Thank you Santanu, That was a good piece. Reading your post, I started thinking: Do people react differently say when public funds are misappropriated as opposed to a thief who steals from a neighbor's house.
I remember one horrible incident at th GU campus. This poor guy was caught stealing coconuts from a Professor's back yard. very soon many professors (some of them intellectual leaders of today) beat the daylights out of this chap and applied the ritual 'soon on his shaven head'. If the police hadn't arrived, he would have probably died. Now these same bunch of professors would look the other way (who knows may be even take part) when the GU is being inundated with charges of misappropriation, mismanagement of funds etc. Do we look away when public funds/of govt. services are involved? The common perception one often finds in India is that Govt. property is 'our property' ie feel free to pillage and loot, nobody cares, as they probably do not equate pillaging such property as a crime in the first place. Just my thoughts. --Ram da On 5/3/05, Roy, Santanu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Is corruption a failure of personal morality? > Are the non-corrupt abiding by higher moral standards than the so called > corrupt? > It is important to understand that there is no straightforward answer to > these questions. > Human behavior reflects the balance of several forces - personal ethical > standards are certainly among them. But there are other very powerful forces > - economic incentives and social norms being the two most important. > Depending on circumstances, one or the other may win when the forces are in > conflict. The Indian president believes that simply building up strong > personal ethics through education would change behavior. I, like many of > you, am justifiably sceptical. > I think it is far more important to understand and change the economic > incentives and social norms that give rise to corruption. One of the key > aspect of this is that social phenomena such as corruption suffer from a > certain "lock-in" feature. > Let me explain by talking about something simpler. Take punctuality - a fine > trait, even a good moral attribute one might say. Some societies such as the > Scandinavian are amazingly punctual; others such as the Spanish are almost > as strongly non-punctual. If you are not punctual in Norway, you will be in > serious trouble. You will arrive late, cause amazing embarassment to > yourself, miss meetings and engagements and earn huge business losses. You > will also face much social derision and lose social standing. In fact, in > Norway, it will be taken as a signal of your unproductive nature, your lack > of collegiality and lack of respect for others. Thus, even the most tardy > Spaniard learns to be punctual in Norway. And the same applies for every > individual Norwegian. Thus we have a social equilibrium of puntuality from > which no individual can deviate without social and economic penalties - > society is "locked-in" it (like the way a tapestry is woven). > In Spain, the equilibrium is different (to put it mildly). If you are > puntual in Spain, you will cause great embarassment to your hosts. You will > walk out of meeting just as they begin, in order to meet your obligation to > be at another meeting and will find that the latter only begins an hour or > two later. You will rudely interrupt long lunches. You will be a pain. And > invite social derision, business losses. You will learn to be nonpunctual in > your own interest. And the same holds for most individual Spaniards. A > social equilibrium of non-punctuality from which individuals have no > personal incentive to deviate - society is "locked - in" it. > Of course, we all know puntuality is better than non-punctuality. But shall > we look at the Spanish behavior as a failure of personal ethics? Is it a > failure of their education? Will telling Spaniards in classrooms and > television and on networks of Spaniards abroad to be punctual - will that > help? Perhaps not. > The same, I submit, is true of corruption. Society, for historical reasons, > gets locked in to a bad equilibrium. No amount of lecturing and theorizing, > can change individual behavior until the bad equilibrium breaks down and a > good equilibrium is formed. The latter is the true meaning of social change > or institutional change. It requires tremendous coordination among > individuals and it requires new incentives to replace the old. > I remain steadfast in my belief that like many other problems, this one too > can be tackled by a two pronged approach. At the political level, through > genuine decentralization, through democracy at the local level, through > empowerment of the locals. At the economic level, through reduction in the > size of the public sector, gradual elimination of all dicretionary powers of > the state and transfer of the absolutely necessary government economic > functions from federal to state governments and from state to local self > government, in that order. When the road next to my house is managed by my > city or nighborhood government, the social monitoring and the sanctions that > officials will face from leakage of funds will be of a different order of > magnitude and the incentives of individuals like me to storm these officials > frequently will also be very different. > > Santanu. > > _______________________________________________ > Assam mailing list > [email protected] > http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/mailman/listinfo/assam > > Mailing list FAQ: > http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/assam/assam-faq.html > To unsubscribe or change options: > http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/mailman/options/assam > > > _______________________________________________ Assam mailing list [email protected] http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/mailman/listinfo/assam Mailing list FAQ: http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/assam/assam-faq.html To unsubscribe or change options: http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/mailman/options/assam
