the goan I network
PANAJI
The key takeaway from a seminar held during Asian Civil Engineering Co-ordinating Council (ACECC)’s 20th anniversary celebration was the pitch for reforms in local governance to remove corruption from infrastructural projects.
Nimish Gupta, FRICS managing director for South Asia RICS (Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors), said that reducing procedural complexities, automating cumbersome procedures and simplification of overall processes will help in removing corruption when it comes to infrastructural projects in India.
As opposed to general perception that corruption takes place during tendering, Gupta stressed that it can happen at any stage of a project; as early as even during the planning stage.
He continued, “In Gurugram, previous government felt the need of building 15 to 20 foot-over-bridges. But, they are in a terrible shape today. This is because someone would have preferred looking at the votes and not at social welfare. We have to de-weed corruption from the initial stages of projects.”
Gupta further highlighted that India’s rank on contract enforcement (148 in the world) stood much lower than its 77th rank on ease of doing business parameter. Due to this reason, multinational companies are not keen to get into civil engineering projects in India because it is very tough to enforce contracts in the country.
During his enlightening presentation, Gupta informed the audience of a number of warning signs, which can show that corruption is going on in a project. Those signs include: lack of public participation, poor transparency, concentration of power and restriction of access to information.
But, he also highlighted that India’s economy is robust as evident from the number of reforms implemented by the central government, including roll-out of Goods-and-Services-Tax (GST), implementation of Real Estate Regulation and Development Act and etc.
Panelists from other countries also detailed how corruption was an evil in their societies and what steps their governments were taking to eradicate it. Dr Ernesto S de Castro, an authority in civil engineering field in Philippines said that his country is struggling with drugs, crime and corruption.
He continued, “Poverty, group bias and weak institutions are all root cause of corruption. With new technologies like big data, blockchain and internet of things, young professionals should take it as a challenge to come out with a corruption rating system.”
There is a huge cost of corruption too, as Dr Castro informed that we lose $3.6 trillion every year due to corruption. 1.6% of children dying annually under the age of 5 years is due to corruption. In nutshell, corruption is a huge evil and it must be eradicated by finding its causes and reforming the system.
