– Indians pay $4.6 Billion in bribes!

India is 88th on the Corruption Index! We Indians pay Rs 210 Billion (roughly USD 4.6 billion) in bribes to our Government employees!

The departments most corrupt are Indian Police and Lower Judiciary and the states most corrupt is BIHAR! The least is Kerala.

I am pretty sure that the Politicians would not be very far – in fact they would be the top!! It is instructive that the three arms of the Government – Executive, Legislative, and Judiciary are all corrupt! So where is the hope? Probably with economics picking up speed… Private sector might start pushing the bureaucracy and the Government.. as Infosys and WIPRO are doing in Bangalore!

Here is the article from Sify.com

Indians pay $4.6 billion in bribes each year to obtain basic services such as water and electricity, Transparency International said on Wednesday.

The survey, titled “India Corruption Study 2005,” sought the opinions of 14,405 respondents across India. “The total monetary value of petty corruption to get 11 basic services is estimated to be Rs 210 billion ($4.6 billion),” the report said.

Sixty-two per cent of respondents said they had “first-hand experience of paying a bribe or using a contact to get a job done in a public office”, the report said.

The other departments named by Indians as corrupt were private schools — where parents paid money to ensure their children gained admission — the lower judiciary, government hospitals and the income tax department, the report said.

The 11 services were chosen based on their public value, availability across the country and monopolistic nature of the amenities, the report said. The survey found almost 75 per cent of those surveyed said they felt levels of corruption had gone up in the past year.

The corruption index scores showed that people said they paid because officials had the potential to disrupt business and home life if they did not, the report said.

Indian police were ranked the most corrupt with as many as 80 per cent of those who had interacted with the department saying they had parted with money to get work done.

The lower judiciary was ranked the second-most corrupt service with land administration and municipal services — electricity and water — in the third and fourth slots.

Bihar was found to be the most corrupt in the country while Kerala was voted the least corrupt. Suggestions made by the respondents to cut down on corruption included more competition, performance-based allocation of funds and greater transparency in the application process to reduce the role of middle-men, the survey said.

In its report released in London on Tuesday, Transparency International ranked India the 88th most corrupt country out of the 159 surveyed.