We posted recently upon the endemic corruption that exists in China, where "fragrant grease" is required to get official approval for virtually any economic activity. Corruption is not isolated to China. India is also notoriously corrupt and lower level public servants have made the bribe an art form.
A rather quixotic idea is apparently helping break down the institution of bribery: zero rupee bank notes. An anti-corruption Non Government Organization, called 5th Pillar has started issuing the notes. The idea is that the poor and defenceless can use these false banknotes as a protest against officials who will not do their jobs until someone pays them money--which, of course, is officially illegal.
The concept is explained as follows:
The zero currency note in your country's currency is a tool to help you achieve the goal of zero corruption. The note is a way for any human being to say NO to corruption without the fear of facing an encounter with persons in authority.
Next time someone asks you for a bribe, just take your country's zero currency note and hand it to them. This will let the other person know that you refuse to give or take any money in order to perform services required by law or to give or take money to do something illegal.
Strange as it may seem, apparently these protest bank notes have an effect. Vijay Anand, 5th Pillar’s president recently explained how it works.
According to Anand, the idea was first conceived by an Indian physics professor at the University of Maryland, who, in his travels around India, realized how widespread bribery was and wanted to do something about it. He came up with the idea of printing zero-denomination notes and handing them out to officials whenever he was asked for kickbacks as a way to show his resistance. Anand took this idea further: to print them en masse, widely publicize them, and give them out to the Indian people. He thought these notes would be a way to get people to show their disapproval of public service delivery dependent on bribes. The notes did just that. The first batch of 25,000 notes were met with such demand that 5th Pillar has ended up distributing one million zero-rupee notes to date since it began this initiative. Along the way, the organization has collected many stories from people using them to successfully resist engaging in bribery.
One such story was our earlier case about the old lady and her troubles with the Revenue Department official over a land title. Fed up with requests for bribes and equipped with a zero rupee note, the old lady handed the note to the official. He was stunned. Remarkably, the official stood up from his seat, offered her a chair, offered her tea and gave her the title she had been seeking for the last year and a half to obtain without success. Had the zero rupee note reached the old lady sooner, her granddaughter could have started college on schedule and avoided the consequence of delaying her education for two years. In another experience, a corrupt official in a district in Tamil Nadu was so frightened on seeing the zero rupee note that he returned all the bribe money he had collected for establishing a new electricity connection back to the no longer compliant citizen.
Anand explained that a number of factors contribute to the success of the zero rupee notes in fighting corruption in India. First, bribery is a crime in India punishable with jail time. Corrupt officials seldom encounter resistance by ordinary people that they become scared when people have the courage to show their zero rupee notes, effectively making a strong statement condemning bribery. In addition, officials want to keep their jobs and are fearful about setting off disciplinary proceedings, not to mention risking going to jail. More importantly, Anand believes that the success of the notes lies in the willingness of the people to use them. People are willing to stand up against the practice that has become so commonplace because they are no longer afraid: first, they have nothing to lose, and secondly, they know that this initiative is being backed up by an organization—that is, they are not alone in this fight.
This last point—people knowing that they are not alone in the fight—seems to be the biggest hurdle when it comes to transforming norms vis-à-vis corruption. For people to speak up against corruption that has become institutionalized within society, they must know that there are others who are just as fed up and frustrated with the system. Once they realize that they are not alone, they also realize that this battle is not unbeatable. Then, a path opens up—a path that can pave the way for relatively simple ideas like the zero rupee notes to turn into a powerful social statement against petty corruption.
We could do with some of these notes in New Zealand. We could call them zero Koha Banknotes. Imagine how a certain now convicted and imprisoned Cabinet Minister might have been cut off at the pass if a particular Thai tiler had handed him a Koha Note, instead of working on his houses for "free". And it could have saved one Owen Glenn an enormous amount of money if he had paid Winston Peters his simony money in zero Koha Notes. Not to mention his large donation to the Labour Party in zero Koha Notes. His gong would not have cost him real coin, then. Not to mention those smelly immigration deals in exchange for "donations" to a certain political party.
Oh, but hold on. We are getting confused. All those shady deals had to do with bribing officials and politicians to do wrong, not with getting them to follow the law. Zero Koha Notes would not have worked at all. It strikes us that New Zealand's corruption is more like the Chinese than the Indian variety. In India, public officials require bribes to persuade them to do their jobs. In China, officials receive bribes in order to bend, if not break the law. And so, it seems, is the case in New Zealand.
No comments:
Post a Comment