{"id":2997,"date":"2008-04-23T13:11:22","date_gmt":"2008-04-23T07:41:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/classic\/200804\/how-corrupt-is-the-government-how-deep-is-the-ocean\/"},"modified":"2008-04-23T13:12:55","modified_gmt":"2008-04-23T07:42:55","slug":"how-corrupt-is-the-government-how-deep-is-the-ocean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/classic\/200804\/how-corrupt-is-the-government-how-deep-is-the-ocean\/","title":{"rendered":"How Corrupt is the Government? How Deep is the Ocean?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I am astonished to find that Amit Varma has a less cynical view of government than I have, at least going by <a href=\"http:\/\/indiauncut.com\/iublog\/article\/whos-the-victim-in-this-sting-operation\/\" title=\"Who is the victim in this sting operation?\">this post<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>See, the thing is, in a corrupt Indian government organization (pardon my redundancy) there are no half measures. It is not like only Jothikumaran was corrupt. Usually, the entire organization, right from the chaprasi level to the very top, has a stake in the corruption. It is usually an open secret as to how much one has to pay whom for what.\u00a0 So, it is not like the organizers of the sting operation\u00a0would have\u00a0any reason to doubt whether Jothikumaran was corrupt or not. It would be just a case of finding the evidence.\u00a0\u00a0Of course, there are many\u00a0ethical issues in investigative journalism and there are more when sting operations are involved, but the possibility that the person being stung is actually honest ought not\u00a0to be one of them.[1] \u00a0<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Second, I am surprised that Amit seems to think that only bad players need to pay bribes. I wonder why he thinks so.\u00a0 From what I know of government recruitments, qualified candidates have to pay lower bribes. They are not exempt.\u00a0 So it is not like someone whose name is being used will have to live with the shame for the rest of his life.<\/p>\n<p>[1] I need to make two points here. First, as a matter of ethics, sting operators should gather sufficient evidence that a person is corrupt even before they sting him. The sting operation should not be a fishing expedition, but a way to get confirmatory evidence. The second point is the one that\u00a0I have made above &#8211; i.e. it is ridiculously easy to &#8220;know&#8221; whether an official is corrupt or not, if you just ask around a government office. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am astonished to find that Amit Varma has a less cynical view of government than I have, at least going by this post. See, the thing is, in a corrupt Indian government organization (pardon my redundancy) there are no half measures. It is not like only Jothikumaran was corrupt. Usually, the entire organization, right [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[126,127],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2997"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2997"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3155,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2997\/revisions\/3155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}