Ethics and Integrity

(September 2020)

Quotes from Yojana

"I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man [woman] whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him [her]. Will he [she] gain anything by it? Will it restore him [her] to a control over his [her] own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj [freedom] for the hungry and spiritually starving millions? Then you will find your doubts and yourself melt away." – Mahatma Gandhi

‘Technologists (the techies) do not drive innovation alone; it is the humanists and the social scientists (the fuzzies, perhaps coined pejoratively) who play as much of a role in creating successful business or policy ideas.’ - Scott Hartley in a book, The Fuzzy and the Techie.

‘The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy; neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.’

- John W Gardner in his book, Excellence: Can We Be Equal and Excellent Too?

“Just as it is impossible to know when a fish moving in water is drinking it, so it is impossible to find out when government servants, in charge of undertakings, misappropriate money.”

- Kautilya’s Arthasastra

“India is a rich country which has managed to keep its people poor." - Nani Palkhivala

“Whatever the Constitution may or may not provide, the welfare of the country will depend on the way in which the country is administered. That will depend upon the men who administer it.”

- Dr. Rajendra Prasad

“The sole aim of journalism should be service. The newspaper is a great power, but just as an unchained torrent of water submerges whole countryside and devastates crops, even so an uncontrolled pen serves but to destroy.” - Mahatma Gandhi

“Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.”

- Napoleon Bonaparte

“Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not.” - Oprah Winfrey

“You’re looking for three things, generally, in a person. Intelligence, energy and integrity. And if they don’t have the last one, don’t even bother with the first two.” - Warren Buffet

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, and a hell of heaven.”

- John Milton.

Important Facts from Yojana

Issues in Indian Elections
Winners with Criminal Cases in 2014 General Elections (GEs)	34%
Winners with Criminal Cases in 2019 GEs	43%
Winners with Serious Criminal Cases in 2019 GEs	29%
MPs with more than Rs. 1 Crore Assets in 2019 GEs	88%

Syllabus: GS Paper – IV - accountability and ethical governance

GS Paper – II(Governance) - Transparency & Accountability and institutional and other measures.

1. Accountability in Government

What is Accountability?

Accountability refers to the process as well as norms that make decision maker answerable to ones for whom decisions are taken i.e. the decision maker and the beneficiary. The accountability could be financial, administrative, legal or professional.
Accountability is essentially an obligation to give an account of the actions taken or the decisions made by the person in authority to the stakeholders who are impacted by those decisions.
It has an answerability component to justify the action and an enforcement component that is to take action in cases where act of omission or commission is established. It provides for remedial measures including punishment in case of deviations from norms.
It helps in improving public confidence in government performance. It facilitates a feedback mechanism between the Government and its citizens.

Accountable to Whom?

First and foremost, stakeholder in any case would be the citizens. The citizens are the tax

payers. They have a right to know how the money has been expended by the government.

External accountability is between the Government and the citizens which is established

through the elections.

Internal accountability refers to systems of checks and balances and incentives on one

hand and oversight mechanisms coupled with expectations of the stakeholders to be

met on the other.

Steps to Ensure Accountability

The Right to Information Act has improved access to information.
Digitisation of various services provided a clear trail of transactions for any analysis by an oversight agency.
Citizen’s Charter clearly spelt out the responsibilities of various agencies of the government.
In the budget speech in February 2020, the Finance Minister announced insertion of new section 119 A in the Income Tax Act namely, “Taxpayers” Charter”. This would provide the much-needed legal backing to Citizen’s Charter in India.

The Institutional Mechanisms

External accountability between the Government and the citizens is established through the elections.
Internal accountability mechanisms refer to systems of checks and balances and oversight mechanisms.
The framers of the Indian Constitution, while adhering to the principle of separation of powers between Legislature, Judiciary and Executive also provided for appropriate checks and balances for administrative objectivity and accountability.
The institutions of horizontal accountability in Indian context include the institutions of CAG, the Election Commission, the Vigilance Commission, the Central Information Commission and the Ombudsman. Also, regulatory bodies such as SEBI, TRAI, etc.

