Legalization of Bribery: An opinion

by Shashank Agrawal

Amongst various of its forms, Bribery is a widespread form of corruption. Bribery is considered to be more heinous form of corruption as the person who is not legally entitled to a right over something gets it in consideration of some value exchange, usually. Bribery involves at least two parties one who gives the bribe and other one is at the receiving end. Though both the parties are legally culprit for spreading this crime, but through this blog post I put a thought that the bribe giver in certain cases should not be penalized and have mercy from the court of law. By doing this, the interests of bribe giver and bribe taker will be at variance and bribe giver will be keener to help the law and make the bribe taker get caught. For the purpose of classification, bribes are detailed of two types one is harassment bribe and other one is non-harassment bribes.

Harassment bribes are given by people to get what are legally entitled to. e.g. bribe given to income tax officer to get the refund released. In these cases, the interests of bribe taker are more corrosive to society as even after having a legal entitlement over something or to get his own thing, a person has to give some consideration to bribe taker. This spreads the anarchy in the society and at large people are made to believe that its acceptable to give bribe in order to get the things done in time. In case of harassment bribe, usually the bribe giver gives the bribe by killing his own conscious. He will be more interested in getting the bribe taker caught. Hence in these cases if bribe giver has immunity from any punitive actions, there are fair chances that bribe taker will be caught and penalized. Currently, since giving and taking bribe is a crime, both parties are subjected to punishment. Hence, the innocent bribe giver also doesn't come forward and report against the bribe taker. Henceforth implementation of this idea will definitely cut down the incidences of bribery. If under current law both parties are equally punished, then under the proposed system the bribe giver should be penalized at zero and bribe taker should be penalized at 2x.      

While in case of non-harassment bribes, the bribe giver is likely to get something by giving the bribe what he doesn't deserve to get. He gets the possession of something which is not supposed to be in his possession. E.g. bribes given to acquire the government contracts. Can in these cases also, the bribe giver be immunized? The answer is No. Since by offering the bribe to get something which one is not entitled to induces to be a criminal offense and its consequences are much corrosive on society, the bribe giver should be penalized with heftier fines.

In harassment bribes, the immunization to bribe giver will not cause the bribery to vanish altogether but the incidences will come down to a considerable extent. The bribe taker will fear of complaint which may be lodged by immunized bribe giver and hence he will not be keen to take bribe.

In my opinion, along with legal penalties & immunization, government may adopt some other measures to curb down the malpractices of bribery such as by introducing and strengthening the e-governance systems whereby the interface between the public at large and public servants is made minimal. Further, if the derelictions of bribery are to be vanished, we need to build the optimum cultural and social traits where there is no scope of corruption and generations to come are taught about the malign consequences of committing the atrocious crime as bribery is.   

This is only an opinion not limited to other individual beliefs at large.