The Great Kickback Culture!

[Guest guest]

Attention: All Anti-Corruption Crusaders! Please wake

up and write strongly to all newspapers and the

electronic media about it. That is why I am

reproducing below my letter to the press about the

great " kickback Culture " .

 

Kickback Culture

Sir,

Now even World Bank’s anti-corruption unit has come

out with the fact that kickbacks were paid to

Ministers and officials of the Union Health Ministry

in the multi-million dollar projects to reduce

maternal and infant mortality (IE Sep 7). This is the

situation at the top of central govt. in New Delhi.

Now I tell you of the bottom. When I supplied

“paushtik ahar”(nutritional food) to the children at

40 paise per child (in 40 paise, you can’t buy

anything today) many years ago, the then chairman of

the municipal school board who had later on got

promotion as state minister, perhaps as a reward for

being corrupt, asked me to donate in cash or kind

something worth Rs. 80,000 for his party. Actually, he

wanted me to donate an ambulance to his political

party. Of course, I did not do that and I did not get

the order. Today, of course, corruption is much more

rampant.

That is why I am insisting that corruption has to be

tackled from top downwards and not otherwise. If the

head of the department or the minister is not corrupt,

his junior dare not indulge in corruption or else he

would get a bad confidential report on which his

future in that service depends. If the collector is

not corrupt, how can his deputy indulge in corruption?

If the chairman of the school board is not corrupt,

then his junior officials cannot afford to be corrupt.

Things have gone so bad that they are eating into the

40 paise given for the feeding of the poor children.

So too, ministers are eating into funds given to save

mothers or babies who die shortly after delivery. Such

cases are always from the poorest of the poor. Even

they are not spared. It amounts to ministers and

officials taking kickbacks from selling the cloth that

is given to the dead bodies of the poor. Are they not

‘chaandals’? (chaandals are those who eat out of the

dead brought for cremation). Shall we say, today’s

government culture is nothing but a pure kickback

culture from top to bottom.

 

S. M. Acharya,

Anti-corruption Cell, Save India Association,

155 St. Patrick’s Town, Pune 411013, Tel:

020-26870204..

 

 

 

 

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