Way Forward

The concept of accountability should not be limited to a fault-finding perspective or blame game but should encompass the larger perspective of correcting and improving the systems.
The focus should be on identification of systemic errors/ failures and suggesting improvements thereof.
The accountability mechanisms need to keep pace with developments of modern government structures particularly in the era of digitisation.
There is also a need to sensitise the functionaries towards their responsibilities and duties in context of the accountability frameworks. For better transparency, not only there should be a Citizen’s Charter but also well-defined Standard Operating Procedures for performing a job.
Element of discretion needs to be minimised for ensuring responsiveness, transparency, and accountability.

Q. Accountability of institutions form the core of any good governance mechanism helping in bridging the gap between the stakeholders and the decision makers. What do you understand by the term ‘accountability’? Suggest some measures to improve the accountability in the governance.

Syllabus: GS Paper – IV - Utilization of public funds, challenges of corruption.

2. Fighting Corruption

According to the fourth report of the Second Administrative Reforms Commission on “Ethics in Governance”, corruption is an important manifestation of the failure of the ethics and values system in society”.
It would therefore imply that unless proper values are nurtured and encouraged nothing much can be done to improve the conduct of human beings in public administration.
The public anger against misgovernance in the delivery of public services gets accentuated when government is insensitive to public grievances. The widespread public protest against lack of performance in public administration also contributes to violence and hatred between the people and the government.

Factors Promoting Corruption

Lack of knowledge of work, inefficiency, negligence of duty, favouritism, caste and community feeling, poor recruitment system, culture etc., contributes to corruption thriving at all places.

Public expenditure of enormous proportions in emerging democracies provides a grand opportunity for both politicians and civil servants to indulge in corruption.
A feudal approach and excessive governmentalisation of public activities.
Over centralised administrative system both at the Centre and the States. It is partly due to legacy of the colonial rule and also due to inadequate leadership in assuring new administrative system.

Measures to reduce corruption

Decentralise powers—financial and administrative—in favour of local self-government so that people are not forced to go from pillar to post for redressal of grievances. This was intended to be achieved by the Panchayat Raj programme but was not achieved due to failure in implementing the scheme.
Reducing manpower in government offices by outsourcing important public services with adequate checks and monitoring.
The working of government needs to be made time-bound.
Top-level police administration requires reforms. Lack of impartiality on part of enforcement agencies such as police and regulatory authorities has also contributed to widespread corruption.
In a recent trend that is taking place by which the investigating authorities communicate with the media even when investigation is still in progress. This needs to be shunned.
SC guidelines to various state governments to implement police reforms need to implemented.

Q. “Corruption is an important manifestation of the failure of the ethics and values system in society.” Comment.

Syllabus: GS Paper – II (Governance) - Transparency & Accountability and institutional and other measures.

GS Paper – IV- Information sharing and transparency in government.

3. Information Sharing in Government

To fulfil its multifarious responsibilities in an efficient and effective manner, government needs to function collaboratively with all stakeholders.
Information sharing on a regular basis with stakeholders, would bring collaboration, transparency and mutual trust in the system and will lead to good governance.

Proactive Dissemination of Information Helps

Unified District Information System for Education (U-DISE) is a ‘government-led education management information system’ on key school-level indicators. It generates report cards on each school every year and also publishes district and state-level data.

Reactive Bridging of Information Gap

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), took the decision to set up a control room. The purpose was real-time monitoring of the status of (i) manufacturing, transportation and delivery of essential commodities to common man and (ii) the difficulties being faced by various stakeholders in the business ecosystem during the lockdown period.
Invest India (India’s investment facilitation national agency working with DPIIT), established a Business Immunity Platform, designed as a comprehensive resource to help businesses and investors get real-time updates on India’s response to COVID-19.
Under the provisions of RTI Act, any citizen of India may request information from a “public authority” which is required to reply expeditiously or within thirty days. In case of matters involving a petitioner’s life and liberty, the information has to be provided within 48 hours.

