Corruption is a significant problem in India and much of
the developing world. The inefficiencies engendered by corruption can be a
significant drain on local development. While policymakers and the man on the
street recognize the importance of the problem, the solution to the problem is
quite tricky and, as a result, evades consensus on how best to reduce the
menace. A recent economic research concludes that the right combination of
external audit and grassroots monitoring by community members, and careful
implementation of the same may be effective in reducing corruption.
One approach to reducing corruption suggests that the
right combination of monitoring and punishments can control corruption. In
practice, however, the very individuals tasked with monitoring and enforcing
punishments may themselves be corruptible. In that case, increasing the chances
that a low-level official would be monitored by a higher-level official would
result only in bribes and other such forms of transfers between the officials,
not in a reduction in corruption.
An alternative approach to reducing corruption, which has
gained prominence in recent years, is to increase grassroots participation by
community members in local-level monitoring. Community participation is now
regarded, in much of the development community, as the key not only to reduced
corruption but also to improved public service delivery more generally. For
example, the entire World Development Report 2004 is devoted to the idea of
“putting poor people at the centre of service provision: enabling them to
monitor and discipline service providers, amplifying their voice in
policymaking and strengthening the incentives for service providers to serve
the poor”. The idea behind the grassroots approach is that community members
are the people who benefit from a successful programme; therefore, they would
have stronger incentives to monitor corruption at the local level than
disinterested central government bureaucrats.
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