As we advance into the digital age of the Anthro pocene Epoch, decision-makers place more and more reliance on computer programs, to the exclusion of common sense, and their own good judgement. Often a computer decides a human’s bona fides, and even his identity. The computer’s decision is final; there is no way you can second guess, argue with, or convince a computer.
Many of us have faced this situation; you are standing in a queue for something, and if for some reason the machine rejects your case, the human attendant can only express his helplessness, and politely ask you to come some other day. Cost-cutting, apathy and plain laziness inspire us to keep aside our native intelligence, and rely on dumb machines for even the most crucial tasks. The results are often terrifying; crores of rupees are credited to a wrong bank account or some daily wager receives an incometax recovery notice for hundreds of crores of rupees, or worse, a poor man is not able to collect his subsidised rations.
Add to it, certain savvy individuals who know how to capitalise on human weaknesses, as also the system’s loopholes, and you have a perfect recipe for a massacre of innocents. According to RBI’s Annual Report for FY 2023-24 the number of bank frauds saw almost a 200 per cent increase over FY 2022-23, going up to 36,075 from 13,564. Sadly, cybercrime has reached endemic levels; as a result, police and other authorities simply ignore ‘small’ cybercrimes, leaving the common citizen high and dry.
The above tally does not include cases where a person’s email or Facebook account was hijacked, and the hijacker sent requests to that person’s relatives and friends for money. It also does not include cases where someone pretending to be a police or customs officer extorted money from people by threatening to implicate them in some crime. Then, the charade of the Nigerian prince offering gullible people a share in his inheritance is a recurring theme. To top it all, there are Russian hackers who launch ransomware attacks on targets as diverse as hospitals and dairies, paralysing their computer systems, asking victims to cough up millions of dollars, to have their computers reactivated.
BlackSuit, the most notorious of the lot, typically demands ransoms ranging from US $1 million to US $10 million, with payments in Bitcoin, and has collectively sought over US $500 million, with the highest individual demand reaching US $60 million. The day one scam is busted, another takes its place. All such scams operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, with almost a third of internet users in India reporting cyber threats. It would appear that there are a number of young men whose only vocation is cybercrime. According to rep – orts, classes offering training in cybercrime have sprung up, in places like Jamtara and Nuh.
Yet, cybercrime is only the tip of the iceberg, the real problem is our penchant to adopt shortcuts to game the system. Recently, we witnessed widespread cheating in a medical entrance examination, where exam hackers adopted methods that could not have been imagined even by James Hadley Chase. No wonder, before entering the examination hall, students are frisked in ways that would do the Gestapo proud. The medical entrance examination, mentioned above, was not an aberration, the National Testing Agency cancelled/ postponed some equally prestigious examinations, on suspicions of paper leak.
Again, this is the prevailing trend, with recruitment examinations in all States being afflicted by paper leaks. The nadir was reached when it was revealed that a candidate had faked multiple disabilities and used a fake income certificate to get into the Indian Administrative Service the crème-de-la-crème of the Indian bureaucracy ~ leaving UPSC, the granddaddy of examining bodies, red faced. UPSC’s embarrassment was multiplied manifold when it was revealed that many others had also adopted similar stratagems to get into premier services.
To cover up, the UPSC issued a press release that concluded: “The UPSC has deservedly earned the trust and credibility of a very high order from the public, especially the candidates.” Simultaneously, the UPSC Chairman, who had a residual tenure of five years, resigned, leaving the bewildered public to draw their own conclusions. The root cause of such shenanigans is the dire unemployment situation in India. According to the Harvard Business Review: “India is in an employment crisis …
Less than half of the 950 million workingage population is actually employed, compared to 70 per cent in other emerging markets.” Bleak as this statistic is, the reality is worse. According to the Periodic Labour Force Survey, some half of all those workers are self-employed, a category that includes “unpaid helpers in family enterprises,” which could cover family and friends who help out for no compensation. Just 32.7 per cent of workingaged women participated in the workforce in 2023. On top of this, a study of 388,000 college graduates by the educational testing services firm Wheebox found that only 51.25 per cent were “employable,” as measured by a skillsassessment test.
These are significant problems for a country in which 40 per cent of the population is younger than 25 years old and an economy that is deeply dependent on domestic consumption. Such findings are reflected in a number of other private studies, notably by CMIE, Forb – es and Citigroup. Anecdotal evidence also validates such findings; it is repeatedly seen that lakhs of well-educated youth apply for some few unskilled jobs; an advertisement for 60,000 constables in UP, had 50 lakh applicants.
Sadly, the recruitment examination was cancelled after a paper leak. The desperation of Indian youth to get employment can well be imagined; they are willing to become cannon fodder in the wastelands of Russia or in the Badlands of Iraq or pay lakhs to immigrate unlawfully to some Western country. The Government has a different view of the matter; according to a recent statement eight crore jobs had been created in the last 3-4 years. Be that as it may, any examination or process that leads to a job is a fair target for fraudsters, and the only way to ensure fairness is to tailor the education system to the job market. The most dangerous kind of gamers are the ones who game their own organisation, like corrupt bureaucrats who undermine Government departments or politicians who award contracts for quid pro quo. There are multiple instances of In come-tax officers who facilitate tax evasion, Customs officers who encourage smuggling or police officers who connive with criminals.
Every month we have multiple instances of high-ranking officials being arrested for multi-crore, multi-layered scams. Where does this leave us? Apart from hurting Government revenues, dishonesty of such high order promotes a lawless atmosphere, where everyone believes that they can get away with murder. The public has to pay the price for the Government’s inaction. Examples are many; cities were flooded because drains were not cleaned, bridges tumbled because sub-standard materials were used, and for the same reason roads caved in, killing innocent motorists and pedestrians. Political masters make the right noises but seldom interfere in the bureaucrats’ nefarious activities, because many a time, such activities are carried out under the politicians’ directions, or for their benefit.
The ultimate solution is electing good and honest people, who work for the benefit of the public. Remembering that after Independence, the Emergency was the only period when public servants worked according to rules, one can conclude that wielding a big stick is required to make government functionaries perform. Ergo, the middle and lower rungs of bureaucracy, who are the first point of contact for citizens, can easily be reformed by streamlining the convoluted procedure to book delinquent officers. However, politicians and top bureaucrats are reined in only by their conscience; acting in cahoots they are capable of inflicting immense damage on the body politic.
As Goswami Tulsidas wrote in the Ramcharitmanas, centuries ago: “If influenced by greed or fear a guru praises his shishya unnecessarily, then dharma is destroyed, likewise if a physician does not tell the truth to his patient, then the body is destroyed, and if influenced by greed or fear a minister does not give true advice to the King, then a kingdom is destroyed.” Willy-nilly, we seem to have reached the last-mentioned position.
(The writer is a former Principal Chief Commissioner of Income-Tax)