Driving in New Delhi - Don't complain about standing in line at the DMV

An article by Joel Waldfogel (Driving in New Delhi - Don't complain about standing in line at the DMV. By Joel Waldfogel) says that in some countries, Corruption does have an economic benefit. They used the example of India, where they had young people get license in different ways, one being the traditional way of going through the test, and the other being the bribery way. He writes:

"To study the process of getting a driver's license in New Delhi, the authors of the new study—economists from the World Bank, the University of Chicago, New York University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—recruited 822 Indians who wanted a driver's license, randomly assigning them to three groups.

India is a good place to study corruption. On a 10-point corruption scale devised by Transparency International, where 10 is squeaky clean and 0 is completely corrupt, in 2005 India came in about 90th among 159 countries, with a score of 2.9. By comparison, Iceland was least corrupt (9.7), while Chad and Bangladesh tied (at 1.7) for most corrupt. (The United States was 17th-least corrupt, coming in between Germany and France with a score of 7.6.)

One of the groups in the Indian study was offered a cash bonus for getting a license within 30 days. These subjects had an incentive do whatever was necessary (offer bribes) to get a license quickly. If bribes work, these applicants would get their licenses faster. A second group was given driving lessons. If the licensing process accurately screens out unprepared—and therefore more likely unsafe—drivers, then these applicants should be more likely to succeed in getting a license. Both of these applicant groups were compared to a third con"

But Joel came to a conclusion (obvious one, atleast for me) that "the benefits of corruption are not worth the costs".

In response to this article, Amit Varma in his article Corruption: A License to Kill says that corruption has only crippled India. He gave a very interesting solution to this problem, which unfortunately, won't be implemented. He says:

"Let every driving license bear the name of the officer who approved it. And in every accident case, let penalty points accrue against that officer’s name. After a threshold of points to account for bad luck, let fines be levied on the officer himself, with increments and promotions halted. With something concrete at stake, the licensing officers will thus be careful while giving out licenses."

The problem being, that wherever there's government monopoly, there's corruption. MTNL, the state telephone company providing telecom services to Delhi and Bombay is an example of that. A few years ago, before private sectors were allowed to enter the telecom sector for landline phones, the only way you could get a phone was by bribing everyone, top-to-bottom. The interesting fact is that everyone knows this, but we just live with it (Not me, but everyone else I mean - I don't bribe). However after Bharti Teleservices started their landline services, known as Airtel Landline, earlier Touchtel, things changed dramatically. Bharti got a good response because people were happy with their service. Apply today, and you get your connection within 7 days. No need to bribe. This also served as a wake-up call for MTNL, and slowly they got better and competitive. That is the reason we have so many telephone connections in India at so cheap, and the companies are profitable even if they earn $2 per customer per month.

A few things that are coming to my mind as I am writing this - Both are Rang De Basanti Dialogues :
1. Sue : Is that a bribe
Karan: Welcome to India, Sue
2. Ab bhi jiska khoon na khoula, khoon nahin voh pani hai
Jo desh ke kaam na aaye, voh bekaar jawaani hai
(ENGLISH Translation:
That which does not boil now, that blood is but a pitiful sham,
That which does not serve one’s nation, that is indeed a wasteful youth.)
- Because Indian people just live the life the way it is... they just don't want to change themselves for the betterment of their and everyone else's life...