How patriarchy encourages corruption

Over the past several months, India has been rocked by anti corruption protests. People are angry with the humongous levels of corruption existing in every level of governance. It is a fact of life here. Even for accessing basic rights, such as acquiring a passport, drivers license, ration card or even a birth/death certificate, requires us to part with some amount of our hard earned money. Corrupt officers keep piling up money, and there exists a chain whereby each officer is required to pay up some amount of the money so collected to their superior. In return, the superior promises not to transfer or otherwise harass the junior officer. The chain ends at the higher political offices in each state.

Different people have suggested different solutions for ending corruption. Ramdev says that the corrupt must suffer the ultimate punishment - death. Besides the unconstitutionality and barbarity of the suggestion, the fact that murder carries a potential death sentence does not deter murderers seems to have been lost on him.

Anna Hazare and Co. is fighting for creation of a stronger ombudsman (Lokpal) with powers to investigate and prosecute corruption at very high levels. This suggestion too has its flaws - what if the Lokpal itself is corrupt ? Are we creating another Frankenstein monster, with draconian powers that will have no checks and balances on itself, and act like a super Government ?

Aruna Roy and others at the NAC have suggested breaking Lokpal into 5 bodies. Her suggestion is drastically different from the government's Lokpal Bill and the Jan Lokpal Bill. “Vesting jurisdiction over the length and breadth of the government machinery in one institution will concentrate too much power in the institution, while the volume of work will make it difficult to carry out its tasks”, she said. Personally I find her suggestion quite agreeable, provided it can be ensured that each of those bodies will be independent of government control.

Government's chief economic adviser Kaushik Basu has suggested legalizing certain forms of bribe giving. He feels that giving bribe to access a resource, which would otherwise be a matter of right, should be legalized. This will make sure, that after the act of giving bribe has been committed, the interests of the bribe giver and the bribe taker will be orthogonal to each other. Bribe giver may then approach the police for action against the bribe taker. This will drastically reduce the incidents of corrupt officers demanding bribe (i call it extortion), as the immunity over the act of bribing extends only to the bribe giver and not the taker.

For most part, public seems to be angry at corruption and the culture of impunity around it. Most of them are not familiar with the intricate details of each of these proposals or the potential consequences of adopting them.

One more aspect that seems to have been completely ignored around this debate, is the widespread acceptance of corrupt behavior in the Indian society. We think of corruption as an 'external' problem - something that concerns the behavior of public servants. We don't think for a millisecond, how our actions may be creating the perfect environment for corruption to thrive in the society.

I would like to target the most basic structure of the Indian society - the family. The understanding of the concept of the family varies from person to person, and it is usually clouded by their religious and cultural views. The only type of family that most Indians seem to understand is a man, his wife and their children (patriarchy). The man has a superior status within his family. Women are not only kept subservient in terms of decision-making, but also in terms of food they eat. Even pregnant women eat food after all others have finished meal, seriously jeopardizing their fetus' health - one of the major causes of child malnutrition.

Due to the inferior status of the woman, it is expected that she will bring around dowry at marriage. In some castes, negotiations take place over the amount of dowry. Personally, I have some friends who say that while they don't believe in dowry, they will have to ask for it because their parents would want so. Their mothers' family had paid dowry to their fathers' family and the tradition must continue.

Thus, even the most basic unit of the Indian society - the family itself, is corrupt! If one can beat/burn their wives over dowry, what prevents them from denying basic rights to someone else, for lack of a bribe?

The basic idea behind dowry and bribe is the same - excessive greed and lack of morals.

According to me, first and foremost we need to fix greed in ourselves. Youngsters should challenge the older generation over dowry. The easiest way to defeat patriarchy and eliminate dowry, is love marriages. Any pair (or more) of individuals who share the bond of love, should be allowed to marry.

The other thing that needs to change is how we deal with our housekeepers and other such 'helps'. It is obscenely cruel that we spend more sums of money on eating outside than what we pay them for the entire month. We call them 'servants' reminiscent of the slavery system, where the slaves were required to 'serve' their masters.

Slavery and patriarchy are inter-related, as the status of the 'servants' is even below that of the household women. In ancient societies, a rich man would have a wife and many servants, mostly female, who also played the role of sex slaves.

If you can't deal with your 'servants' in a dignified way, how can you expect the babu to do so with you ? If nothing prevents you from you shouting at, or abusing your household help, what prevents you from doing so at the aam aadmi, the common citizen.

It is this greed and arrogance that is the root cause of the culture of corruption. It is this greed and arrogance that we must shed, if we truly want the anti corruption struggle to succeed.

Jai Hind!