ABSTRACT

3. It proved difficult to get detailed information on such matters, though I tried at several points in the Irrigation Department. To the best of my knowledge, there is no organisation chart for the Department. The headquarters in the state capital has no information at all on how many field staff are employed throughout the state, and its aggregate information on number of employees above field staff level is, for AE and EE level, out of date and in any case available only for each rank as a whole, not broken into functional categories.4. The figure excludes clerical staff, who may number about 50. The variation in staff numbers is less than in irrigated area, partly because Divisions with a relatively small irrigated area may be given more tank maintenance responsibilities, and partly because the crop zoning results in some canals having their irrigated area spread out in scattered non-contiguous blocks, with a relatively high ratio of channel length to irrigated area; such canals will need a higher density of staff per 10,000 irrigated acres.5. I have checked the argument by presenting it in detail to two engineers, with experience in different parts of the state and of very different rank. I have also presented it in detail to an Indian economist long familiar with the state and its politics (his brother is closely involved in state and national politics). At the same time, it should be said that a few people from the sub-continent who have heard the paper in seminar have felt deeply affronted by the argument, and are not convinced it is not a tissue of exaggeration and half-truths. ‘How many engineers did you interview, what percentage of them were corrupt?’, they wanted to know. I hope that the earlier discussion shows why these questions are difficult to answer and why it is nevertheless worth making the argument.6. The figure taken for irrigated area may be several years out of date-in 1980 the figure for 1974/75 was still being used.7. One engineer said the division varies from half and half to one-third to contractor and two-thirds to officers; a retired engineer who since retirement had worked as a consultant to contractors said half and half was usual.8. Even the formal stipulated procedures for quality control in the Irrigation Department are very weak-weaker than, for example, in the Roads and Buildings Department.9. On big construction projects the percentage may well be lower. Over the summer of 1981 a Commission of Enquiry has been hearing evidence on the causes of the rupture of the Barna Dam, in Madhya Pradesh. A contractor has filed an affidavit alleging that contractors have to hand over 15 per cent of the contract value to the officers.10. The percentage fluctuates, because increases in the maintenance grant and in field staff salaries do not occur at the same time.11. It must be made clear that no engineer told me directly how much he was making. The income figures (as for the AE figures later) are arrived at indirectly, in the EE case from the size of the works budget, plus informants’ statements about the way it is divided up. The income inferences can then be compared with what informants say about the price of posts (in specific instances, and in general). One can then see to what extent the figures tally.12. This is the mid-point in the range, after the 1978 revision. The figure includes a cost-of-living allowance (Dearness Allowance) and a housing allowance.13. In the case of big contracts, the SE is the payer of bills.14. ‘Speed’ money is of course one of the oldest and most familiar forms of corruption. The Northern India Patrika, 30 July, 1981, reports that an EE of the Public Health Department of Uttar Pradesh was caught taking a Rs. 1,000 bribe from a contractor; the contractor had complained to the Collector that the EE was demanding the bribe in return for paying a Rs.40,000 bill, and a trap was set up. Note that the bribe amounted to 2j per cent, the same as our EEs are said to get on ‘savings on the estimates’.The speed money (as well as other types of payment which alter the allocation of benefits) is increasingly in the form of consumer durables. Krishnaswamy reports that a businessman told him that ‘officials who have to pass bills ask for domestic durables to be purchased on the installment system in their names’ [1980].15. One EE related that he had been transferred early from being in charge of construction of a medium project for refusing to alter the accounts of a big contractor who turned out to have more influence with the Minister than he thought. Into his place was promoted his own AE, who though next in line for promotion would not usually have been given such a big responsibility immediately; but he had already demonstrated to the contractor his willingness to comply. Of course the Department could always argue that the AE’s

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