Technology-led Transparency

The Champions of Change platform (CoC 2.0) for aspirational districts has been introduced by NITI Aayog to ‘enhance functionality of automated data-quality reports, which would enable the District Magistrates/ District Collectors to take corrective action, wherever required.’ Taking resort to 49 key performance indicators (81 data points), a ranking of districts has been evolved.
The Government proposed to enact Electronic Delivery of Services (EDS) Bill to make it mandatory for every government organisation to deliver public services in electronic mode after a certain cut-off date.
India’s Global Real Estate Transparency Index ranking has improved by one notch to 34 in the year 2020 ‘as a consequence of regulatory reforms, better market data and green initiatives’, according to a property consultant.
Further, structural reforms such as the Real Estate Regulation and Development Act 2016 (RERA), GST, Benami Transaction Prohibition (Amendment) Act, 2016, Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) and digitisation of land records also bring greater transparency in a sector.

International Leading Practices

Canada has the Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) that provides open access information on how the tax-payers’ money is spent.
Denmark has a high degree of accessibility to information on public expenditures, commitment to open data systems and even a scheme for whistle-blowers within the Danish Ministry of Justice.

Conclusion

The critical factors for such sharing and transparency are as follows:

Regularity: Sharing the information at stages of planning, formulation, implementation and monitoring, and giving updates at pre-decided intervals.

Stakeholder-centric: The exact message, format, language, medium and regularity needs to be decided based on the stakeholder.
Monitoring and evaluation: Constant monitoring of the government’s initiatives, evaluation of the success/ failure against the set objectives.

Q. Information sharing on a regular basis with stakeholders would bring collaboration, transparency and mutual trust in the system and may be construed as a step towards bringing in good governance. Elucidate.

Syllabus: GS Paper – IV - Ethics and Human Interface.

4. Ethics in Journalism

As the fourth estate of democracy and voice of voiceless, journalism plays a crucial role of keeping the citizens informed about the issues and ideas of public interest. Hence, journalism must be socially responsible, serve the people with devotion, and educate them while avoiding sensationalism, distortion and manipulation of facts.
Like other public-facing professions, journalism too has also evolved with a set of ethical principles, standards and norms for fulfilling its social responsibility.
Journalistic ethics are basically a set of principles, standards, guidelines and code of conduct prepared for professional journalists. It deals with conduct, character and behavior of a journalist and how s/he works before, during and after the news gathering and dissemination.
However, given the non-mandatory and voluntary nature of journalistic ethics, there are always complaints of violations.
In fact, the critics of unethical conduct of news media are demanding stringent regulation in place of ‘ineffective’ self-regulatory mechanism and their voices are growing louder day by day.

Unethical practices in Journalism

Paid News, spreading Fake News, engaging sensationalism and exaggerating trivial stories, running misleading headlines, breach of privacy, distortion of facts, openly taking sides and bias in reporting.
One-sided media trial, lobbying for personal gains, blackmailing, manipulating news stories, engaging in malicious and defamatory reporting, running propaganda and disinformation campaigns.
Example - Influential Media Mogul, Rupert Murdoch, was forced to shut the publication of his 168-year-old tabloid, ‘News of the World’, in the UK due gross violation of ethical norms and standards and even breaching the law.

Evolution of Journalistic Ethics

Since quality of information and the public discourse based on it directly reflects the quality and health of a democracy, concerns were raised. Slowly a concerted campaign started to bring in ethics and principles with a set of guidelines and code of conduct for news media and journalists.
In the US, for the first time, in 1922, the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) adopted a set of ethical principles. It proposed six key principles—-Responsibility, Freedom of the Press, Independence, Truth and Accuracy, Impartiality and Fair Play.
It was around this time that ideas like objectivity, fairness, truth, accuracy, impartiality and independence started gaining credence.
In 1940s Hutchins Commission in the US articulated in its report the principle of Social Responsibility of the Press. The Commission reiterated that while the freedom of press is paramount, it also has a moral obligation to consider the well-being of the general public when making its decisions and choices.

Institutional mechanism in India

The Press Council of India (PCI), a statutory and quasi-judicial body.
- Its two broad objectives are–safeguarding the freedom of the press and to improve its quality and standards.
- It works on the premise of self regulation of print media but has no punitive powers.
- It can only censure, warn or ask newspapers to issue apologies and corrections.
- It has also put out a detailed 161 page long “Norms of Journalistic Conduct”.
News Broadcasting Standard Authority (NBSA), a non-governmental body, oversees the news channels.

