The Hindu Business Line : No sense of shame

AT LEAST about the weather, everyone talks about it though no one does anything about it. About corruption, which bids fair to become a shameless way of life, nobody finds any need even to talk about it, let alone do something about it.

The watchdog agency, Transparency International (TI), however, dutifully comes out year after year with a painstaking compilation of corruption perception indices of countries based on opinions gathered from tourists, journalists, business persons, natives and other respondents. It, then, lists them beginning with the cleanest (getting 10 or close to it) and ending with those perceived to be the least honest (approaching zero in the scale).

No country has so far been able to beat the score (above 9) of Iceland, Finland, New Zealand, Denmark, Singapore, Sweden and Switzerland in providing corruption-free governance. The industrialised countries are generally between 7 and 8. Chad and Bangladesh are perceived to be the most corrupt in the tally for 2005, scoring a little above 1. India has consistently remained at around 2.8 out of 10 in probity. This year it has imperceptibly improved its score to 2.9.

TI estimates that around Rs 21,068 crore is paid annually as bribes by Indians to get basic services to which they are entitled from public bodies. The police in every State was found to be the most corrupt with the lower judiciary, government hospitals, land administration and civic services coming immediately behind.

In the Central Government set-up, the income tax department is perceived to be the worst. Of the 20 States ranked, Kerala has the distinction of being the cleanest. The others rank thus after Kerala: Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chattisgarh, Punjab, West Bengal, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Jharkhand, Assam, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir and Bihar.

All this must be water on a buffalo's back for the political and governing classes. Fleecing the people must seem a harmless pastime before heinous crimes such as murder, rape and the like of which so many legislators and Ministers stand accused.

B. S. Raghavan

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