Bureaucratic Corruption has become an incurable parasite in India

By Chinnaa

Greetings!

I am going to share with you one of commonest cases of bureaucratic corruption but with the slight twist in the sense that it relates to religion and naturally a sentimental one.

‘Deputy Commissioner of Hindu Religious Endowment held for accepting a bribe of Rs.50000’

The headlines indicating similar meanings appeared in the newspapers of Tamil Nadu dated 27.06.2009. What are unique and different in this case is that the higher corrupt official involved happens to be the Deputy Commissioner of Hindu Religious & Charitable Endowment, whose duty is to regulate, control, maintain and settle the day to day issues pertaining to Hindu Temples in his jurisdiction.

In this case the private Marriamman temple which was owned and maintained by a trust of private people was subsequently taken over by the Deputy Commissioner in question for proper control. Then the trust members appealed to the official in question to return back the control of the Temple to the former for which the latter demanded a bribe of Rs 200000. Unfortunately the power to retain the temple with the department or to return back to the private trust lies with the official. It is this power that made the official to demand money.

Our question here is: why should he have demanded money in addition to his salary for performing his duty? If he feels that the Temple should have been with the Government, the official could have easily rejected the appeal. Or else he could have allowed the appeal and handed over the control to the trust members.

It is said in India that even political corruption is time-bound, i.e. as long as a party is in power, whereas bureaucratic corruption remains for ever. Bureaucratic machinery is the executer of the government projects, policies and programmes. They are the servants of and at the service of public. That is why they are called to be in civil service of IAS, IPS, and IRS.

But are the bureaucrats in reality behaving like servants of the public? People don’t expect too much from them in terms of their service to them. Their only expectation is that they should not be corrupt at least.