Bribery from women\\\'s perspective

So long the issue of bribery involving women was hardly focused. A Transparency International study carried on women's compulsion for parting with bribe money in two unions, the lowest tier of local government, has for the first time made surprising revelations. Information collected over two years from January 2013 on how women in the two unions were compelled to hand over speed money for receiving services from institutions and organisations of education, health, local government, law enforcement agency, non-government organisations, judiciary, land offices and banks can however be representative. Even in obtaining or procuring reproductive health service, maternity allowance, Vulnerable Group Development (VGD) and Vulnerable Group Feeding (VGF) cards, girls' stipends, work order for earth cutting and filling and filing cases of women repression, there was need for bribe.

Unsurprisingly, the majority of women under study did not consider handing over money on their own a case of bribery but if it had to be paid on demand in exchange for some service, it surely was graft. Most revealing is the fact that women members of union parishads (UPs) are sucked into the corruption conundrum mostly against their will. Thus and in cases where women are service-providers, women also become bribe takers.

The issue here is not how women become corrupt. If men are corrupt, women cannot remain immune from this social vice. The issue that is most alarming is the fact of its spreading like an epidemic at all levels of society, down to the grassroots level. There is no comparative study of vulnerability to bribery between men and women. But it can be assumed that as second sex (this is how they are treated), women at this bottom level are more vulnerable than men. Women cannot count on social connections like their male counterparts and therefore they have to make greater compromises.

Developments such as this paint a bleak picture of society. Touts and corrupt elements are getting a stranglehold on society with the result that the programmes meant for women empowerment are failing to produce the intended results. In cases where women service providers accept bribe money from poor women for services they were supposed to get free of cost, their own sex betrays themselves. If graft gets the better of human values, self respect and social relations based on justice and fair play, the malaise is too deep-rooted to be wished away.

Blaming the poor and the underclass for allowing bribery to take root at this level will not do. If it has to be addressed, the rich and influential who involve themselves in corruption not out of want but out of avarice should be taken care of first. Actually, unless the head of a fish start rotting, the entire body cannot get so decomposed. It is because of this, justice should be done in corruption cases without fail. Sadly, the big fish are rarely punished for their corrupt practices. It is time law was given a chance to take its own course to prove that none is above the law of the land. When this becomes axiomatic in precept and practice, society can expect a turnaround in its state of corruption.