and performance is the responsibility of the firm. Will some of these private firms be corrupt? Yes, but they can be monitored and replaced much easier than you can do with millions of individual government employees. Corruption can be reported directly to the firms and they will have incentives to sack the corrupt employees because of the fear of being investigated and sacked by the government.

Privatization is clearly not a solution I have seen what it did in housing in Germany and for the locomotives in the UK it is fairly clear firms can be worse or just as bad

> It happens when there is no downside to it.

That is a bit simplistic. The penalty for corruption could be death, definitely a downside, but an official will only be singled out for punishment if they displace someone more powerful. Corruption as such thrives in countries without strong rule of law (where laws might be harsh but are applied arbitrarily).

> If that was true, the poorest would be the most corrupt and the richest would be the least corrupt.

It seems clearly true to me that poorer countries have greater issues with corruption than poorer ones. What makes you say that's not true?

What ComradePhil means is: If poor countries' police are corrupt simply because they're so poorly paid, shouldn't the poor countries' police chiefs be honest, as they're paid more? And yet the police chief probably makes much more bribe money.

As I understand things, highly corrupt countries have a sort of 'bribe pyramid' where the police chief remits a certain amount of bribe revenue to his boss in order to keep his job, who in turn gives a portion to his boss and so on, so the police chief sees a lot of money, but will be replaced if he develops a conscience.

Corruption happens because the bribe is high compared to the receiver wages.

Most people wouldn't accept a bribe that would be just pocket money (unless they're so corrupt they get as many as tips), but having a bribe offer equivalent to a month salary (or 2, or 3) really makes you think.

One Dalai Lama had created a "reverse secret police" whose job it was to spy on officials.

India's approach is technological, like the Aadhar biometric system to ensure financial aid payments are not embezzled by corrupt officials. Some cultures like Scandinavia have managed to develop a zero-tolerance approach to corruption, like the minister who had to resign because she used her government credit card to buy a chocolate bar.

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