KOCHI: Corruption - perhaps, no other factor has had a major influence on the general public than the huge bribery and corruption scandals of the previous UPA government at the Centre, leading to the overwhelming victory of Narendra Modi-led BJP government in the 2014 general elections.
Reams have been written about 2G spectrum scam, coal allocation scam, chopper scam, Adarsh flat irregularities, Tatra truck scam, Common Wealth Games scam under the UPA government. The Aam Admi Party’s genesis is rooted in the movement against corruption. Yet there is little academic scrutiny that has gone into this pressing and distressing phenomenon in India.
“What we have is a lot of hype and sensationalism with scarce amounts of objectivity and neutrality, leave alone academic vigour,” says Vinayan Janardhanan, who through his book ‘Ethics & Corruption - An Introduction’ seeks to aid the teaching community to “find the apt material for the right inputs in the all-important topics of ‘ethics and corruption’ to undergraduate, postgraduate and professional courses”.
Vinayan rightly feels there’s an urgent need for ‘Catching Them
Young’ and for incorporating these topics as subjects to be taught formally in educational institutions. In fact, this need is being understood all over the world. The book, Vinayan writes, is an effort to present some inputs for young adult scholars and their teachers. The author has all the right credentials to preach on the topic.
As a career civil servant in the Indian government with over 27 years experience in administration, rail and aviation operations, construction, project management, ethical oversight and vigilance. As Chief Vigilance Officer of public sector Fertilizers and Chemicals Travancore (FACT), his report led to the removal of Jaiveer Srivastava as CMD, in a case related to corruption in the sale of gypsum to private companies.
The book covers a range of topics starting with the ‘need of the book’ to ‘antecedents of corruption’ to ‘effects of corruption’ and ‘corruption measurement’. Corruption measurement? In order to control it, you need to assess and measure it’.
In his preface, N Vittal, former Chief Vigilance Commissioner of India, notes that the book is packed ‘so much of valuable information about such a wide spectrum of aspects relating to corruption and ethics’, that it will be of ‘immense value to the students who may not have any idea about the multiple dimensions of both corruption and the problems of ethics’. Coming from Vittal, they are high praise indeed.