India is ranked 87th in the Transparency’s International Report on Corruption Perception Index.

Discuss the issue of corruption with reference to any two political scandals in contemporary India.

Most of us must have been a witness to or a victim of the corruption thriving in some or the other
part of the country. It could be in the form of a taxi-driver manipulating the meter to jack-up the
reading or a government officer taking bribe to promptly transfer your file to the next department or
even yourself offering bribe to a traffic police on breaking a signal.

The average Indian citizen may be working and diligent, but it is the people in charge of the
system or with whom the power lays, that act as a cancer spreading the venom, but, somewhere
down the line, we ourselves are responsible for allowing and being taken for a ride by these people,
like Plato said, “One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being
governed by your inferiors.”

Political corruption in India is a major concern. 1A study done by Transparency International in

India found that more than 75% of the people had first-hand experience of paying bribe or peddling
influence to get any type of job done in a public office. For 2010, India was ranked 87th of 178
countries in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index, with a CPI score of 3.3.
India compares favourably with other BRIC countries, with China ranking 78th, Brazil ranking
69th, and Russia ranking 154th, the worst of the BRICs. Criminalization of Indian politics is a
major setback as well as a serious problem. The Washington Post reported that nearly a fourth of
the 540 Indian Parliament members faced criminal charges, including human trafficking,
immigration rackets, embezzlement, rape and even murder.

2
Greed is the new religion and all are welcome to feed at the trough. Nothing else is sacrosanct; not
the highest offices in public service: chief minister, army chief, navy admiral, or top bureaucrat
through whom the file must pass. It is entirely appropriate that a nation whose motto is Satyameva
Jayate should discover a metaphor for ravenous loot in a Mumbai building society called Adarsh.
The Adarsh Housing Society is a cooperative society in the city of Mumbai in India. About 3800
square meters of land reserved for the war widows and veterans of the Kargil War, was given to
private Housing Society. But army took no action in this regard because several army officials,
including former army Chief Deepak Kapoor himself, had flats in this society. Questions were
1
http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2010/results

2
mjakbarblog.blogspot.com/.../between-scam-india-and-slum-india.html
raised on the manner in which apartments in the building were allocated to bureaucrats, politicians
and army personnel who had nothing to do with Kargil War and the way in which clearances were
obtained for the construction of the building of the Adarsh Society. The society is also alleged to
have violated the Indian environment ministry rules. Many activists like Medha Patkar had been
trying to uncover this scam since a long time.

The 3Fodder Scam was a corruption scandal that involved the alleged embezzlement of about
950 crore from the government treasury of the eastern Indian state of Bihar. The alleged theft
spanned many years, involved the fabrication of "vast herds of fictitious livestock" for which
fodder, medicines and animal husbandry equipment was supposedly procured. Although the scandal
broke in 1996, the theft had been in progress, and increasing in size, for over two decades. It started
with some government employees submitting false expense reports, which grew in magnitude and
drew additional elements, such as politicians and businesses, over time, until a full-fledged mafia
had formed. Jagannath Mishra, who served his first stint as the chief minister of Bihar in the mid-
1970s, was the earliest chief minister to be accused of knowing involvement in the scam as well as
Rashtriya Janata Dal Chief, Lalu Prasad, who had been named as accused in five cases.

Since it broke into public light, the fodder scam has become symbolic of bureaucratic corruption
and the criminalization of politics in India generally, and in Bihar in particular. It has been called a
symptom of the "deep and chronic malady afflicting the Bihar government and quite a few other
state governments as well." In the Indian parliament, it was cited as an important indicator of the
deep inroads made by 4mafia raj in the politics and economics of the country.

India has gone down in the ranking as well as integrity score and this is a matter of concern and
regret. It appears that the level of governance has not improved despite India having a skilled set of
administrators. Corruption is rampant in the judicial system of India as well. According
to Transparency International, judicial corruption in India is attributable to factors such as "delays
in the disposal of cases, shortage of judges and complex procedures, all of which are exacerbated by
a preponderance of new laws".

The cause of India’s corruption is due to our previous socialist type of economy, but from the time
of economic liberalization there has been a considerable decline in corruption. As we see, the
extensive regulation forced people into giving bribes which spoilt the entire system, so to reduce
corruption we’ll need to implement more liberalization strategies.

3
http://fodderscamtruth.com/

4
http://www.rtiindia.org/forum/18687-rti-information-fodder-scam-bihar.html
The existentialist dilemma before Indian democracy is stark: it cannot co-exist with financial
honesty. It does not matter if you are personally incorruptible; you have to be institutionally corrupt
in order to engage in the business of democracy. As M.J. Akbar put it, the opposite of corruption in
politics, therefore, is not honesty, but hypocrisy. 5The moral code of politics is uncomplicated:
Don't ask. Don't tell. And for God's sake don't get caught.

5
http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/Story/125138/byword/double-face-cream