Applications for the LAMP Fellowship 2025-26 will open on December 1, 2024. Sign up here to be notified when applications open.
In the last decade, some schemes have been recast as statutory entitlements – right to employment, right to education and right to food. Whereas schemes were dependent on annual budgetary allocations, there rights are now justiciable, and it would be obligatory for Parliament to allocate sufficient resources in the budget. Some of these rights also entail expenditure by state governments, with the implication that state legislatures will have to provide sufficient funds in their budgets. Importantly, the amounts required are a significant proportion of the total budget. There has been little debate on the core constitutional issue of whether any Parliament can pre-empt the role of resource allocation by future Parliaments. Whereas a future Parliament can address this issue by amending the Act, such power is not available to state legislatures. Through these Acts, Parliament is effectively constraining the spending preferences of states as expressed through their budgets passed by their respective legislative assemblies. I have discussed these issues in my column in Pragati published on August 16, 2013.
The last few months saw a number of allegations of corruption in issues such as contracts for the Commonwealth Games, allocation of 2G Spectrum, and the building of the Adarsh housing society. Professor Kaushik Basu, the Chief Economic Adviser to the Ministry of Finance, has proposed a modification in order to make the anti-corruption law in the country more effective. The Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 penalizes both bribe giving and taking. Bribe giving is punishable under the Act with imprisonment ranging between six months to five years. He argues that bribe giving should be legalized. Professor Basu distinguishes “harassment bribes”, which he defines as “bribes that people often have to give to get what they are legally entitled to” from the remaining, “Non-Harassment Bribes” which would involve illegal benefits accruing to the bribe giver at a potential cost to the public interest. He argues that legalization of harassment bribes would reduce the nexus between the giver (victim) and the taker of a bribe. Giving complete immunity to the bribe-giver would ensure higher reporting and co-operation of the giver in bringing to justice the bribe taker. The present law acts as a deterrent to reporting of bribery. Courts have also highlighted this issue. The High Court of Delhi in the Bharadwaaj Media Case (2007) observed that a “bribe giver is normally on the mercy of the officials and babus who compel him to pay bribe even for lawful work.” The Court further observed that “Instead of expressing gratefulness to the persons who expose corruption, if the institutions start taking action against those who expose corruption, corruption is bound to progress day and night.” It can be inferred from the judgement that steps ought to be taken to provide protection to those exposing bribery. The proposed legalization of bribe-giving may result in increased reporting of bribery and co-operation of the victim during prosecution. The fear that a bribe giver may report the public official could reduce corruption, at least in terms of harassment bribes. However, this proposal may reduce the stigma attached to bribe-giving and result in corrosion of morality. Much of the recent debate around corruption and the Lok Pal Bill revolve around effective prosecution. This paper looks at the incentive structure for reporting bribe-giving, and merits public debate.