This was established by an industry body, News Broadcasters Association (NBA).
It has also issued a crisp “Code of Ethics and Broadcasting Standards” for its member news channels.
Like the PCI, the NBSA too is headed by a retired Supreme Court judge and its other members comprise well-known people belonging to civil society and editors of TV news channels.
It receives complaints of violation of ethical norms against member TV news channels and decides after hearing all the sides
Additionally, it has the power of imposing a fine that can go up to Rs. 1 lakh against an errant channel.

Apart from the NBSA, the news channels are also regulated by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B) under the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995 which contains a “programme code” and an “advertising code” to which news channels have to adhere. Their adherence to this code is, in fact, one of the pre-conditions for obtaining the license for a news channel.

Q. What does the following quotation mean to you in present context?

Syllabus: GS Paper – IV - corporate governance.

5. Corporate Ethics

Business Ethics is defined as “the application of ethical values to business behaviour”.
Professionally managed organisations have always striven to focus on good governance and adherence to compliance measures to pre-empt malpractices.
Good corporate governance calls for stringent compliance and pervasive ethical practices. It is a misconception that compliance and ethics are one and the same.

Difference between compliance and ethics

Compliance is about doing what is required for the given process or statute.. Processes required and completed to fulfil a statute is statutory compliance.
Organisations can be compliant to internal processes and fulfil all statutory laws yet be unethical.

E.g. Surrogate advertising is a good example to illustrate this point, where something is legally compliant but unethical.
Promoting alcohol consumption is banned on national television. If a company, however, advertises an alternative product with the same brand name, it is indirectly trying to increase brand recall to the intended product. Legally, the company is not flouting any law. However, it is clearly unethical.

Elements of strong ethical framework in an Organisation

A strong ethics framework is required to drive the culture of ethics across the board. The elements for such a framework include:

The company’s executive leadership sponsoring the Ethics programme with the continued support of middle and lower level teams.
An ongoing dialogue across levels to address tough questions that may arise during the business ethics journey.
A two-way communication process, cutting across levels, to foster an environment of openness and trust.

Code of conduct

‘Code of Conduct’ conveys the company’s value statement and defines the ethical foundation on which decisions will be made to achieve business objectives. It also specifies the general principles of behaviour which employees and other stakeholders are expected to follow.
The organisation’s external ecosystem such as value chain partners—often considered as an extension of the organisation itself—should also abide by the principles of the Code.
Ethical dilemmas do not always have prescriptive and clear-cut answers. Hence, an effective training programme to understand and live the Code will not will be beneficial.

Building a Check Mechanism

The first step towards building a culture of ethics is to review the integrity index of employees at two levels: the hiring process and every performance appraisal cycle.
The second step is to institute a check mechanism to help the organisation and stakeholders navigate ethical dilemmas.

Create Channels to Address Concerns

Employees and stakeholders must be encouraged to speak up against any suspected or known situations or persons where the Code has been compromised and report the dilemmas faced.
A channel to report and log concerns must be made available to all employees. Care must be taken to ensure confidentiality to protect the complainant from any act of retribution.

Weaponizing the Code

Instances are observed where the company’s Code of Conduct or law is used incorrectly to settle scores with colleagues or superiors. This is nothing short of weapon zing the Code/law.
The most extreme example is an employee alleging sexual misconduct at the workplace to deliberately inflict harm on a colleague. Such instances need to be very carefully weighed.

Oversight and Administration of Ethics Programme Building

Building a team of Ethics Counsellors is often seen as a good practice.
It is debatable whether ethics should be an in-house function or an externally managed service, but it is observed that the best outcomes are witnessed by having a dedicated in-house team that acts as an external regulator.

Conclusion

Organisations need to set the tone at the top, and leaders need to lead by example; even as companies address ethical by providing guidance through codes and other supporting mechanisms like training and counselling.
As ethical dilemmas encompass a range of issues and concerns, involving inter-relationships, the context of each matter needs to be considered objectively, as no straight answers exist on such issues.