While the poor do not have the money to ‘purchase’ public services that are their right, they have a vote that the politician wants. The politician does a little bit to make life a little more tolerable for his poor constituents—a government job here, an FIR registered there, a land right honoured somewhere else. For this, he gets the gratitude of his voters, and more important, their vote . . . perhaps the system tolerates corruption because the street-smart politician is better at making the wheels of the bureaucracy creak, however slowly, in favour of his constituents. And such a system is
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