BLURRED LINES
In this book, Bibek Debroy and Kishore Desai have brought together 18 people from the NITI Aayog and elsewhere in the government to survey corruption in India. Between them, they cover public procurement, higher education, trade, the medical and pharma industry, procurement and distribution, elections, cash payments, land and property transactions, legislation, institutions set up by the government to tackle corruption and other minor topics. This is a pretty broad agenda. The treatment of every topic must start with a factual survey. In many of these areas, there is considerable official literature; most of the papers try to survey it. These surveys take up most of the space in the book. There has been little concrete action to prevent, curb or punish corruption; while the government has produced reams of reports, laws and statements, it has achieved little. So the book gives little space to the achievements. What would have been useful is some judgement on how greater efficiency can be brought to the prevention of corruption. While this lack of focus and analytical depth may be due to the inexperience of the authors, they would have performed better with stronger leadership and closer supervision. I expect Bibek Debroy was too preoccupied to provide it. I read three chapters with greater attention. One was Dhiraj Nayyar’s essay on demonetisation. It begins with the assertion that “It is difficult to imagine any other single policy measure that disrupted the activities and fortunes of all corrupt citizens in the way demonetisation did”. How? Through “deadweight loss (if they chose to destroy their illicit cash) or a heavy price (read tax and penalty) to pay if they declared it by depositing it in banks”. Nayyar has such strong preconceptions that he does not look at easily available facts. Between demonetisation and the end of 2016, currency in circulation went down by about Rs 9 trillion, and deposits went up by about Rs 7 trillion; people lost Rs 2 trillion. Were they poor people without bank accounts, or crooks with black money? We do not know; but Nayyar does—or rather, knows what he wants to think.
The other was Bibek Debroy’s essay on black money in land and property, which is best read together with Suparna Jain and Aparajita Gupta’s essay on benami transactions. The latter simply recounts the history of legislation which, however, is useful background for Debroy’s essay because benami transactions are important in real estate. What I found interesting was that benami transactions are very old, but the British did not try to ban or suppress them; they simply required the benami property holders to unveil themselves under certain circumstances. This approach of minimum legislation is superior to the post-Independence one of making comprehensive laws banning whatever the government did not like without making any effort to enforce the laws. There is something to learn from the British even now.