Convenience and corruption

Legalize corruption! :D Sounds funny...

Is there a solution for corruption? Can it be curbed completely? These are the questions rhetorically vivering in the discussions on social gatherings of middle class. Every other person has one or the other example of how he or she came out of a situation through corruption. Getting a reservation in a train to Mumbai in a jampacked train is not a big deal today given that your pocket is heavier than TTEs demand. Black money from the tax heavens has been in the news for quite a while now. Recently TOI gave an amazing article showing how the whole system works. Person A from India gives cash in INR to Person B. Person B give a havala to Person C in other country. Person C supplies cash to Person D in that country. And this system had been running quite smoothly. According to that article, in Delhi itself the volume of transactions is around 300 billions! That is approximately 7 % of the total GDP of our country. And more than the total volumes of most of the banks. And note that it is just Delhi. What if rest of India is added. Look at the efficiency of the system - Money transferred in 24 hours! Moreover that money is not been accounted anywhere in the economy. Rather it is disguised in some form, which form - is still a question mark. Why do people like you and me go to such a local foreign exchanger? Why do a common man go to a unauthorized RTO agent for getting the licence? The answer is convinience. If I had the time to stand in the queue at the RTO office for 4 hours, I would have not gone to that agent. If tickets are available easily, I would not go to that local chaiwala to ask for an agent. A common man enters this vicious cycle of corruption just for 1 reason - convinience. What if this convinience is made available to the common man legally? Then Indian Railways turn into profit!

Well that was an example. Lalu prasad made tatkal chargeable by 150 Rs and kept certain conditions of non-cancellation and end-to-end fare and that turns railways to profit. of course there were other factors too but this factor not only helped the profits but also helped in reduction of the un-authorized ticket sellers. Similar thing happened with the passports. Tatkaal passports are been offered legally at a premium price in 1/3rd of the time. Similar thing can happen with the local foreign exchangers too. Legalize them. This would be ek teer se do nishaan. It would help in reducing the corruption and secondly it would reduce the black money transactions on the other hand. Convinience leeds to corruption. So let us provide the convenience to customers legally. This would of course not completely curb the corruption but it would definitely help in reducing it. What do you say?