How much evil we do in the name of good
Nov 13, 2009
Recently we have seen the report of metropolitan Magistrate S P Tamang where he has confirmed that the encounter of the killing of Isharat Jehan was fake and same was the conclusion in the encounter of Sohrabbuddin and Kauser bi.

There was an ACP Rajbirsingh of Delhi police who was killed and he had 56 killings to his credit. Same ACP was also caught in dealings with a drug peddler. Then there are many so called encounter specialist in Mumbai Police.

There are though political reasons attributed to such extrajudicial killings, but the common cause is the promotion systems prevailing in police where such extrajudicial killings are rewarded.

Though, might look absurd or exaggerated but same parallels can be drawn with other professions be it casting couch scandals where a actor or actress is ready to do anything for a better role in a film or business men are ready to bribe the officials for a meaty piece of business.

Without rambling much and coming straight to the heart of the article, let us discuss the prevailing corporate corruption and try to analyse the causes. 

There are three people involved in corrupt transaction: One who gives money, One who approves the transaction and One who takes the money. Let us analyse the role of each stakeholder. If there are no takers on money then there are chances that there is no corruption, but if you see the desperate person who needs to get his job done would find someone else who is ready to take money. Hence just by having people not taking money we cant control corruption.

In other scenario, where the person who offers money refuse to give money, then there is no medium  for money to travel from the individual or company that intend to give money to the person or the organization that want to take bribe. But since we have the giver and the recipient then together they would find a mechanism to ensure that the money/bribe exchange hands and the transaction is complete.

In the third scenario, where the person who approves the transaction is not ready to approve the bribe in this case the person who intends to offer bribe neither he can bribe nor the person who intends to be recipient of bribe can get the bribe. In such a scenario the transaction cannot happen and we can have clean business environment.

                                   |-------->Giver 1---------> Recipient 1

                               |

Approver-----------|--------> Giver 2---------> Recipient 2

                               |

                               |--------> Giver n---------> Recipient n


                                          (Relationship model)

 
Now let us look at how this happen in our corporate world that too with the focus on the white collar, sunrise  industry, The IT Industry.

We have MNC's operating here which reward there employees generously on achievement of their targets. A survey shows that the most companies have 50:50 or 60:40 ratio between their fixed salary component and their target achievement incentives. Meaning if an employee has a salary package of Rs 30,00,000.00 then he earns 50% as salary I.e 15,00,000.00 and other 15,00,000.00 as incentive on achievement of his targets. This is a huge sum at stake for him.

His supervisor would have say the salary of 50,00,000.00 with same ratio then he has 25,00,000.00 at stake and the chain goes on.

Now let us take a real example with the names changed.

There is a big infrastructure project of modernisation of Airports in India by ***** where only ***** at the customer place is there to decide the technology for 16 airports across.

The technology includes Servers and Software. The top technology companies like *****, *****, *****, ***** etc join hands and form consortium. Mr ***** (name changed from a leading Server manufacturer) takes the lead and fixes the customer for a set commission. As a result the customer comes out with the tender with all the products by names without caring much that the H/W and S/W bought is obsolete.

In other scenario the The Indian Railways have their major applications running on a proprietary servers and software. The revenue that the company gets on annual basis is over a few millions of dollars. This being proprietary hardware the company makes huge profits. As a result the same company is able to cross subsidies the other deals and win other orders as well as a result you would find the company holding over 80% share in the business from the Railways.

Even the research is not untouched with corruption. ***** and ***** is part of Indian Army’s modernization drive. ***** under the aegis of Army Training Command is the premier institute responsible for conceptualization and development of computerized war games in Indian Army. The H/W (Servers/Workstations from *****) procured for this software was bought when this was declared obsolete by the manufacturer and the vendor responsible was none other than *****, one of the most admired company in the world for its integrity.
 
The problem in all these scenarios is with the huge money at sake for the salesmen. With the huge money at stake for them they would go all out to approve such transactions and ensure it is win win situation for all. But, this is from where the corruption spirals from here and go to other sectors and influence the development of the country.
 
The money wasted by Airports authority if saved could give some corpus funds in modernization of Air India. The  money wasted  by Railways can spare them some money so that the clean bedcovers can be provided in the coaches and the money spent on dead H/W if prevented can make India spend money on equipping its troops with modern equipment and help them save some lives in insurgency operations.
 
If there were no incentives by the companies for such deals then the very motive of the crime was finished and hence it would have played an important role in stopping the corruption.

How much Evil we will do of corruption or the innocent killings and in the name of Good of rewarding people for their misadventures.