I called this years ago — Corruption, public schemes and the slow work of reform

When I read the figures again — that more than 62% of people have at some point paid a bribe, and that India sits far from the top of the Corruption Perceptions Index — a personal memory returns. I wrote about these problems years ago, and I proposed specific fixes then. Seeing the same patterns persist is at once vindication and a sorrow; vindication because the diagnosis still holds, sorrow because implementation remains the bottleneck.

The scale and texture of the problem are well documented: corruption is not an isolated pathology; it has become systemic across bureaucracy, politics and service delivery (Corruption in India). That systemic nature explains why a single raid, a single bill or a single agency cannot cure what is a structural illness.

What has actually helped — and why it matters

There are reforms that move the needle. I recognise them not as rhetorical wins but as practical, measurable improvements:

• Right to Information (RTI): by making government decisions and records accessible, RTI has stripped away convenient secrecy and given citizens a tool to hold offices to account (Corruption in India).
• Right to Public Services / Right to Services laws: where they are implemented they force time‑bound delivery and create grievance mechanisms that reduce discretionary rent‑seeking (Corruption in India).
• Digital governance and direct benefit transfers: moving transactions and payments online removes many human touchpoints where bribes happen. Digitisation is not a panacea but it is an effective instrument.
• New oversight bodies: institutions like Lokpal and strengthened vigilance agencies are important because law must exist alongside public pressure.

These are real advances — I argued for many of them years ago. That earlier thinking was not sentimental prediction; it was practical sense. Today, seeing digital transfers and RTI disclosures change individual lives, I feel validated that those early prescriptions were on the right path. That sense of validation strengthens my urgency to push harder on execution.

Where reform has failed — the contours of impunity

Yet the same documents that celebrate progress also record limits. Implementation is uneven; accountability is weak; the prosecutorial and judicial follow‑through is slow. The U.S. State Department and many independent studies note a persistent lack of convictions and institutional impunity — a structural failure of enforcement (Corruption in India).

Put bluntly: laws without enforcement become theater. Transparency without accessible remedies becomes a paper trail that rusts. Digital systems without integrity controls become new avenues for capture. I warned about these dynamics years ago; I raised them because reform that ignores enforcement is reform that comforts the conscience but not the citizen.

A terse, practical list of what still needs to be done

These are not grand slogans — these are operational priorities that I have repeatedly emphasised over the years:

• Wire enforcement to transparency: disclosures and RTI outputs must be matched to case‑management that converts leads into investigations and convictions. Transparency must feed enforcement, not replace it.
• Treat service delivery as a rights architecture: the benefits of welfare schemes must be enforceable entitlements under service laws, with clear timelines and penalties for default (a point public leaders like those writing in city press have been urging in the context of service law debates) (Mumbai News).
• Harden digital systems with audit trails and independent red‑team testing: digitisation succeeds only when the interfaces that matter — payments, registrations, certificates — are tamper‑resistant and auditable.
• Strengthen whistleblower protection and fast courts: brave disclosures must not mean ruined lives. Fast‑track special benches for corruption cases will shorten impunity cycles.
• Open procurement and price comparison by default: e‑procurement is not enough if the underlying tender design invites collusion. Price benchmarking and live public dashboards reduce discretion.
• Political finance reform: money in politics distorts incentives; unless contest funding and opaque donation vehicles are addressed, corruption will find political cover.

I raised most of these needs years ago — sometimes in reports, sometimes in off‑the‑record conversations. Today they remain urgent. The fact that I was thinking about enforcement as the central problem three, five, seven years ago matters: it shows I was not reacting to incidents, I was diagnosing a system.

A personal note on patience and impatience

There is a paradox in this work. Reforms are slow because institutions change slowly; yet the cost of delay is immediate for millions who depend on public schemes for food, health, education and livelihood. I find myself alternately patient — because institutional culture changes over generations — and impatient — because every day of delay is a day someone is denied a right that could be enforced.

I still believe the playbook is simple: transparency + enforceable service rights + digital integrity + political will. The difficulty is not in enumerating the steps; it lies in aligning incentives so actors who gain from the status quo stop doing so.

Closing reflection

When systems resist change, the correct human response is persistence. I had sketched diagnostics and remedies years back; revisiting them now is not nostalgia. It is a renewed insistence that ideas which stood the test of time must be executed with more humility and greater ferocity. I am encouraged by pockets of success — and stung by the persistence of old capture — which together sharpen my conviction: the work of institutional repair is moral, technical and political, and it requires both citizens and leaders to insist, daily, on rights rather than favors.

Appendix: additional article (captured content)

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Regards,
[Hemen Parekh] Any questions? Feel free to ask my Virtual Avatar at hemenparekh.ai