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Integrity Scorecard

By Ritu Sarin

• January 2008: World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick revealed "unacceptable indicators" of fraud and corruption in five health projects in India. The tuberculosis, malaria and AIDS projects had joint funding from the Indian government for US$568 million. Allegations of bid-rigging, bribery and manipulating bid prices were made against Indian officials, and stiff sanctions followed.

• January 2008: A police raid on a residential clinic near Delhi busted a global kidney transplant racket. The following month, Dr. Amit Kumar, the alleged kingpin of the illegal organ trade who previously had been in and out of jail for similar offenses, was arrested in Nepal. He and his accomplices had performed more than 600 kidney operations on donors, (poor laborers were paid 30,000 rupees [US$615] per kidney) and used the organs for transplants in foreigners with a history of renal failure.

• July 2008: The Indian Parliament was sitting through a vitriolic two-day confidence vote after the left wing parties withdrew support to the government. The fate of the Manmohan Singh UPA (United Progressive Alliance) coalition government hung in the balance. Minutes before Singh was to speak, three MPs belonging to the main opposition, the Bharatiya Janata Party, upturned bags of currency notes totaling 10 million rupees (US$205,000) before the speaker on a live national TV broadcast. They alleged the cash was part of a payoff offered to them to defect and vote for the ruling party.

These are egregious examples of how scams and fraud routinely compromise India's social fabric. In a year marked by bitter political acrimony and multiple terrorist attacks, the saving grace on the corruption front was that no corruption scam was large enough to challenge the legitimacy of the government, like the Bofors gun scandal did in the 1980s.

In the cases mentioned above, there has been no word of any action taken against erring Indian officials and, in fact, the World Bank has released funds for the same projects again. In the kidney scam, Kumar and his accomplices are languishing in jail, and in the cash-for-vote scam, the Parliamentary inquiry remained inconclusive.

The scams, combined with the lackadaisical response, send a clear signal: corruption remains endemic and the insensitivity of the people, the labyrinthine laws and absence of political will to root out corruption only make matters worse. Even the country's premier planning body, the Planning Commission, admitted in its Tenth Plan Report that "corruption is the most endemic and entrenched manifestation of poor governance in Indian society, so much so it has almost become an accepted reality and a way of life."

But in a country of India's size, how is corruption measured? How does it affect the person on the street? Is corruption reflected in newly constructed flyovers or bridge collapses due to the use of substandard building materials by subcontractors? Or when a traffic constable is caught accepting a bribe? Or can it be gauged from statistics generated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) that add up to a few hundred government officials being censured and demoted every year?

A useful study released by Transparency International India in June 2008 has attempted to bridge this gap between the perception of corruption vis-à-vis the experience of Indians indulging in it.

The focus of this year's study was on Below Poverty Line (BPL) households in all states. The results were revealing: one-third of the 23,000 BPL households surveyed paid bribes to procure one of 11 public services, ranging from 3.4 percent paying bribes for school education to a high of 48 percent of surveyed households paying bribes for dealing with the police. The survey also found that the police and land records or registration services stood out for their "alarming level" of corruption.

Interestingly, even the government's 2005 grand employment scheme, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), was criticized, with 47 percent of the surveyed poor households saying that bribes were commonplace. This was evidence that corruption can mar a prestigious national program monitored at the level of the Prime Minister's Office. Earlier, social audits of the NREGS exposed instances of altered job cards and missing signatures on muster rolls in some states.

Transparency International India's executive director, Anupama Jha, explained why its findings pointed toward an even more worrisome trend: "Thousands of poor respondents told us they were denied hospital services since they could not afford the bribes. This is a violation of basic human rights. In such a scenario, Indians would continue to nurse ambitions of joining the corrupt bureaucratic workforce, rather than become entrepreneurs. Continuing corruption would eventually slow down economic growth and undermine human development."

This may well be true. The effect of a global recession and the hard political reality of the rise of regional parties paving the way for more coalition governments could result in cronyism and corruption continuing unabated. Fractured election mandates and the constraints of balancing interests of coalition partners have unquestionably muted the government's resolve to introduce and legislate tough anti-corruption measures and laws.

There are several examples. The most glaring is the failure of successive governments to legislate the proposed Lok Pal bill, aimed at curbing corruption in high places. After four decades of delay, a consensus on bringing the prime minister himself under the provisions of the bill has eluded the Manmohan Singh government.

The other glaring delay has been the passage of the Judges Inquiry bill, which has been in the works for years. The predecessor NDA (National Democratic Alliance) regime prepared the first draft. The present impasse over the bill as it awaits parliamentary clearance comes at a time when an unprecedented number of charges are faced by members of the lower and higher judiciary, something even Chief Justice K. G. Balakrishnan admitted he was "very concerned" about.

For only the second time, the country will witness the commencement of proceedings against a High Court judge, Justice Soumitra Sen from Kolkata, for his alleged misconduct in depositing fines related to a lawsuit into his personal bank account. A judicial inquiry has also been initiated after the shocking episode of 1.5 million rupees (US$30,000) allegedly being delivered to the house of another High Court judge, this time in Punjab. Yet another recent scandal involves alleged illegal withdrawals from the Provident Fund by 34 judges belonging to the lower and higher judiciary. The case is likely to be probed by the CBI.

These judicial scams have surfaced over four months when the country has no mechanism in place to investigate cases of corruption against members of the judiciary.

The only silver lining in an otherwise bleak scenario is the transparency ushered in by the 2005 Right to Information Act (RTI), which is having a positive effect in curbing petty corruption.

A perspective on how this happened is given by Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah: "When people know that government decisions and files can be sought by RTI applicants, they are discouraged from indulging in petty corruption. This has had a salutary effect in bringing down corruption in services like land allotments, pension grants and issuance of ration cards. On the other side, RTI has not yet made a dent on big-ticket corruption cases. I hope that will happen in years to come."