It might work when someone like president or minister really wants to do that and have support. But it's more like mini-revolution. It's hard to go there evolutionary. But may be I'm wrong.
If there would be one size fits all solution, we’d had one of those.
Generally the quintessence is the big role of money. But you just can’t create money out of nothing. Money comes from actions, money causes actions. If the Cashflow is redirected, something else will suffer from it.
If it increases compliance then the effective revenue might actually go up.
Apply Peelian principles? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_Principles)
(I've no idea how.)
Yeah that seems like exactly the problem.
That won't yield much because the gap between even a 100% increase in salary and the amount of bribes they collect is vast.
E.g. salary of an inspector could be, say INR 40k-50k per month but the bribes being collected typically would be millions of INR. Suppose an inspector has 15 people reporting to him who are collecting INR 200 from 300 people per day and the inspectors share in this is just 5%. Then the amount per month is 200 * 300 * 30 * 15 * .05 = INR 1350000. If I assume the salary to be 50k per month, this bribe amount is 27 times that. It is just not possible for the government to get the salary even in the same vicinity (just for kicks, Indian President's salary is about INR 500000 per month).
The rates are fixed. The collection mechanisms are solid. Everyone, from the peon to the minister, gets a cut.
As it stands today, there is no accountability in the whole system. An official can sit on a file for years with no repercussions. You can drag them to court, but sooner than later you will understand that this is a battle you can never win. The official has the power and money of the government behind him while you are totally alone. Most importantly, the official has time while you do not.
It does make it sound like there's a bribery-free equilibrium really close by though. Like imagine all of these things happened as part of a single reform:
- Policeman and management salaries go up.
- Fines go down.
- Taxes go up.
- Anti-bribery enforcement goes way up.
The idea would be to acknowledge that regardless of the bribery culture, the typical policeman might be doing a decent job and doesn't necessarily deserve an effective pay cut. The amount of money they're getting today is in some sense their "market rate", and the goal is to improve the efficiency and transparency of the system in other ways without shifting that market rate. Likewise the goal would be that the tax increases for citizens would be designed to match what they're paying in bribes and fines today, so they wouldn't actually end up paying more.
I assume the hard part is that each of these things by itself might make the problem worse, and it's only if they all change at the same time that you get a coherent result that's "good for everyone". And there are probably a ton of other factors to add to the list. (Like tax enforcement. Is it even possible to raise taxes to accommodate salary increases and fee decreases? If the tax code needs to be reformed before people will accept stricter enforcement of it, what are those reforms, and who would fight them?)