One healthy fallout of the infamous NPSC corruption saga is the public interest and debate it has generated on the (mal) functioning of the Nagaland Public Service Commission (NPSC). How to restore the public faith in the process of recruitment is the immediate task before the leadership in Nagaland. One reasonable proposition is to allow the Union Public Service Commission to appoint the Chairmen and members of the state Public Service Commissions. Like the Supreme Court supervising the functioning of the high courts, the UPSC can keep an alert eye on the state Public Service Commissions. Politicians in Nagaland as elsewhere have badly damaged many state run institutions, particularly universities (the Nagaland University scam) and Public Service Commissions. The state commissions, set up to tap local talent to meet local needs, have been given abundant autonomy under the Constitution to insulate them from interference of the state governments. But political wheeling-dealing has dwarfed these institutions.
In the year 2002 the entire nation was shocked when a similar cash-for-job scam was exposed in the Punjab Public Service Commission (PPSC). The PPSC Chairman had at that time hijacked the entire recruitment system openly selling lucrative posts for years together without being detected. As in the case of Punjab the political leadership in Nagaland must demonstrate the will and courage to clean up the system by punishing the corrupt. In fact in Punjab a sustained investigation and public campaign finally led to scrapping of the PPSC selections for 639 posts.
Similarly, the arrest of eleven persons reportedly involved in the cash for job scam involving the NPSC dramatically exemplifies the enormity of the crisis that has overtaken this fundamentally important institution of the State, the Nagaland Public Service Commission (NPSC), and turned it inside out, as it were.
One fundamental issue that is even more difficult to address is the weakening of the moral values within the society. A rationale for corruption (commonly associated with bribery) has been built into the psyche of the people under the prevalent system of administration and politics. People now believe that no work however small or routine can be got or done without paying ‘something’ to ‘someone’ in government offices, educational institutions and even in legal matters. The recent exposure of corrupt practice in the NPSC recruitment process only underlines the harsh truth that the corrupting of our institutions in turn has finally led to the institutionalization of corruption.
The screaming headlines in newspapers during the past few weeks have a common message — no recruitment in Nagaland has been without a consideration. To get a job in any department at any level one has to be either a moneyed man or an influential person. Merit is of no consideration at all. As the Naga Students’ Federation (NSF) campaign grows into a public movement it appears that a vast majority appears to have lost faith in the present recruitment channels.
There are also stories (not reported by the media) doing the rounds that families have to shell out huge amounts of money to get into the premier services of the state. This they do by either selling some immovable property or by raising loans. The whole system stinks. It goes without saying that in Nagaland, the recruitment (not only within the NPSC) scandals are galore. The headlines of the last few weeks are only a tip of the iceberg as there are now murmurs that a well entrenched powerful lobby runs an unending army of touts, agents and sub agents. This has almost muzzled up meritocracy permitting only opportune candidates to get jobs.
Today corruption is a low risk high profit business. The only way out is to enforce effective punishment of the corrupt.
Punishment must be ‘ensured’ at all cost. The principle of zero tolerance resulting in effective and prompt punishment should increase the risk of the corrupt mind. This should be the most important single element to fight and eliminate corruption not only within the recruitment system of the NPSC but within the State as a whole. As the principle of Zero Tolerance says, no case of corruption should be tolerated and the corrupt must be punished.
