Corruption - Incentive Vs Bribe

You wanted a birth certificate and went to the concerned office. The officer said, if you give money, you would get it immediately. If you don't give money, you would get it after one month. Is this corruption?

Same scenario. Instead of one month, it takes two months. Is that corruption?


According to the rules of the government, there is a time limit for each application. For most of the applications, including RTI, the time limit is one month. If he is giving you what you wanted within the specified time, then that cannot be considered as corruption. If he is giving an option of getting it sooner, it should be considered as incentive to him.

Let's suppose, if the application has to be processed within a month and the concerned officer is taking two months, and is asking for money to give it sooner, then can we consider it as bribe? Let's suppose, if the office does not have enough staff to process all the applications, and because of that, if they are going to take two months, how can the concerned officer is responsible for the delay, when he does not have any control in recruiting staff.

If according to the government rules, and the staff that the office has, if they are going to do their best and process all the applications on time, then why should they be charged with corruption?

If the employee is going to work after the office hours and process few extra applications, and in turn take some money from the applicants, it cannot be called as bribe. It is just an incentive to the employee.

If you are an employee of any organization, and if somebody (other than your manager or anybody in the hierarchy) asks you to work (under the terms of the company) on a sunday and offers some incentive, would you say NO?