Corruption in India – An overview

         Corruption – This is a word which doesn’t require any explanation to understand for us all. Because we are seeing it daily in our life. In India, if we talk about the government or government officials or administrators, somehow we can relate them with corruption. We are paying bribe at times willingly to speed up the work and at times, we are paying due to compulsion to get our needs in time. So we people are both a victim and criminal, in case of corruption.

              Corruption in a developing country like us proves to be a biggest drawback in terms of growth. And the statement said by the Transparent international chief Hugette Labelle on corruption is a perfect one:

   “In the poorest countries, corruption levels can mean the difference between life and death, when money for hospitals or clean water is in play. The continuing high levels of corruption and poverty plaguing many of the world’s societies amount to an ongoing humanitarian disaster and cannot be tolerated. But even in more privileged countries, with enforcement disturbingly uneven, a tougher approach to tackling corruption is needed.”

CPI index:    

        In the CPI of 2008, India has been given a rating of 3.4 and was placed at 85^th position. Denmark, New Zealand and Sweden were placed at the first place with a rating of 9.3 followed by Singapore (9.2), Finland (9.0) and Switzerland (9.0). China was placed at 72^nd position with a rating of 3.6 and U.S. was placed at 18^th position with 7.6 points. Last year India has the rating of 3.5 and placed at 72^nd position. So we are improved in giving or taking bribe. Here is the table on how our country performed in the last 8 years:

          

            If we look at the above index we could see that India never managed to break the barrier of ranking 70, which argues for its high corruption level. In this list Denmark, Sweden, Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, Netherlands and Finland are the countries which are placed at the top 10 regularly. When we look at what makes to be at the top is their Ombudsman system, which keeps their society bribe free. In India too if our parliament passes the Lokpal bill, then we can see a marked improvement in our system. With the help of RTI act many of our country has got a fresh lease of life, as our citizens are started to reap benefits of this act.

 TI  Global corruption report:

              By the report of Transparency International Global corruption Barometer, Asia-pacific region which comprises of India ranks second in corruption next only to Africa. According to that survey totally 13% of the people have paid bribe, in which Asia-Pacific region consists of 22% way beyond the average 13% and India’s percentage in this 25%.

               What we can infer from that report is political parties and the police are more corrupted when compared to others. And it is no different in our country; they are the highest with 4.6 and 4.5 respectively. You can see it in the below chart:

And what is more worrying fact is that most of our citizens believe that corruption rate will increase in coming years in our country. In the below charts you could see that 90% of the Indians have said that corruption will increase in the coming years.

 Bribe payers Index:

              This report was prepared on the world’s 22 most influential economic countries and India was placed at 19^th position. Belgium and Canada tops this list with a rating of 8.8 and Russia is at the bottom with a rating of 5.9. India is at the cluster which is most likely to be bribed.

 There are 3 types of bribery are assessed in this report:

1.  bribery of high-ranking politicians or political parties.
2.  bribery of low level public officials to speed up things.
3.  the use of personal or familiar relationships to win public contracts.

 In India, the 2^nd one has got the highest percentage at 30% with the other two at around 25%.

      This transaparency has also provides way to curb the corruption in a country in the articles given here.[1],[2],[3],[4],[5]

 Directorate of vigilance and Anti-Corruption:

           This is a body which has been setup by the Tamil Nadu government to make complaint on public servants regarding malpractices and corruption, and it has been performing very well with even people who are living in rural areas too knows about this and has helped the officials in catching the corrupted officers. You can find the report on them here [1],[2],[3],[4]. If more anti corruption bodies were setup like this means we can surely reduce the amount of corruption in India.

Quotes on Corruption:

    The accomplice to the crime of corruption is frequently our own indifference.  – Bess Myerson 

Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power. – George Bernard Shaw 

Corruption  is worse than prostitution. The latter might endanger the morals of an individual, the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country.  – Karl Kraus 

      Corruption and hypocrisy ought not to be inevitable products of democracy, as they undoubtedly are today – Mahatma Gandhi.

     So Why I am writing about corruption now. Because December 9 is anti-corruption day. Let us take a pledge on this day: We will not give bribe in any circumstances and thus doing a small help in reducing the corruption rate in our country.