AP government partners with IIM-Ahmedabad to curb corruption in state

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy stated in a meeting recently, that the fight against corruption should be taken on aggressively. He added that the Anti-Corruption Bureau will run on a full-fledged manner across all departments in the state. Keeping in line with the announcement, the Andhra Pradesh government has partnered with top management institute Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A) to curb corruption in the state administration. The institute is going to study structural problems in various government departments with respect to corruption and provide solutions to each of the issues. Special focus is going to be placed on the various departments that have earned a reputation for being corrupt.

IIM Ahmedabad is going to partner with top officials to identify structural issues in registration offices, mandal revenue offices, police and town- planning wing in civic bodies. Based on the inputs provided by the B-School, the government is going to take corrective actions against the department staff according to reports.

Top officials of the state remarked that the decision to involve IIM Ahmedabad to tackle corruption shows the government’s seriousness. However, nature of punitive action seems to be a matter of concern within the departments.

Previously, the action was not taken against accused corrupt officials due to a lack of sanction for prosecution by higher authorities. Top officials are of the opinion that there shouldn’t be any special sanction for prosecution for officials accused under the Prevention of Corruption Act.

While the IIM-A team is likely to include such cases in their data,the state government is said to be working on issues connected to corruption. These include usage of information technology-based systems, reducing citizen-official interaction in government offices, publishing the names of the corrupt officials and curtailing the power and arbitrariness of bureaucrats.

Armed with inputs from the IIM-A officials and above mentioned steps, the Andhra Pradesh government hopes to curb corruption in a stringent manner.