The Anti-Bribery Camaign - A Ray of Hope?

talkIndia · Site Admin Joined: 12 Apr 2006 Posts: 153

The Drive Against Bribe

We all pay taxes. Even a beggar on the street pays sales tax when he buys anything from the market. This money belongs to us. But where does this money go? Why are there no medicines in the hospitals? Why are people dying of starvation? Why are the roads in such pathetic conditions? Why are the taps dry?

Now we have a right to question governments. The Parliament of India has passed Right to Information Laws, which empower citizens to question the government, inspect their files, take copies of government documents and also to inspect government works.

People often have to pay bribes in their daily interaction with Government Departments – be it getting a passport or a ration card or a licence or an income tax refund etc. Sometimes, even if a bribe is not directly asked, your work is still not done because of complacency or simple bureaucratic delay. So, one has to either pay a bribe or face harassment.

What does one do in such a situation? So far people were helpless. They could only curse the system and do nothing about it. Each one of us, when faced with a similar situation, wondered whether there would ever be a time when our country would get rid of this curse of bribery.

Maybe that time has come. Now we need not pay a bribes in such situations. We have the Right to Information Act. Use it. Often, it works faster than bribes. Hundreds of people across the country have benefited from this tool. They got their passport, income tax refund, ration card, pension, PF, electricity connection, water connection, etc – works that had been pending for several months, were done within a few days when they applied under Right to Information Act. Under this Act, when we demand to know the status of our application and reasons for delay, most of the time, the work gets done.

For more information - http://www.ndtv.com/rti/faqs.asp

zdestiny · Senior Member Joined: 12 Apr 2006 Posts: 55

How come a lot of people havent heard about this? Efforts like these should be heavily advertised so the people can know about them and benefit from them. This definitely looks like it has a lot of potential, but it may fail again like previous efforts, due to a lack of awareness among the people.

But then again, do you think the politicians and corrupt workers will just sit around and do nothing? how can they let something like this grow and succeed? It will put an end to their corruption and their bribery, which is what they live for. I certainly hope that this succeeds, something like this is long overdue for India.

talkIndia · Site Admin Joined: 12 Apr 2006 Posts: 153

You're right zdestiny, this needs more exposure. The RTI act went through last November, however I heard about this on NDTV a couple days ago. They started this Anti-Bribery campaign today on their network to make the general public aware of this new system. This is a huge initiative with over 700 organizations. I believe it will be running this whole month.

sjf · Senior Member Joined: 22 May 2006 Posts: 57

yeah i just started seeing this on tv too. there's this show on everyday called the drive against bribes. they keep showing this story about this guy called nannu. he refused to pay bribes and then got help through this program to get his work done.