Interesting idea to make bribe's legal by Kaushik Basu.. Some titbits
"An Indian website, ipaidabribe.com, set up last summer by anti-corruption activists, reveals just how grasping officials can be. It has documented over 8,500 instances of bribery adding up to nearly 375m rupees ($8.4m) in backhanders. These include 100 rupees to get a policeman to register a complaint about a stolen mobile phone and 500 rupees for a clerk to hand over a marriage certificate. The amounts are much larger to facilitate income-tax refunds, where the standard “charge” is 10%; sums between 5,000 and 50,000 rupees change hands"
" The category of payments he would like to legalise are “harassment bribes”, made by a person to get things to which he is legally entitled. In such cases, Mr Basu argues, the giver should be granted immunity from prosecution and a proven complaint should result not only in punishment for the corrupt official but also in a “refund” for the bribe-giver. These steps, he believes, will align the incentives of those asked for bribes and law-enforcement agencies which seek to prosecute corrupt officials by giving their victims the confidence to lodge complaints and encouraging them to hang on to evidence of bribery. Fear of being caught should make officials more wary of asking for bribes in the first place."
Read on...
http://www.economist.com/node/18652037
"An Indian website, ipaidabribe.com, set up last summer by anti-corruption activists, reveals just how grasping officials can be. It has documented over 8,500 instances of bribery adding up to nearly 375m rupees ($8.4m) in backhanders. These include 100 rupees to get a policeman to register a complaint about a stolen mobile phone and 500 rupees for a clerk to hand over a marriage certificate. The amounts are much larger to facilitate income-tax refunds, where the standard “charge” is 10%; sums between 5,000 and 50,000 rupees change hands"
" The category of payments he would like to legalise are “harassment bribes”, made by a person to get things to which he is legally entitled. In such cases, Mr Basu argues, the giver should be granted immunity from prosecution and a proven complaint should result not only in punishment for the corrupt official but also in a “refund” for the bribe-giver. These steps, he believes, will align the incentives of those asked for bribes and law-enforcement agencies which seek to prosecute corrupt officials by giving their victims the confidence to lodge complaints and encouraging them to hang on to evidence of bribery. Fear of being caught should make officials more wary of asking for bribes in the first place."
Read on...
http://www.economist.com/node/18652037
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