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A prescription to end corruption to empower citizens to create all round peace and prosperity

What ails the under developed and developing nations? Reply: “corruption leading to self perpetuating poverty”. Reason: lack of honesty and transparency. Result: lack of accountability for sustained growth.

Let’s analyze these statements in detail.

The economy is divided between the rich and poor; the rich are growing richer and the poor are growing poorer. The poor cannot afford the essentials for a decent living such as food, clothing, shelter, health, education and social security. The division is so sharp between nations and communities, while a rich family can afford to spend Euro 500 per week on food items, a poor family of the same size can hardly spend Euro 5 per week.

Does this mean all citizens living in a poor nation are poor? Well the answer is a ‘NO’. The wealth in a under developed / developing nation is skewed. Almost 80-90% of the wealth of the nation is in the control of say 5-10% of the population. The majority of the populations hardly have access to any wealth and live in abject poverty.

One of the biggest factors is ‘Corruption’. It is the cancer eating into the vitals of the society. It has permeated into all facets of life, affecting the poor and voiceless. Today, the common man with no money or muscle power, cannot think of getting any thing done in the developing world, without having to pay a bribe. This has created a parallel black economy sucking money out of the taxpayer and enriching the pockets of the rich.

The Heads of Commonwealth nations at their recent mini-summit on 9 and 10 June, 2008 have stated that “Global institutions such as World Bank, IMF, and UN must enjoy legitimacy from their member countries and the international community. They must also be responsive, with the interests of all members, especially the smaller and poorer, being taken into account. The activities and governance of these institutions must be flexible, they must respond to new challenges, national priorities and specific circumstances in countries. Institutions must have clear responsibilities and the conduct of their business must be transparent and accountable to the entire membership and the wider public.”

A scathing report from the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) of IMF highlights the lack of transparency and accountability in IMF… The IEO measured governance along four dimensions – effectiveness, efficiency, accountability and voice – and against three standards – the Fund’s own governing documents, other international organizations, and private and public-sector corporations. The report finds accountability and voice are the weakest features of the Fund’s governance and these weaknesses entail risks to the Fund’s legitimacy, which in turn has a bearing on its effectiveness.

If this is the situation with global institutions, we can well imagine what would be the situation with national and regional institutions, No wonder they abound in corruption of all sorts and get away with it. Then, how do we get over this corruption mania? One sure way would be to plug all the leakages in the system. This cannot be done without active support of the governments and its citizens.

A unique identification of every citizen is the primary requirement. With the advent of ICT tools, every citizen can be uniquely identified from birth to death using unique identification methods such as fingerprint, iris, hand vein geometry and DNA linked to their ID, name, family details, photo, etc.

A Multi Purpose Biometric Smart Card for every individual and organization linked to a money account and a e-Tool to link every citizen and service provider / public authority including the vertical and horizontal hierarchy of governance can be used as a single window of transactions for G2C, G2G, B2B, B2C, etc. If the transactions are thrown open, then total transparency and accountability can prevail, as envisaged in the Right to Information Act.

Healthy citizenry can be created by covering all aspects of citizens from birth to death such as health, hygiene, housing, education, skills, employment, earnings, expenses, consumption, savings, social security, etc. based on genuine physical transactions and not ghost transactions. Thus corruption. money laundering, arms trade and terrorism can be eliminated and all round peace and prosperity can prevail as every one would feel good that no one can cheat any one and all have equitable opportunities to contribute and grow.

The e-Administration e-Platform can help in establishing G2C, G2G, B2G communications and making it transparent to the public, thereby creating large scale satisfaction among the citizen that their elected government and officials are citizen friendly.

Kris Dev, ICT & e-Gov Consultant, Manthan Awardee for e-Inclusion & Livelihood Creation. krisdev@gmail.com