Assume that anyone handling public funds will take some, and design audit and rotation around the assumption rather than around character.
The text is unusually blunt: just as it is impossible not to taste honey placed on the tongue, so it is impossible for one handling the king's funds not to taste a little of the wealth. The remedies proposed are frequent transfer, overlapping informants and audit — controls designed for the official who is ordinarily honest, not for the exceptional thief.
In practice
- A council that rotates its procurement officers every three years finds fewer long-running supplier arrangements and no more honest staff.
- A charity that relies on trusting its treasurer discovers the shortfall when the treasurer is ill.
- Possible explanations
- The explanation is opportunity and detection: where funds pass through a single pair of hands unobserved, the chance of being caught is low, so a design that assumes honesty is a design that will be robbed.
- In its favour
- It anticipates modern audit practice, including rotation of duties, separation of powers over funds and surprise inspection, all of which reduce fraud in measured settings.
- Against it
- Assuming universal dishonesty has costs of its own, including surveillance that drives out trustworthy staff, and the text's date and authorship are disputed.
- Standing
- The Arthashastra's date and authorship are disputed.
- Subject
- Organizations & Bureaucracy
- Essay
- Rules for running organisations, and for pressing them