There is a way to fight corruption. We must begin by saying, “We will not pay bribes to get what is rightfully ours”. We must say: “We are prepared to wait till the bribe-taker gets tired of waiting for us to come up with the bribes”. It will be a long, hard haul in which every individual can and must participate

When the price of onions rose to an extortionate hundred rupees a kilo, some social activists went around advising people not to eat onions. If everybody stopped buying onions, demand would plummet and the racketeers who had jacked up the prices would be left with mountains of unsalable onions. They would be forced to cut the price to a reasonable level.

The idea was based on simple economic logic. But it also illustrates the power that lies in the hands of you, me and the man in the street-people's power, which is the strongest weapon in the battle against injustice, extortion, racketeering, political chicanery and that leviathan called corruption in India.

A septuagenarian Gandhian, with a late-awakening conscience, and a cross-dressing yoga teacher, have, in recent months, dominated the headlines, challenging as they have done the government's sincerity in cracking down on corruption. People like Anna Hazare and yogi Ramdev are useful in their own way. They occasionally turn the spotlight on the government and there is a public outcry, this time over the Lokpal Bill.

One need not be a cynic to say that Anna Hazare's efforts will not get results. We have the example of the Bofors scandal and investigation which, to quote Shakespeare's Macbeth, was "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing".

To justify such a conclusion, one has to understand the nature of the beast. Corruption is the genus which has two main species.

The first, and bigger in terms of the money involved, is the bribe paid in order to obtain something to which a person is not legally entitled. Examples include the 2G spectrum scandal, the Harshad Mehta scam, Bofors, Narasimha Rao's bribery of JMM members of the Lok Sabha to get them to vote for the government. Only the rich and the powerful have the necessity and means to indulge in this species of corruption.

All of us are the victims of the second species of corruption which is graft paid to obtain something to which one is legally entitled.

Bribes paid to get a college or even a school seat; speed-money that we pay to hasten the process of renewing a driving licence and issuing a passport; the elbow-grease that smoothens the issue of a ration card, any type of permit and, horribly enough, even a death certificate; the fact bribes have to be paid to get anything from any bureaucrat and civil servant, from the panchayat office to central ministries in New Delhi-all are bribes paid to get things to which we are legally entitled.

Corruption touches every aspect of an Indian's life; it is like the mosquitoes; lorries belching lung-destroying exhaust on every road; the rains that do not come and the rains that flood thousands of acres; the flies that hover in their thousands over exposed food at roadside eateries-it is all-pervasive, encompasses all human activity in India and appears to be indestructible.

Will the war against graft ever begin? Are we totally helpless? It would seem so. But…

Hindu mythology has the concept of "shaapavimochanam". It means that every curse has an escape clause. We Indians are enduring the incredibly burdensome curse of corruption. Is there an escape clause?

There is, and it is the use of people's power. If we can bring down the price of onions by simply saying "No, we won't buy at this price", we can defeat the corrupt vampires sucking the nation's blood. But a warning. It will involve very patient, hard work over decades, maybe even half a century. All of us can and must participate. We begin by attempting to "terminate with extreme prejudice" (as the CIA puts it) the second species of corruption.

We begin by saying, "No, we will not pay bribes to get what is rightfully ours". We must say: "We are prepared to wait till the bribe-taker gets tired of waiting for us to come up with the bribes". It will be a long, hard haul in which every individual action will help.

The war against the first species of corruption requires an army of dedicated experts-financial experts, chartered accountants, cost accountants, lawyers, judges, trained investigators from the police and security services. They have to accept that their main goal in life is to expose and punish corruption wherever it is found.

They could begin, for instance, with hunting for over-invoicing and under-invoicing in import and export transactions where the biggest leakages of foreign exchange take place, with the connivance of government agencies. Later, they could turn their microscopes on every transaction into which every government, central and state, enters. (The Raja Chelliah committee report on black money in India, published in 1986, is a good introduction to the mechanics of black money and corruption).

Somebody has to start a movement to initiate the war against both species of corruption. Perhaps it could be called the "People's coalition against corruption".

'Will you start the movement', do you ask? No way. I am a journalist. I will sit back and give advice.

(R Vijayraghavan has been a professional journalist for more than four decades, specialising in finance, business and politics. He conceived and helped to launch Business Line, the financial daily of The Hindu group. He can be contacted at [email protected].)