Rural People To Against Corruption

A poor labourer, Sasikala desperately knocked on the doors of government offices for doles for pregnant women under the Tamil Nadu. Government's Dr.Muthulakshmi Maternity assistance scheme. But the village administrative officer in her Karungalpalayam hamlet in Erode district demanded Rs.100 for processing her petition. The eight month pregnant lady and her husband Pachaiappan, though illiterate, did not grease the palm of the village administrative officer. Instead, they walked straight to the vigilance and anti-corruption office and gave a complaint recently. She represents the face of illiterate and semi-literate rural Tamil Nadu which is slowly rising against the grassroot level corruption.

And increasingly the village administrative officers or the VAOs, who provide the crucial connect between the administration and the people, are getting caught red-handed. "She could not even write the petition. But she was determined to pin down the corrupt VAO," says the Erode vigilance inspector, Rajesh. A trap was laid, and the Karungalpalayam VAO landed in jail.

In Erode district alone, five VAOs have been trapped and put behind the bars. And in Tamil Nadu, at least 15 VAOs have now seen the insides of prison cells this year. As Tamil Nadu sees a faint rural awakening against corruption, people from remote corners are heading for the DVAC offices, not with mere sheets of complaints, but with a never-before-seen gumption to lay a trap for the corrupt babus. In remote Dhonankankottai hamlet in the most backward Krishnagiri district of Tamil Nadu, a poor farmer, P.Karupannan too, decided not to spare the village administrative officer for demanding a bribe for giving a copy of his land records (adangal chitti).

It was a paltry demand of Rs 200, but the angry farmer P.Karupannan, though badly needed the "adangal chitti" for a bank loan, complained to the DSP of the Vigilance and Anti-Corruption in October. A trap was set and the VAO, Ramanujam, was put behind the bars. A couple of months ago, over a hundred farmers, many of them unlettered, swarmed the Pollution Control Board office in Erode, and rolled down the shutters, demanding action against the corrupt officials. The result: the divisional environmental engineer, Joseph Pandiaraj, who was caught with unaccounted cash of Rs.7 lakhs, has been suspended and other officials shunted out.

In Coimbatore, two village administrative officers were recently sentenced to four years imprisonment by the Chief Judicial Magistrate, for demanding bribe. Besides, a village administrative officer at Ganapathy was caught red-handed for receiving a bribe of Rs 6,000 for issuing a birth certificate. A record clerk at the Coimbatore Medical College hospital who demanded Rs. 150 from a poor ex-service man for a medical fitness certificate too was trapped recently.

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