Causes of Corruption |10 Main Reasons which can be Eradicated
Corruption is one of the biggest threat to the well-being of a society.
Corruption degrades the quality of the services and also ruins the life of the common man. Many countries in the world are affected by this problem called corruption.
Political parties who promised to stop and take steps to eradicate corruption have been voted for power. This shows the significance of corruption free society and government.
Unlike like developed countries, corruption is at a high rate in developing countries. The causes of corruption are many and quite complex that the promises of the political parties to eradicate corruption is not easy.
Corruption is primarily seen in instances like jobs, businesses, promotions, election campaigns, sports etc. Below is the list of
Main Causes of Corruption
1. Low Pay scales/ Wages: Most of the employees in the government sector are paid low wages and salaries. Hence some employees revert to corruption for more financial benefits.
2. Low Job opportunities. This is another cause of corruption. Due to the lack of job opportunities at will, there are many people who like to go for corruption mode to get the job offer. They will be ready to pay a lump sum amounts for the job offer to the higher officials or politicians.
3. Lack of Strict and fast punishments: Even if someone is found guilty or even caught red-handed by the anti-corruption officials or media, the convicts get less punishment. First, they will be suspended for a few months or weeks and then re-posted to another location with same Job grade and pay. So this means the official who did the corrupt practice is given a free license to continue his practice.
If the government is so strict that any such corrupt incidents will lead to permanent removal from the job and also punishment like several years imprisonment then the corruption will come down to a large extent.
4. Lack of ill fame: If a person is found to be corrupt or has done some unacceptable misconduct, he or she has to be avoided and not be respected. But currently, those with corruption and other offense related history are given prominent positions like the member of parliament or even higher posts. Instead of being disrespected they are respected.
5. Lack of Unity in public: Public openly criticize corruption but interestingly there is no unity among the public to stop corruption. If a person wants to get his done his work, he gets it done by corruption means if possible and then later criticizes the corrupt official. If the public stands united against corruption in such a way that no one is ready to offer bribes to get their work done then the corrupt officials will have no other option but to work in a corruption-free manner.
During the election, politicians try to lure the people by offering money and other things. If these politicians win and get power, they try to regain 10 to 100 times the amount spent on their elections.
6. Lack of transparency in affairs and deals: Many seat selection processes like in education, contracts for the job, employee income reports (wealth possession), etc lack transparency. For this purpose, there is a new act namely RTI: right to information, but the act is not strong enough to prevent malpractices.
7. Lack of Independent detective agency: Lack of an independent detective agency to investigate with full power and freedom to expose the corrupt individuals. The existing agencies are under the control of either the government or the armies and are not free to work. Hence anyone who commits offense will not be afraid of the investigation as they can escape from it by taking help of those controlling them.
8. Lack of state funding to elections: State funding for elections is the best way to beat corruption. Political parties receive party funds and will not disclose it to the fullest. In doing so, they encourage corruption. They receive massive funds from industrialists with a promise to help when in power. Presence of state funding can abolish party fund culture and minimize the corruption.
9. The option of many political parties: In a democracy, anyone can establish a political party. So there are chances for corruption of many political parties in the country. If a political party wins, then the party members will desire to expand the party to all over the country. To do so, they need enough financial reserves. For this, once they come into power, they opt for corrupt means to make the wealth needed to expand the party.
10. Lack of enough powers to the judicial system and other independent organization. Like the election commission cannot ban a politician from contesting in case they make a mistake or do not comply with the rules during the election campaign (like distributing money to people etc). Similarly, the judicial system has low options to punish someone who is found to be
11. Lack of accountability: In government, there is a big trend in corruption. This is because of a lack of accountability. The employee’s on government offices do not perform to their par excellence. If they receive 100 files to be cleared in a week they may not even clear 50 of them in that week. They tend to postpone the clearance of the files. So those who are in the urgency of the clearance have to get them done by rewarding the officials involved in the clearance office. This lack of accountability in government offices is the chief cause of corruption.
If there is a mandate that all the files or at least 95% of files received by government offices for clearance are cleared in the said period than corruption can be minimized to a large extent.
12. Encouragement of unhealthy competition: Competition in business is a good sign for the quality of service to be delivered. But in poor nations, there is an encouragement of unhealthy competition.
When there is a tender, you can notice that only a few companies bid for it. This is because the companies having political relations have higher chances of winning while others do not. So, companies with no political influence will not bid for the tender in-spite of being a good company. That is here the number of bidders for a tender will be low due to political interference.
These causes of corruption have to be eliminated for better growth of the nation.
