POLITICAL CORRUPTION IN INDIA

Vinayak Kataky Gogoi

18COM63009

Corruption is derived from the Latin word “corruptus”, which refers to abuse or destroy and
when used as an adjective means utterly broken. In todays time the word refers to the abuse
of entrusted power for one’s own private gain. Our country India is not new to corruption, we
have seen various forms of corruption in India since time immemorial like corruption in
businesses, sports, bureaucracy, police and most importantly political corruption. The most
prevailing for of corruption we see today is done by the opportunistic elected representatives
of the people, i.e. the elected leaders. Also, the people who work with ethical principles are
un-recognized and set aside by the system. Yes, the system that is still in order in our country
today, this system consists of a connection between bureaucrats, politicians and criminals. In
the society most respected individuals who we are supposed to look up to are involved in one
or the other form of corrupted activity to get his/her selfish desires fulfilled and the common
men who work hard honestly to earn a leaving are looked down upon by these very same
people.

So, what exactly is political corruption? It is the use of legislated powers by government
officials for illegitimate private gain. It the wrongful use of the powers vested upon them by
the people in a democracy like India for other purposes, such as subduing other political
opponents or stealing the hard-earned tax money that the common people work hard to pay.
To put it straight political corruption is said to be an illegal act which is done by an office
holder and the act is related to their official duties. There are various forms of political
corruption which in include patronage, bribery, cronyism, nepotism, extortion,
embezzlement, etc. Criminal activities such as money laundering, extortion etc are facilitated
because of corruption and the scope for such other criminal activities is vast. But political
corruption differs from country to country, this is because depending on which country it is
government officials have broadly or poorly defined powers and therefore it becomes hard to
distinguish between what is legal and illegal. Also, in one country a practice of political
funding is completely legal, but it maybe illegal in other countries. In India we see that
corruption (not just political corruption) in general is weakening the political system and the
governance of law. It is seen that many Indian politicians have a past history of crime and it
is a norm for criminals to be in politics. Also, the main backbone of a democracy which is the
people’s power to elect their own representatives though a ‘vote’, can be associated with
corruption. In many parts of the country, which are often over looked as they are not part of
the big cities, we see that voting and election activities are associated with a lot of criminal
activities. Criminals threaten the poor common people to vote for a particular leader, big
politicians even outright bribe the public with a small amount of money which is a lot for the
people as they are the poorer section of society in terms of money. If all else fails criminals
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and big politician threaten the people with physical violence, they stop people from entering
polling booths and vote in their behalf instead.

According to Transparency International, which is an international non-government

organization which is based in Berlin Germany founded in 1993, India is among the most
corrupt countries in the world. The NGO released its Corruption Perception Index (CPI) and
it gives India a score of 40 on scale of 0-100 (score of 0 indicates highly corrupt and 100
indicates clean) which puts it in the 81st position of being one among 180 other most corrupt
countries in the world in 2017. Other countries such a Morocco, Turkey and Ghana have
received the same scores as India. Other poor performers in the South Asian region were
Maldives, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Also, China overtook India after four years
with a scores of 41 and rank of 77. The CPI report also said that anti corruption efforts in the
region was “slow and imperfect”, with the low CPI score along with lesser press freedom and
diminishing civil society space. The NGO also singled out India, Maldives and the
Philippines, as one of the region’s worst with regard to this situation.

After Prime Minister Narendra Modi came into power in 2014, the country’s corruption
scores have slightly improved. When Modi came into power, he pledged that he will break
the cycle of corruption in the country. But as we saw that only after three and half years of his
rule which was generally free of big corruption scandals, in the start of 2018 Modi’s track
record took a hit. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) accused one of India’s most
prominent billionaires, Nirav Modi, who is unrelated to Narendra Modi, of planning and
executing a 1.8 billion dollar fraud against one of the biggest state-run banks. Transparency
International released its rankings just few days later this bank fraud was discovered by the
CBI which again fuelled the fire for public debate about whether India was making any real
progress in the anti corruption realm. This scandal had undermined PM Modi’s hard earned
anti corruption credentials. The key pillar of PM Modi’s election campaign was to adapt
measures aimed at curbing corruption. In this mission of anti corruption the PM Modi lead
government introduced two new policies; Demonetisation and The Goods and Services tax
(GST). These two policies were intended to fight corruption, encourage good governance and
to be more transparent. But as we know it Demonetisation which was a policy to make all the
old Rs1000 and Rs500 notes illegal and replaced them with new Rs500 and Rs2000 notes in
an effort to bring back the black money stored by the corrupt rich had failed. The Reserve
Bank of India (RBI) which the central banking institute of the country released an annual
report which showed that 99.3 percent of the bank notes which were made illegal to use
under demonetisation were deposited back. This further proves that political corruption is still
a huge part of the Indian system and it does not matter which political party or who is in
power and one man cannot change the system no matter how admirable his motives are.
While the move did not help solve India’s black money and corruption problems it ended up
costing the country 1 percent of its total GDP and also 1.5m people lost their jobs due to the
lack of paper money according to the RBI report.

With a booming economy in early 2000s, the country was praised as one of the most fast
growing and promising new emerging markets. However, this fast pace growth stopped and
came to a decade low in 2012, with many researchers pointing the finger at India’s endemic
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corruption. Public revelation of corruption which also includes major scandals in the
telecommunication industry and coal industry have angered the rising middle class in the
country and has increased demands for a better governance who do not backup these
corrupted people in these industries. After Independence in 1947 the new Indian government
implemented heavy economic regulations which were intended to develop domestic markets.
This required all new industries to obtain a licence from the government. This made
obtaining licences a chance for corruption and also limited foreign investments and bribery
became part of doing business. This led to poor often suffering from widespread corruption.
This diverted large amounts of public revenue which was intended for public works, aids and
social welfare programs.

In India, to win an election is beyond a common man’s imagination, this is one of the major
reasons behind political corruption. Corrupted competition during elections intern brings in
even more corrupted competition and there is no place left for the honest leaders. The Right
to information act (RTI act) which was meant to help the Indian public to help get more
transparency out of the government seem to be fairly inactive with very low rate of use. This
leads to politicians getting involved in even more corrupted acts fearlessly without taking into
consideration the consequences of it. Also, politicians use goons to subdue common people
who use RTI act against them. Also fear of forming a coalition government to win the
coming elections stops the ruling ministers to take action against other party ministers and
politicians as they may need their support to stay in power in the future themselves. Also, the
anti corruption bureaus which are run by the bureaucrats are under the direct control of the
governments and therefore in fear of their career they do not directly attack the ruling
government even if they know about their corrupt activities.

Nowadays the number of honest politicians and ministers are getting thinner and thinner. At
one time bribes were a part of doing something wrong but now it seems to do anything at all
and to actually make it happen in normal time a bribe is the norm. Corruption today almost
seems like an integral part of politics in India.

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