Corruption in India
Corruption in India is an issue that affects the economy of central, state, and local government agencies. Corruption is blamed for stunting the economy of India. A study conducted by Transparency International in 2005 recorded that more than 62% of Indians had at some point or another paid a bribe to a public official to get a job done. In 2008, another report showed that about 50% of Indians had first-hand experience of paying bribes or using contacts to get services performed by public offices. In Transparency International's 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index, which scored 180 countries on a scale from 0 to 100, India scored 38. When ranked by score, India ranked 96th among the 180 countries in the Index, where the country ranked first is perceived to have the most honest public sector. For comparison with regional scores, the best score among those countries of the Asia Pacific region that appeared in the Index was 84, the average score was 44 and the worst score was 16. For comparison with worldwide scores, the average score was 43, the best score was 90, and the worst score was 8.
Various factors contribute to corruption, including officials siphoning money from government social welfare schemes. Examples include the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and the National Rural Health Mission. Other areas of corruption include India's trucking industry, which is forced to pay billions of rupees in bribes annually to numerous regulatory and police stops on interstate highways.
The news media has widely published allegations of corrupt Indian citizens stashing millions of rupees in Swiss banks. Swiss authorities denied these allegations, which were later proven in 2015–2016. In July 2021, India's Central Board of Direct Taxes replied to Right To Information requests stating undeclared assets of Rs 20,078 crore identified by them in India and abroad following the investigation till June 2021.
The causes of corruption in India include excessive regulations, complicated tax and licensing systems, numerous government departments with opaque bureaucracy and discretionary powers, monopoly of government-controlled institutions on certain goods and services delivery, and the lack of transparent laws and processes. There are significant variations in the level of corruption and in the government's efforts to reduce corruption across India.
Politics
Corruption in India is a problem that has serious implications for protecting the rule of law and ensuring access to justice., 120 of India's 542 parliament members were accused of various crimes, under India's First Information Report procedure wherein anyone can allege another to have committed a crime.Many of the biggest scandals as of 2010 have involved high-level government officials, including Cabinet Ministers and Chief Ministers, such as the 2010 Commonwealth Games scam, the Adarsh Housing Society scam, the Mining Scandal in Karnataka, and the Cash for Vote scams along with the Electoral Bond scam. There have also been decades of numerous state and local level scams, for example the Saradha group financial scandal, the Narada sting operation, the Rose Valley financial scandal,the West Bengal teacher recruitment scam, the 2024 Sandeshkhali violence and the 2024 Pune Porsche car crash.
Lack of accountability
Since the anti-corruption departments in India exist as defunct outfits, the corrupt bureaucrats and politicians keep committing acts of corruption with impunity. This fact is also stated in its annual country report released in April 2022 by the U.S. Department of State.In an exclusive section, "Corruption and Lack of Transparency in Government", the report asserts that the law provides criminal penalties for corruption by officials at all levels of government in India. However, officials frequently engaged in corrupt practices with impunity while there were numerous reports of government corruption during the year.
The U.S. report further reveals that a lack of accountability for official misconduct persisted at all levels of government in India, contributing to widespread impunity. While investigations and prosecutions of individual cases took place, lax enforcement, a shortage of trained police officers, and an overburdened and under-resourced court system contributed to a low number of convictions, the report said.
The U.S. report adds that corruption in India happens at different levels including the payment of bribes to expedite services such as police protection, school admission, water supply, and government assistance.
Bureaucracy
Bribery
A 2005 study done by Transparency International in India found that more than 62% of the people had firsthand experience of paying bribes or peddling influence to get services performed in a public office. Taxes and bribes are common between state borders; Transparency International estimates that truckers annually pay in bribes.Both government regulators and police share in bribe money, to the tune of 43% and 45% each, respectively. The route stoppages at checkpoints and entry points can take up to 11 hours per day. About 60% of these stoppages on roads by concerned authorities such as government regulators, police, forest, sales and excise, octroi and weighing and measuring departments are for extorting money. The loss in productivity due to these stoppages is an important national concern; the number of truck trips could increase by 40%, if forced delays are avoided. According to a 2007 World Bank published report, the travel time for a Delhi-Mumbai trip could be reduced by about 2 days per trip if the corruption and associated regulatory stoppages to extract bribes were eliminated.
A 2009 survey of the leading economies of Asia, revealed Indian bureaucracy is not only the least efficient among Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan, Vietnam, China, Philippines and Indonesia, but that working with India's civil servants was a "slow and painful" process.
Land and property
Officials are alleged to be stealing state property. In cities and villages throughout India, groups of municipal and other government officials, elected politicians, judicial officers, real estate developers, and law enforcement officials, acquire, develop and sell land in illegal ways. Such officials and politicians are very well protected by the immense power and influence they possess. Apart from this, slum-dwellers who are allotted houses under several housing schemes such as Pradhan Mantri Gramin Awaas Yojana, Rajiv Awas Yojna, Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna, etc., rent out these houses to others, to earn money due to severe unemployment and lack of a steady source of income.Tendering processes and awarding contracts
A 2006 report claimed that state-funded construction activities in Uttar Pradesh, such as road building, were dominated by construction mafias, consisting of cabals of corrupt public works officials, materials suppliers, politicians and construction contractors.Problems caused by corruption in government-funded projects are not limited to the state of Uttar Pradesh. The World Bank study finds that public distribution programs and social spending contracts have proven to be a waste due to corruption.
For example, the government implemented the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act on 25 August 2005. The Central government outlay for this welfare scheme is in FY 2010–2011. After 5 years of implementation, in 2011, the programme was widely criticised as no more effective than other poverty reduction programmes in India. Despite its best intentions, MGNREGA faces the challenges of corrupt officials reportedly pocketing money on behalf of fake rural employees, poor quality of the program infrastructure, and unintended destructive effect on poverty.
Science and technology
CSIR, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, has been flagged in ongoing efforts to root out corruption in India. Established with the directive to do translational research and create real technologies, CSIR has been accused of transforming into a ritualistic, overly-bureaucratic organisation that does little more than churn out papers.There are many issues facing Indian scientists, with some calling for transparency, a meritocratic system, and an overhaul of the bureaucratic agencies that oversee science and technology. Sumit Bhaduri stated, "The challenges of turning Indian science into part of an innovation process are many. Many competent Indian scientists aspire to be ineffectual administrators, rather than do the kind of science that makes a difference". Prime minister Manmohan Singh spoke at the 99th Indian Science Congress and commented on the state of the sciences in India, after an advisory council informed him there were problems with "the overall environment for innovation and creative work" and a "war-like" approach was needed.
Preferential award of mineral resources
In August 2011, an iron ore mining scandal became a media focus in India. In September 2011, an elected member of Karnataka's legislative assembly, Janardhana Reddy, was arrested on charges of corruption and illegal mining of iron ore in his home state. It was alleged that his company received a preferential allotment of resources, organised and exported billions of dollars' worth of iron ore to Chinese companies in recent years without paying any royalty to the state government exchequer of Karnataka or the central government of India, and that these Chinese companies made payments to shell companies registered in Caribbean and north Atlantic tax havens controlled by Reddy.It was also alleged that corrupt government officials in charge of regulating mining, port facilities and shipping cooperated with Reddy. These officials received monthly bribes in exchange for enabling the illegal export of mined iron ore to China. Such scandals have led to a demand in India for a consensually driven action plan to eradicate the piracy of India's mineral resources by an illegal, politically corrupt government officials-business nexus, removal of incentives for illegal mining, and the creation of incentives for legal mining and domestic use of iron ore and steel manufacturing.