Battling Corruption: Why it happens and how to stop it?
Corruption: dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power.
On a nice warm afternoon, I was checking Instagram. I was looking at posts with funny facts- “Horses sleep standing up, Dolphins sleep with one-eye open”, and then came another post- “In 2021 the Corruption Perceptions Index ranked India in 85th place out of 180 most corrupt nations”.
“Corrupt officials in India may be making the country poorer by more than Rs. 90, 000 crores every year”.
That’s a lot of money! Some reports said that officials are literally taking out people’s money that they pay as taxes. It is now clear that most of the corruption happens around money. That got me worried. After some reflection, I came with two main ideas that I believed could significantly help reduce corruption:
That got me worried. After some reflection, I came with two main ideas that I believed could significantly help reduce corruption:
1. Taking Records Online.
A lot of corruption actually happens because of poor archives of records. When certain government officials introduce new projects, sometimes the funding part of the project is not publicly available. This leads to bad management. Government officials may even keep some of the money with themselves- making the 1 quality of the project way poorer than what was revealed earlier to the public.
Technology reduces corruption by automating bureaucratic processes. —bussinessworld.in
Thanks to the internet- with the help of new technologies, keeping records and making them public has never been easier. Governments have to make sure that none of their work goes undocumented and foreign to the citizens of the country. Imagine if every work ever done by the government is maintained and available publicly- healthcare, finance, infrastructure. This will help definitely reduce corruption, increase accountability and most importantly- increase trust. Taking Records Online- keeping track of where the money goes and how it’s being used.
2. A New Way of Maintaining Transactions: Say Hello to Blockchain:
No matter how hard you try, there is always some way which leads to things getting messy. As I mentioned earlier, most of the corruption revolves around money. And if we really want to make India a Corruption Free, Developed Nation- There has to be a way in which fund alteration becomes impossible. Say Hello To Blockchain. Blockchain is a system of recording information in a way that makes it difficult or impossible to change, hack, or cheat the system. It’s a digital ledger of transactions in a peer-to-peer network.
The way I interpret this is by imagining a large blockchain network in which the government shares transactions and records 2 from initiation to deployment. Every citizen has access to the network, and everyone can individually verify them by mining if they want to. This will empower citizens and truly make our democracy by the people, for the people, and of the people.
The Bottom Line
Corruption can destroy a country as great as ours. It’s time we all come together and work hand in hand to make sure our government becomes more clean, honest and definitely way above the 85th place out of the most corrupt nations. I strongly believe, We Can.
This article was written by Monojoy Dey. You can find more of his work on medium.
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