Summary
Police paper extols the virtue of bribe", "cod to probe top IPS officer", "Notice served on Andhra MLA for fraud", "it Commissioner lands in CBI net", "mp gets jail term for tax evasion". These are only a few of the umpteen headlines on corruption that I have taken from the Indian newspapers of the past month. Corruption in India has become so pervasive that it has seeped into our most revered institutions. No wonder then, that former Chief Justice of India S.P. Barucha was compelled to remark in 2001: "About 20 per cent of the judges in the courts are corrupt; corruption among public servants has reached monstrous dimensions in India. Its tentacles have started grappling even the institutions created for the protection of the public." Even a powerful Prime Minster like Rajiv Gandhi admitted defeat on the issue, saying that "out of every Rs 100 crore allocated to an anti-poverty project, only about Rs 15 crore reaches the people. The remainder is gobbled up by middlemen, power brokers, contractors and the corrupt". Our late President K.R. Narayanan bemoaned in 2001 how even convicted criminals were getting elected to legislatures. As much as Rs 37,000 crore, about 1.5-2 per cent of the GDP, surfaced as part of the Voluntary Disclosure Scheme of 1997. Transparency International has ranked India among the most corrupt countries in the world.
Is corruption the sole prerogative of the politicians and the bureaucracy? I am afraid not. In fact, the biggest corruption cases have been outside the government. The Harshad Mehta scam of around Rs 10,000 crore and the Ketan Parikh scam of Rs 5,000 crore have put other scandals to shame. It is estimated that Non-Banking Financial Companies have swindled over 30 million small investors. Recently, it was reported that a sizeable number of software professionals in a well-known multinational had fudged their bills. This morning, I received an e-mail from an erstwhile, dismissed colleague of mine arguing why she was not all that wrong in swiping the attendance card on behalf of another colleague! The cricket match-fixing scandal is still fresh in our memories. Several years ago, I sat through a long sermon on how Indians are corrupt from an NRI in Chicago. I had no hesitation in abruptly walking away from that meeting when he whispered into my ear, asking me whether he could sell his dollars in black. The list goes on. It is very clear that corruption is now an accepted phenomenon in the psyche of Indians from all walks of life.See the full content of this document
Extract
What Will It Take to Rid India of Corruption?
Corruption is not just a moral issue. It is also a powerful inhibitor of economic progress in a poor country like India. Most economists observe that corruption thrives when politicians and bureaucrats espouse the choice of unnecessary and unviable public projects, inflated costs, and the selection of incompetent contractors. The politicians who proclaim their commitment to improving the lot of the poor would do well to remember that it is really the poor that suffer most in a corrupt country. Generally, most mega projects in a developing country are intended to bring healthcare, education and n...
See the full content of this document
Sponsored links
