The government of the Odisha police has cracked one of the biggest scams in India, with at least 50,000 jobseekers having been duped of crores of rupees. This scam targeted the desperate and innocent jobseekers in at least five States — Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and Odisha.
The scam was being run by a group of tech-savvy engineers from Uttar Pradesh with the help of some expert website developers. This core group was assisted by around 50 call centre employees. The masterminds of the scam, are engineers by profession. These scamsters would develop websites identical to government portals displaying the job advertisement, mainly targeting health or skill department jobs, some using ‘Pradhan-Mantri schemes’ to attract and deceive jobseekers.
The fake employment sites were ‘JeevanSwasthyaSurakshaYojana www.jssy.in’, www.bjsry.in (Bharatiya Jana Swasthya Suraksha Yojana’ and www.gsmsss.in (GraminSamajManavswasthyaSeva).
Job aspirants would be first charged ¹ 3,000 as registration fees. During the course of time, he or she would be directed to submit money in the name of interview, training and other orientation programmes. Gullible jobseekers had paid up to ¹ 70,000. The skill training never happened. Those who got whiff of the fraud had withdrawn themselves.
These fraudsters usually withdraw money only from ‘Jan Seva Kendras’ using the QR code of the Kendra and mule account. There is a plethora of such ‘Jan Seva Kendras’ in Uttar Pradesh who would give the cash amount taking 10% commission. By such clever moves the scamsters ensured they left no trail either through phone or bank accounts.
Suppose you are the Chief Investigating Officer in the case, then
a) How will you describe the scam in the case study in the context of digital governance readily sighted as a panacea for corruption?
b) What are the ethical issues in the case?
c) Discuss the course of action to tackle such types of scams effectively.
Answer:
The Context: Fake Job Scams have existed for a long time but technology has made this scam easier and more lucrative. Scammers advertise jobs the same way legitimate employers do—online (in ads, on job sites, college employment sites, and social media), in newspapers, and sometimes on TV and radio. They promise a job, but what they want is money and personal information from people.
Fake Job or Employment Scams occur when criminal actors deceive victims into believing they have a job or a potential job. Criminals leverage their position as “employers” to persuade victims to provide them with personally identifiable information (PII), become money mules, or to send them money.
a) Description of scam:
There have been concerns of corruption in the public sector. To tackle it, digital governance is being considered as a panacea. It brings transparency in the way the government works and it eliminates arbitrariness in use of authority by the civil servants and upholds their accountability in general.
The government started promoting digitalising processes, procedures like recruitment processes to reduce corruption and scams that were prevalent earlier when things were done manually. This has increased the complex nature of corruption as can be seen from the matter given in case study.
This kind of corruption has become more difficult to tackle as sophisticated technology is being used and the way it is being remotely carried out, it has become difficult to trace those criminals.
That is, the digitalisation which was expected to solve the problems of corruption itself has become a serious challenge to tackle corruption.
b) Ethical issues are as follows:
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- Weak character: Even though these scamsters are educated engineers, they are deceiving the job-seekers for their self-interest by doing such unethical actions. It shows their weak character.
- Education devoid of moral values: Such acts show that education in the country has failed to inculcate moral values of truth, honesty among the youth.
- Lack of empathy: Exploiting the helpless job-seekers by fraud shows that the scamsters have no empathy towards people.
- Lack of public morality: Such practices going on in the society shows that there is a lack of strong public morality among the people. This affects the moral fabric in the society.
- Lack of trust in the government: Due to such frauds, people will lose trust in the government as they may not differentiate between authentic government websites and the duplicate one. This will affect the overall governance process.
When educated people become corrupt then it becomes a serious matter and raises a serious question. It also shows lack of probity in governance.
C) Course of action:
Actions |
Details |
1. Stern action by the government |
• There should be a crackdown on all identified fake websites and scamsters should be punished according to provisions of IT, Act 2000. |
2. Issue an advisory to the people |
• Government should issue an advisory on all media platforms about these scams and how to detect them. E.g. Many of these scamsters use names similar to government departments or government schemes. |
3. Display names of fake websites |
• From time to time, public names of fake job websites in newspapers, social media platforms of government departments and ministries. |
4. Cross check |
• Reaching out to the applicants through various media platforms, newspapers and requesting them to cross check the job opening from the concerned department or ministry. |
5. Awareness generation |
• There can be an IEC (Information, Education and Communication) campaign by the government regarding such fake job websites so that youth can be made aware about it. |
6. Conducting camps in educational institutions |
• With the help of NGOs, there can be awareness generation camps in colleges and universities to make the youth aware about these scams and how to protect themselves from these scams. |
Conclusion:
In the long term, there should be focus on values along with skills being imparted in educational institutions. This will build strong character among the youth who will not take such unethical actions to earn money. The process of digitalisation should be backed with adequate safeguards to avoid any misuse. The government can take help of CERT-IN to pre-empt any such efforts before it becomes too late.
At the same time, we need to understand that unless scarcity of resources problems is not address, moral temptation for corruption cannot be reduced satisfactorily. Kautilya remarked, to reduce moral pressure on society, the state needs to be wealthy and prosperous.
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