In my last blog, I wrote about Klitgaard’s formula, C=M+D-A, in which the pathway to eliminate corruption becomes evident. If Monopolies are dismantled and discretion is reduced, while increasing accountability, corruption will come down. But in practical terms, even if such moves are made through policy, if citizens do not seek recourse to them and insist upon their rights to obtain corruption free services, corruption will persist.

A few years back, while working with ipaidabribe.com, I led a team that undertook research into corruption prone government processes. One of the most corruption prone was the registration of flats and land sales. Sub-Registrar offices in Bengaluru city were cited by citizens through their experiences filed on ipaidabribe.com, as a place where corruption was inevitable. This happened in spite of these offices being digitised through a software suite known as ‘Kaveri’. The problem was that the software digitised the functioning of the sub-Registrar’s offices, but did not take away either the monopoly character of these offices nor reduce the discretion of the officers to deal with the public.

Sub-Registrar offices were service area monopolies; with each office having a footprint jurisdiction. All owners of properties within each such area had to come to the sub-Registrar having the jurisdiction over it, in order to register sale deeds. In spite of this dismal picture, the department had undertaken some reforms to put it on the path to reducing and finally eliminating corruption, even if milestones and targets for the implementation of these reforms were not met. The details of the reforms that aimed to reduce the scope for corruption were:

• A reduction of the registration fee to 6 per cent along with the introduction of fixed area wise guidance values – which means that regardless of the value on the sale deed, one has to pay the stamp duty as per the guidance value (or the sale deed value, whichever is higher). This, at least on paper, diminished the discretion of the sub-Registrar to refuse a registration on the ground of undervaluation.

• E-stamping of stamp papers which enabled selected Bank outlets to stamp the appropriate  stamp  value  on  any  plain  paper,  while  collecting  the  stamp  fee, reduced the scope for delays in registration because payments of stamp fee through cheque had to wait for the cheque to be cleared.

• Increase in the number of sub-Registrar’s offices (in Bengaluru from just 12, to more than 50) reduced the pressure and rush in these offices; while also decentralised corruption, perhaps.

• Bringing registration services under the Right to Services Act brought in a legal obligation upon the sub-Registrar to complete any sale transaction in 2 hours 20 minutes; i.e., 20 minutes to verify the market value of property, 1 hour for preliminary scrutiny of documents and 1 hour for admission of documents and recording signatures.

Yet corruption happened, because in practice citizens were still overawed and submissive when they went to the sub-Registrar’s office. Many of them passively submitted to corruption out of nervousness and a misplaced sense of fear. Purchase of immovable properties is for most people, a once-in-a-lifetime activity and therefore they do not want any ‘trouble’.  They  blindly  take  the  advice  of  touts  and  middlemen  and  are  willing  to  pay  a ‘facilitation charge’ rather than fight corruption. To cure these, ipaidabribe.com made a few suggestions, based upon a practical application of Klitgaard’s formula.

Also read: Brokering Public Service Delivery in Delhi

We first suggested that the department introduce the system of ‘Anytime-Anywhere’ registration. Under this system, a citizen should be able to go to any location in the city to register a property. This will reduce the service area monopoly of the offices and give a choice to all citizens to go to more efficient offices. We also felt that such an approach would incentivise officials to improve the service delivered  by  their  offices  and  bring  about  a  sense  of  competition  amongst  them.  In other words, we aimed to reduce the value of ‘M’, in Klitgaard’s formula.

We also suggested that there should be no discretion given to the department to make citizens wait. Every day, each office should make available clear time slots for registration of properties. Citizens should be able to go onto the website and choose the time slots on their own. Once the time slot is chosen by the citizen and he/she turns up at the given time in the sub-Registrar’s office, they must have no discretion. They must register the property. If there is any hurry for some reason, then there should be a tatkal system by which citizens can jump the queue (like in the passports and railway ticketing systems). In other words, we aimed to reduce the value of ‘D’ in Klitgaard’s formula.

Corruption happened, because in practice citizens were still overawed and submissive when they went to the sub-Registrar’s office.

As to increasing accountability, we felt that in spite of the stipulations in the Right to Services Act to complete registration within a specified, committed period of time, this by itself does not make registration  any less complex,  time  consuming  and  cumbersome than before. We suggested that some of the processes that are now done in the sub-Registrar’s office can be done online, prior to the actual registration. For instance, standard sale formats can be made available on the website, which  people can  download and use to prepare their sale deeds themselves. Second, photographs of the parties can be taken in advance and sent online to the office, at the stage of taking the appointment for the registration.  The preparation of the sale deed and photography online will reduce the time spent by citizens in the registration office. The less time an individual spends in a government office, the less the chance of corruption, we felt.

We also suggested other measures for increasing transparency, such as displaying the guidance values on maps so that citizens can understand   them easily and make use of them while calculating the stamp duty to be  paid, and proper signage and displays.

However, these suggestions, even if implemented would not have worked, in retrospect. We discovered another pernicious problem that went beyond the simple edict of the Klitgaard formula; a private-public partnership in corruption. More on that in my next blog.

This blog is part of a series. The first blog can be found here.