CONSUMER RIGHTS
Take graft head on

A study on corruption in and around Bangalore reveals that even to see a newborn, parents may have to bribe the nurse. Corruption has permeated the entire social system of many countries in Asia, writes Pushpa Girimaji

Last week, a television channel exposed corruption in its worst form: hounded by the goons sent by a bank to recover a loan that he had taken for a motorbike and unable to pay up, a young man had committed suicide. And like a vulture, a Sub-Inspector from the Police Department handpicked on the family to extract his pound of flesh.

The young man’s body was in the custody of the police and when the distressed family asked for it, the Sub-Inspector demanded Rs 20,000. Or else, he would change the case from suicide to murder and members of the family would be arrested, he threatened. Initially, in their desperation to get the body for performing the last rites, the family paid, but when the demand increased, they contacted the news channel to expose the policeman.

Juxtapose this with the huge haul of unaccounted wealth uncovered by CBI officials in a nationwide swoop on 70 government officials over a month ago and you have more or less a complete picture of how corruption has spread its tentacles far and wide. And the ultimate victims are the consumers.

Two NGOs, Public Affairs Centre and Citizens Action Group, some years ago carried out a report card study on the nature and extent of problems faced by the urban poor in and around Bangalore, in accessing health care. And they covered government hospitals run by the municipal corporations, the Central Government, mission and charity hospitals and even private hospitals. And the results were quite damning. They showed that in order to access services provided free of charge to them by the government, the patients had to pay bribe to various people in the hospital. So much so that even to see a newborn baby, the parents had to bribe the nurse.

Corruption affects consumers indirectly too. Take a small example: despite the MRP marked on the package, ice creams sold by roadside vendors in certain areas of Delhi cost more than elsewhere, the reason being that the vendors pay bribe to civic authorities and the local police to sell ice cream there. (Under the Standards of Weights and Measures (Packaged Commodities rules), it is an offence to sell at a price higher than the maximum retail price.)

These are just a few examples of how corruption hurts, and hurts the consumer, particularly the poor, the most. In fact, delivering a silver jubilee lecture at "Action for Agricultural Renewal in Maharashtra", Pune, some years ago, former Central Vigilance Commissioner N. Vittal had spoken of how 31 per cent of the food grains and 36 per cent of the sugar meant for the public distribution system, designed to provide food security to people living below the poverty line, got diverted to the black market.

"The Government of India spends Rs 15,000 crore (150 billion) every year by way of subsidy to the public distribution system. This means that Rs 5,000 crore (50 billion) meant for giving relief to the poor, lands in the pockets of corrupt shopkeepers and their godfathers in politics and bureaucracy," he had said.

In fact emphasising the need for member organisations to concentrate on this area of work, Dr Sothi Rachagan, Advisor, Consumers International, said in his keynote address to the conference, "A fundamental blight that affects all of us as consumers is the issue of corruption. Yet, very few consumer organisations have taken this head on. Though Asia is reputed for many positive values, it is also well reputed for corruption. Corruption has permeated the entire social system of many countries in Asia… Consumer organisations must expose corrupt practices and seek redress for those affected by such practices. Without public exposure, shame and severe punishment, rampant corruption will not abate. Consumers are the ultimate victims of corruption. Corruption is a consumer issue and the consumer associations need to focus on efforts to fight corruption."

If the pledge that the consumer groups took at the end of the conference is anything to go by, in the coming years, consumer groups will put in a lot of effort to expose corruption.

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