Our leaders are most corrupt...

Indian political parties and their elected representatives are most corrupt in the country. But the government, which comprises elected representatives, has been able to tackle corruption effectively.

Updated on: Jun 4, 2009, 24:47:09 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Indian political parties and their elected representatives are most corrupt in the country. But the government, which comprises elected representatives, has been able to tackle corruption effectively.

This was the popular perception that emerged in a global survey – Global Corruption Barometer – conducted by international corruption watchdog Transparency International (TI) across 69 countries.

The survey, conducted during the October-November 2008 period, was released on Wednesday.

Close to 58 per cent people in India’s five metros – Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata and Bangalore –considered political parties to be most corrupt. But there was a sizeable improvement in the perception of the government’s role in tackling corruption since 2007.

“People believed that the Right to Information Act has helped in combating corruption. Social audit, citizen’s charters and technology are wonderful tools to check corruption,” Admiral (retired) R.H. Tahilani, who heads the Indian chapter of Transparency International, said.

But Tahilani said, “There was rampant use of black money in the recent general elections.” Poll officials around the country seized about Rs 60 crore of black money during the elections in April-May 2009.

Election Commissioner S.Y. Quraishi, after the final round of polling on May 13, termed the influence of money in Indian elections as the “biggest challenge” for the country’s democracy.

As many as 10 per cent respondents said members of Parliament and legislators indulge in corrupt practices, while Indian respondents – 13 per cent of the total 73,000 – found bureaucrats also to be corrupt. But only three per cent reported corruption in judiciary.

Just nine per cent respondents said they paid bribe to government officials as compared to 12 per cent in 2007. The survey, however, found that the poor pay more bribe than the rich.

The India Corruption Study 2008 revealed that Indians below poverty line paid bribes worth Rs 900 crore every year to avail of basic and need-based services.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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