India to be blamed for plethora of corruption?
By siliconindia   |   Friday, 10 December 2010, 03:29 IST   |    28 Comments
Printer Print Email Email
India to be blamed for plethora of corruption?
Bangalore: Despite the vicious circle of corruption in India which involves scam after scam whether its 2G or Commonwealth, it is still difficult to understand who is to be blamed. The Heritage Foundation, a leading think tank in Washington has reported that it's the country and its policies which is the root cause of rampant corruption in India. The Heritage Foundation said that while long-standing issues such as tax evasion and corruption by the wealthy and by corporations is marring the economy on one side, Indian government on the other side is further stopping the growth by making it difficult for entrepreneurs to start businesses. India ranked "165th out of 183 countries in the World Bank's measure of the difficulty of starting a business," the Heritage Foundation report said. It pinpoints that many ordinary Indians balked at the thought of endless delays and high costs, preferring instead to proceed without the necessary authorisation and hiding their businesses from official scrutiny. Infact, as per Transparency International (TI) survey "Global Corruption Barometer 2010" about 74 percent Indians feel that corruption has increased over the last three years. The black market in India is around 40-50 percent of India's Gross Domestic Product."This black market activity is due to a predatory State, which seeks to control Indian entrepreneurship," the report said, highlighting a recent headline that described how India had lost over $450 billion in illegal capital flows. This money was illegally earned and ideally would never have existed in the first place if the Indian government had not tried to restrict capital movement, the report said. Citing the example of the Commonwealth Games as illustrating the "government's guilt," the report noted that they were plagued by overspending, due to lack of transparency and competition in State contract awards. State-run financials have also made loans in exchange for bribes, a problem which would be eased if the State did not dominate the banking system, the report added. Indians identify that political parties are the most corrupt, followed by police, parliament, public officials, education, business-judiciary-NGO, media, religious bodies, and military. Religious statesman Rajan Zed said that corruption was an important concern and India needs to show commitment for good governance and restore the trust in its institutions and project an image of cleaner and transparent country. Corruption affected everybody but it hurt the poor most and is one of the major obstacles in poverty reduction and impaired democracy.

siliconindia