MUMBAI: India had the highest bribery rate among the 16 Asia Pacific countries surveyed by Transparency International. Nearly seven in 10 Indians who had accessed public services had paid a bribe. Contrast this with the least corrupt country - Japan, where only 0.2% of the respondents reported paying a bribe.
The only silver lining is that over a half of the respondents from India were positive about the government's efforts to combat bribery. Even as the government's efforts to tackle bribery were appreciated, slightly more than 40% of the respondents viewed that corruption had increased over the past twelve months. 63% of the respondents in India also felt that they as individuals had the power to fight corruption.
The Global Corruption Barometer for the Asia Pacific Region was released by Transparency International (TI) - an anti-corruption global civil society organisation, at the stroke of one minute past midnight on March 7, in Berlin.
Approximately 90 crore people, or just over one in four, across 16 countries in Asia Pacific, including some of its biggest economies like India and China, are estimated to have paid a bribe to access public services. For its report - People and Corruption: Asia Pacific, part of the Global Corruption Barometer series, TI spoke to nearly 22,000 people in these countries about their recent experiences with corruption.
India was followed closely by Vietnam where around two thirds (65%) had paid a bribe when accessing public services.
Across the Asia Pacific region, just 22% of the respondents thought that corruption had decreased while 40% of the respondents (41% in India) were of the option that it was on the rise. In mainland China, 73% of the respondents felt that the level of corruption had worsened. This was the highest of any country surveyed.
For the purpose of this survey, TI concentrated on bribes paid for procuring six key public services viz public schools, public hospitals, official documents (such as identification card, voters card), public utility services, the police and courts. In toto, 38% of the poorest people surveyed said they paid a bribe either for access to a service or for quicker delivery. In some countries like India, Pakistan and Thailand, it was the poorer section who had to bear the brunt of corruption and pay a bribe.
Nearly 73% of those who paid a bribe in India were from the poorer section of society, in Pakistan and Thailand this percentage was 64% and 46% respectively.
Surprisingly a reverse trend was found in some countries - such as China, where the richer sections were more likely to pay a bribe - perhaps to get a quicker or better quality of service.
"Governments must do more to deliver on their anti-corruption commitments. It's time to stop talking and act. Millions of people are forced to pay bribes for public services and it is the poor who are most vulnerable," said Jose Ugaz, chair of Transparency International.
As many states in India, already have in place the 'Right to Public Services Act' cutting across a number of services, which require that services be delivered within a stipulated time period, the survey results point out the need for further improvement.
In India, respondents reported the highest bribery incident in procuring government healthcare services and even identification related documents. Nearly 59% of the respondents had paid a bribe for such services. Bribes paid for education were next on the list with 58% having reported doing so.
Speaking to TOI, Ilham Mohamed, regional coordinator, South Asia & Mongolia at TI said: "At the state level, anti-corruption policies must be focussed on catering to the poor. Uniform best practices for state levl lokayuktas must be agreed upon and any overlaps with other law enforcement agencies must be resolved at the earliest."
She adds that at the national level, "India needs to urgently align its foreign bribery laws with its UNCAC (United Nations Convention against Corruption) obligations. Signing OECD anti-bribery commission is key in this process. The legal infrastructure for public procurement in India falls under the remit of the General Financial Rules. TI recommends that a national procurement law that incorporates international best practices including debarment, appeal processes and a review processes be enacted. This will substantially reduce fraud in public contracting which will in turn affect the quality of public service delivery. For grand corruption, a key step would be to set up effective enabling regulations and institutions for the LokPal." Across the region, people thought that reporting corruption (22%) followed by refusing to pay bribes (21%) were most effective.
Whatever the government is doing is just window dressing for showing to the public that they are doing something. If the government is truly interested in attacking the scourge of corruption, they should first attack politicians.Even in the Demo exercise, political parties were allowed to keep their black money when actually politicians are the fountainhead of corruption.
This is proved by the following article which appeared in The Telegraph of 09.03.2017.
Poll pile punctures DeMo pride
- Three-fold rise in cash seized in states where elections were held
New Delhi, March 8: Cash seizures from the five states that voted in February-March were more than three times the amount seized during the 2012 elections in these states, despite the post-demonetisation limits on cash withdrawals.
The rise of the seizures from Rs 50.78 crore in 2012 to Rs 184.85 crore challenges the government's claim that the note recall would cleanse India of the "cancer of corruption".
Liquor, drugs and precious metals too have been seized in huge quantities, making it clear that it was business as usual even after the demonetisation.
Its sheer size and political heft ensured that Uttar Pradesh dominated the lists of seizures in all the categories, including drugs, a sphere where Punjab has earned much notoriety in recent years.
Uttar Pradesh accounted for Rs 119.03 crore in cash seizures, followed by Punjab (Rs 58.02 crore), Uttarakhand (Rs 3.38 crore), Goa (Rs 2.24 crore) and Manipur (Rs 2.18 crore).
Some 22.43 lakh litres of liquor worth Rs 64.66 crore were confiscated in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab coming a distant second at 12.43 litres of liquor and lahan (an illicit brew), worth Rs 13.36 crore. Of the 6,264 kilograms of a variety of drugs seized from the five states during the elections, over half (3,218kg) came from Uttar Pradesh while Punjab accounted for 2,598kg.
Goa came up clean in the matter of precious metals. The other four states saw seizures of gold, silver and wristwatches (Rado brand) worth Rs 52.30 crore.
Cash withdrawal limits had been in place through the polls which ended today, although they were relaxed somewhat from February 20, allowing up to Rs 50,000 to be drawn from savings bank accounts per week.
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