Corruption in India

rdf:langString Corruption in India

rdf:langString Corruption in India is an issue which affects economy of central, state and local government agencies in many ways. Corruption is blamed for stunting the economy of India. A study conducted by Transparency International in 2005 recorded that more than 62% of Indians had at some point or another paid a bribe to a public official to get a job done. In 2008, another report showed that about 50% of Indians had first hand experience of paying bribes or using contacts to get services performed by public offices. In 2021 their Corruption Perceptions Index ranked the country in 85th place out of 180, on a scale where the lowest-ranked countries are perceived to have the most honest public sector.Various factors contribute to corruption, including officials siphoning money from government social welfare schemes. Examples include the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and the National Rural Health Mission. Other areas of corruption include India's trucking industry which is forced to pay billions of rupees in bribes annually to numerous regulatory and police stops on interstate highways. The media has widely published allegations of corrupt Indian citizens stashing millions of rupees in Swiss banks. Swiss authorities denied these allegations, which were later proven in 2015–2016. In July 2021, India's Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) replied to Right To Information (RTI) requests stating undeclared assets of Rs 20,078 crore identified by them in India and abroad following the investigation till June 2021. The causes of corruption in India include excessive regulations, complicated tax and licensing systems, numerous government departments with opaque bureaucracy and discretionary powers, monopoly of government controlled institutions on certain goods and services delivery, and the lack of transparent laws and processes. There are significant variations in the level of corruption and in the government's efforts to reduce corruption across India.