Posted by Gopal Unnikrishna
Corruption, in addition to its ethical corroding impact is also very much a political issue having impeding economic consequences of lost opportunities,deferred investment, aborted entrepreneurship, and abandoned innovation. Widespread corruption evolved in independent India mainly from the distortions arising from a tightly controlled socialistic political economic regime where the economy was under excessive regulation and protectionism till the end of 1980s..”Corruption emerged almost as an illegitimate price mechanism, a shadowy quasi-market”
Since the first major scam in independent India, the Haridas Mundhra scandel, that broke out in 1957, there have been at least 56 major scams which rocked India. That works out to be more than a major scam every year which after the year 2004 increases to an average of more than four per year, with the year 2010 being the high watershed of corruption scandals that can "boast" of a total of nine scams. Among those of last year, there are the shockers like 2G spectrum ,Commonwealth Games, Adarsh Housing Society, Indian Premier League, Lavasa, Uttar Pradesh Food Grain, Hosing Loan, all big scams. And this year so far we are bombarded with Hasan Ali Khan, Noida Corporation Farmland, Black money in Swiss bank, Bellary Mines, and EPFO scams, a veritable basket of hot potatoes.
Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index in 2010 rated India as 87th out of 178 countries. An earlier 2005 study by them in India discovered that more than 50% of Indians had primary experience of paying bribes or influence pitching to get tasks done in public offices with success. Indian bureaucracy is notorious for its inefficiency. A 2009 study of the heading economies of Asia, disclosed Indian bureaucracy to be not merely least efficient out of Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan, Vietnam, China, Philippines and Indonesia. It was also found that forging with India's civil servants was a "slow and painful" process. Added to this bureaucratic ineptitude is corruption by avaricious, power-thirsty political leaders and the black money being laundered and or stashed abroad..
From a country where 80% of the people earn less than 2$ per day and every second child is malnourished, it is estimated that more than a trillion dollars are stashed away in foreign havens. India is said to top the list for black money in the world and has more black money than all other countries put together, according to Swiss Banking Association Report (2006). India is a rich country of poor people, it seems.
Take the case of India’s most powerful ruling family, the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty. "Independent reports published through 1991 to 2011 calculated the financial net worth of the family to be anywhere near between $9.41 billion (Rs 42,345 crore) to $18.66 billion (Rs 83,900 crore), most of it in the form of cash.
Criminalization is also a serious problem in contemporary Indian politics. The Vohra Report, submitted by the former Indian Union Home Secretary, N.N. Vohra, in October 1993, studied the problem of the criminalization of politics and of the nexus among criminals, politicians and bureaucrats in India. The report revealed a criminal network that was running an almost parallel government which enjoyed patronage of politicians from all parties. In successive elections criminals had been elected to local bodies, State Assemblies, and even the Parliament. The Washington Post in 2008 reported that nearly a fourth of the 540 Indian Parliament members faced criminal charges, "including human trafficking, immigration rackets, embezzlement, rape and even murder"--
Not that there is no anti corruption mechanism in the country. At central Government level, there is Central Vigilance Commission, Departmental vigilance and CBI. CVC and Departmental vigilance deal with vigilance (disciplinary proceedings) aspect of a corruption case and CBI deals with criminal aspect of that case.However, if a citizen wants to make a complaint about corruption by a politician or an official in the Central Government, there isn’t a single anti-corruption agency which is effective and independent of the government, whose wrongdoings are sought to be investigated. CBI has powers but it is not independent. CVC is independent but it does not have sufficient powers or resources
"The fast by social reformer Anna Hazare not only forced parliament to move on an anti-graft bill, it may have woken the ruling Congress party to the fact governance is more important than playing populism with regional and caste-based votes."
That perhaps is the only silver line now.
Corruption, in addition to its ethical corroding impact is also very much a political issue having impeding economic consequences of lost opportunities,deferred investment, aborted entrepreneurship, and abandoned innovation. Widespread corruption evolved in independent India mainly from the distortions arising from a tightly controlled socialistic political economic regime where the economy was under excessive regulation and protectionism till the end of 1980s..”Corruption emerged almost as an illegitimate price mechanism, a shadowy quasi-market”
Since the first major scam in independent India, the Haridas Mundhra scandel, that broke out in 1957, there have been at least 56 major scams which rocked India. That works out to be more than a major scam every year which after the year 2004 increases to an average of more than four per year, with the year 2010 being the high watershed of corruption scandals that can "boast" of a total of nine scams. Among those of last year, there are the shockers like 2G spectrum ,Commonwealth Games, Adarsh Housing Society, Indian Premier League, Lavasa, Uttar Pradesh Food Grain, Hosing Loan, all big scams. And this year so far we are bombarded with Hasan Ali Khan, Noida Corporation Farmland, Black money in Swiss bank, Bellary Mines, and EPFO scams, a veritable basket of hot potatoes.
Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index in 2010 rated India as 87th out of 178 countries. An earlier 2005 study by them in India discovered that more than 50% of Indians had primary experience of paying bribes or influence pitching to get tasks done in public offices with success. Indian bureaucracy is notorious for its inefficiency. A 2009 study of the heading economies of Asia, disclosed Indian bureaucracy to be not merely least efficient out of Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan, Vietnam, China, Philippines and Indonesia. It was also found that forging with India's civil servants was a "slow and painful" process. Added to this bureaucratic ineptitude is corruption by avaricious, power-thirsty political leaders and the black money being laundered and or stashed abroad..
From a country where 80% of the people earn less than 2$ per day and every second child is malnourished, it is estimated that more than a trillion dollars are stashed away in foreign havens. India is said to top the list for black money in the world and has more black money than all other countries put together, according to Swiss Banking Association Report (2006). India is a rich country of poor people, it seems.
Take the case of India’s most powerful ruling family, the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty. "Independent reports published through 1991 to 2011 calculated the financial net worth of the family to be anywhere near between $9.41 billion (Rs 42,345 crore) to $18.66 billion (Rs 83,900 crore), most of it in the form of cash.
Criminalization is also a serious problem in contemporary Indian politics. The Vohra Report, submitted by the former Indian Union Home Secretary, N.N. Vohra, in October 1993, studied the problem of the criminalization of politics and of the nexus among criminals, politicians and bureaucrats in India. The report revealed a criminal network that was running an almost parallel government which enjoyed patronage of politicians from all parties. In successive elections criminals had been elected to local bodies, State Assemblies, and even the Parliament. The Washington Post in 2008 reported that nearly a fourth of the 540 Indian Parliament members faced criminal charges, "including human trafficking, immigration rackets, embezzlement, rape and even murder"--
Not that there is no anti corruption mechanism in the country. At central Government level, there is Central Vigilance Commission, Departmental vigilance and CBI. CVC and Departmental vigilance deal with vigilance (disciplinary proceedings) aspect of a corruption case and CBI deals with criminal aspect of that case.However, if a citizen wants to make a complaint about corruption by a politician or an official in the Central Government, there isn’t a single anti-corruption agency which is effective and independent of the government, whose wrongdoings are sought to be investigated. CBI has powers but it is not independent. CVC is independent but it does not have sufficient powers or resources
"The fast by social reformer Anna Hazare not only forced parliament to move on an anti-graft bill, it may have woken the ruling Congress party to the fact governance is more important than playing populism with regional and caste-based votes."
That perhaps is the only silver line now.
