Abstract
While corruption has been thrust to the centre stage in India in recent years, no government institution has been entrusted the responsibility for measuring corruption or its effects. While civil society has focussed on the larger context of accountability in service delivery, their approach has been typically focussed narrowly on individual sectors or services. As India’s legal frameworks for tackling corruption are in a state of transition, it would be timely to translate the relatively higher energy in the evaluation of service delivery efforts into a more pointed effort to track corruption. The challenge is to develop a range of survey methodologies to measure corruption and build capacities to undertake these reliable measurements and record the changes over time in the character and nature of corruption in India.
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Notes
- 1.
For example, alleged corruption in the procurement of equipment for the Commonwealth Games held in India in 2010.
- 2.
Two scams stand out in this regard. The first was triggered by a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India pointing out serious irregularities in the issuing of licences to telecommunication companies for the use of the broadband spectrum for provision of 2G mobile telephony services. The second related to widespread irregularities in the licencing and permitting of iron and manganese ore mining along the border between two states, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.
- 3.
These are (a) bribery of national public officials; (b) embezzlement, misappropriation and other diversion of property by a public official; and (c) laundering of proceeds of crime. Bribery of foreign public officials and officials of public international organisations, abuse of functions, illicit enrichment, concealment, trading of influence and obstruction of justice; and bribery and embezzlement of property in the private sector (all listed in the UNCAC-2005) do not come within the definition of corruption in India. Moreover, companies in India are not liable for the corrupt acts of their employees. An amendment to strengthen the Prevention of Corruption Act and expand the definition of “corruption” to include these acts was introduced in Parliament during the term of the previous government (2009–2014), but has not been passed yet.
- 4.
Which may be merged with the Lokayukta or may exist as a separate entity.
- 5.
Article 21 of the Indian Constitution states “Protection of life and personal liberty. No person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law.”
- 6.
RTI Acts quickly became the norm in many states in India before a national law was passed in 2005.
- 7.
The following aspects of each service were investigated: interaction with the service concerned, purpose of interaction, difficulties faced during interaction, perception about the service concerned, measures taken to improve service, experience of corruption, reason for paying bribes, route of bribe payment, estimation of bribe amount, where do states stand, the service providers’ perspective and suggestions to improve the service concerned.
- 8.
Each state-wise chapter covered the following areas of investigation: general perceptions about corruption, interaction with public services, perceptions about services, grievance redressal mechanism, incidence of corruption, relative positioning of services, the service providers’ perspective and the Right to Information & Citizens’ Charter.
- 9.
In 2006–07, 500 field assistants and 10 technical assistants were dismissed, 3 Mandal (Block—an administrative level above the village) officials were suspended and inquiries initiated against at least 6 other Mandal-level officials. Since the social audit process began, Rs. 6 million of embezzled funds have been returned (Aiyar and Samji 2009).
- 10.
The present author was the Programme Coordinator for the site and in that capacity established it and ran it for nearly two years in 2010 and 2011.
- 11.
ipaidabribe.com’s original aim was to use and analyse the crowd-sourced reports by citizens to (a) heighten citizen awareness about the nature and diffusion of bribe-related exchanges and promote a purposive public debate to pressurise public officials to reduce and eventually eliminate corruption; (b) help citizens to recognise, avoid and tackle bribe-paying situations; and (c) identify and analyse the workflows within corruption-prone public services, resulting in suggestions on systemic reform directed at entrenching simpler and more transparent processes, more consistent standards of law enforcement, and better vigilance and regulation. In pursuance of the last objective, the site produced “Janamahithi” (peoples’ information reports), which identified trends in bribery, the most corrupt offices and bribe-prone workflows and suggested process reform changes to reduce corruption. These were presented to the government with good effect. Another effort aimed at citizens was the preparation of the ten Commandments for Successfully Avoiding Corruption. These were drawn from reports by citizens who successfully resisted the payment of bribes.
- 12.
On December 12, 2011, the site had had 16,725 experiences of citizens in a year and four months of online presence. In the next year and nine months, the number of bribe experiences only increased to 21,229 (4504 reports added, a 26% increase). As of today, (November, 10, 2014), the total number of reports stands at 31,701. However, the data reveal discrepancies: there are 20,284 reports of experiences of bribes paid, 2,573 where individuals did not pay bribes, but the number of cases where someone met an honest official is 884, bringing the total to 23,705 and not 31,701.
- 13.
This commenced as a call by telephone going out to an external call centre, but now it is an online tool on the website answering questions regarding processes and legal recourses to counter corruption.
- 14.
Details as of April 7, 2016. This includes 35,280 reports of bribes paid, 2,872 reports of bribe demands successfully resisted and 965 instances of honest officials who did not demand bribes.
- 15.
For example, a bribe report reported in New Delhi (Is anybody doing anything?? 2014) was merely a rant about the nature of the website. However, the bribe amount added was Rs. 1,410,065,408, thereby leaving the city of Delhi with an absurdly high per-individual average bribe paid.
- 16.
Email correspondence and response to a questionnaire sent by the author to the managers of the website in April 2016.
- 17.
At the latest count, 30 countries have started similar sites based on the same brand.
- 18.
Email response to a questionnaire from the managers of the site, April 2016.
- 19.
In the NREGA, civil society actors are deeply involved in decision- and policy-making through various advisory bodies and task forces, which not only go into matters of high policy regarding the act of corruption but also into designing processes, such as software programmes.
- 20.
Laws constituting Lokayuktas also task these bodies with addressing the question of maladministration. However, most of them function as grievance redressal and investigation authorities and do not pay attention to analytical studies of sectors with a view to bringing out sectoral white papers on corruption.
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Raghunandan, T.R. (2018). Measuring Corruption in India: Work in Slow Progress. In: Malito, D., Umbach, G., Bhuta, N. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Indicators in Global Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62707-6_17
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