Finally, we come to the middle classes and the urban elite who offer the most vocal moral critique of corruption and yet remain willing participants. For them, complicity is a marginal tax for the enormous benefits they get by easing through the system. Think of the number of times you have succumbed to paying a bribe to the traffic cop or the electricity department because it makes life easier. So then, what are the incentives to mobilise for change?

But shouldn’t we also be focusing on the consequences of our complicity?

Tackling corruption requires addressing the demand and supply side of the corruption market. There is no shortage of proposals on ways to reform the public sector. How do we generate collective action across the class spectrum to address the supply side? We can draw lessons from experiences both within and outside India. The movement for the right to information and related social audits provides a useful framework for thinking about ways of empowering the poorest and most vulnerable to demand accountability. Generating collective action amongst other sections of society requires a somewhat different strategy. Hong Kong’s Independent Commission against Corruption (ICAC) is an interesting model to learn from. The ICAC adopted a proactive strategy of public awareness particularly in schools on the ethics of corruption, which analysts say led to an increase in complaints of corruption and changed public attitudes.

In India the media can play a similar role through public awareness campaigns and constructing sustained debates on the market for corruption. Information is key to generating public interest and often serves as a catalyst for mobilisation. Civil society is already beginning to fill the information gap through studies on the status of public services. These could be extended to looking more systematically at levels of corruption and the work of anti-corruption agencies. Finally, we cannot as a society get away from taking collective responsibility for our state of affairs. We have to stop being complacent and interrogate our own complicity to move forward.

... contd.