Corruption: Indians take the battle to the enemy within

By Siddhartha Kumar Jul 31, 2011, 11:09 GMT

New Delhi - It had been a traumatic night in the life of Vivek Pai, a young engineer based in India's western city of Pune. A close friend had been killed in a road crash and Pai needed to provide an embalming certificate to the airline for the body to be flown to New Delhi.

'I had to bribe the hospital in the early hours of that terrible morning to get a professional to come and do the embalming. ... I had to pay a clerk 500 rupees (11 dollars) to get the certificate for the flight so that the devastated parents could see their son one last time,' he said.

Pai later heard of accounts of poor people being forced to bargain over bribes for getting bodies of their kin released from hospital morgues. 'I am ashamed of our corrupt system,' he says dejectedly.

Pushkar Sharma, a Bangalore-based entrepreneur, refused to pay a 1,000-rupee 'extra fee' for his marriage certificate and was forced to report to the registration bureau repeatedly for months by an official who kept demanding additional documents.

Corruption is so rampant in India that it pervades almost every aspect of daily life, from petty payoffs attached to basic services to graft at the top rungs of government.

People have to pay bribes to set up businesses, register flats, obtain driving licences, passports or even their university degrees, a series of interviews reveal.

The origin of corruption lies in the 'Licence Raj' - an extensive regime of licences, regulations and accompanying red-tape - maintained by the Indian bureaucracy till the late 1980s as the country pursued a planned economy.

But even after economic reforms launched in 1991, India remains highly corrupt - ranked 87th among 178 countries on Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index 2010.

The cost of corruption is estimated at 345 billion dollars over the last decade, and the bulk of it has been laundered out of India through illicit channels, a recent study by a research firm IndiaForensic claims.

According to the analysis, corruption cost the average individual 2,000 rupees in 2009, 260 per cent higher than the amount 10 years earlier.

Frustrated by unprecedented levels of corruption, Indians have hit the streets in protest, the first such mass demonstration in several decades.

Brazen corruption scandals, including those linked to the shoddy organization of Delhi Commonwealth Games (which damaged India's international image), have shaken people out of their apathy and plunged the Manmohan Singh government into a severe credibility crisis.

The anti-graft movement since April has demanded an effective anti-graft ombudsman and also called for repatriation of billions of dollars of untaxed money stashed away by corrupt Indians in banks abroad.

The campaigns by Gandhian activist Anna Hazare and Yoga guru Baba Ramdev have drawn support mainly from the youth and are backed by business leaders concerned over corruption hurting foreign investment in Asia's third-largest economy.

Political parties splurge money during elections to bribe people for votes, confident that candidates, once elected, would make lucrative returns misuing their position.

'There is a direct relationship between corruption and bad governance. Corruption has subverted democracy,' said Transparency International India chief PS Bawa.

Ipaidabribe.com, a website for whistle-blowers, 'uncovers the market price of corruption,' by determining the going rates for bribes in government departments.

With 13,000 stories, the website which is the largest repository of bribe reports worldwide, has made a serious effort to expose corrupt officials and improve services by giving specific recommendations, the site's coordinator TR Raghunandan said.

Indian society seems to be headed for an inevitable showdown with politicians desperate to suppress anti-corruption movement.

'I'm afraid it does not bode well. The movement might turn violent if the government is not responsive enough,' sociologist Shiv Vishvanathan says.

But Transparency International's Bawa is hopeful, saying the movement can gain momentum once powerful ministers made examples of.

Most importantly, systemic changes will occur when people begin to resist paying bribes. That is already beginning to happen, although gradually.

Rohit Singh, a doctoral student in Delhi is among the many youth who participated in Hazare's agitation.

'Young Indians are consolidating the fight through social networking sites. Our group of friends have vowed not to pay bribes,' he said.

Singh was recently accosted for a bribe to let him off the penalty for jumping a traffic-signal. 'I insisted on paying a higher fine. The policeman who was baffled for a minute, could just manage a sheepish grin.'