corruption in india

Corruption in India is a major issue that adversely affects its economy.  Corruption in the Indian society has prevailed from time immemorial in one form or the other. The basic inception of corruption started with our opportunistic leaders who have already done greater damage to our nation. Political corruption is worst in India. The major cause of concern is that corruption is weakening the political body and damaging the supreme importance of the law governing the society. Nowadays politics is only for criminals and criminals are meant to be in politics. Elections in many parts of

the country have become associated with a host of criminal activities. Threatening voters to vote for a particular candidate or physically prevent voters from going in to the polling booth. In today's scenario, if a person wants a government job he has to pay lakhs of rupees to the higher officials irrespective of satisfying all the eligibility criteria. In every office one has either to give money to the employee concerned or arrange for some sources to get work done. 

Black Money in Switzerland: According to a 2010 The Hindu article, unofficial estimates indicate that Indians had over US$1456 billion in black money stored in Swiss bank (approximately US$1.4 trillion).^]While some news reports claimed that data provided by the Swiss Banking Association Report (2006) showed India has more black money than the rest of the world combined, a more recent report quoted the SBA's Head of International Communications as saying that no such official Swiss Banking Association statistics exist.

Causes of corruption in India

1. Low Pay scales/ Wages: Most of the employees in government sector are paid low wages and salaries  Hence some employees revert to corruption for more financial benefits. 

2. Lack of Strict and fast punishments: Even if some one is found guilty or even caught red-handed by the anti-corruption officials or media, the convicts get less punishment. First they will be suspended for few months or weeks and then re-posted to another location with same Job grade and pay. So this means the official who did the corrupt practice is given a free licence to continue his practice.

3. Lack of Unity in public: Public openly criticize corruption but interestingly there is no unity among the public to stop corruption. If a person wants to get his done his work, he gets it done by corruption means if possible and then later criticizes the  corrupt official. If the public stands united against corruption in such a way that no one is ready to offer bribes to get their work done then the corrupt officials will have no other option but to work in corruption free manner.

During election, politicians try to lure the people by offering money and other things. If these politicians win and get power, they try to regain 10 to 100 times the amount spent for their elections.

4. Lack of transparency in affairs and deals: Many seat selection processes like in education, contracts for job, employee income reports (wealth possession), etc lack transparency. For this purpose, there is a new act namely RTI : right to information, but the act is not strong enough to prevent malpractices.

Measures To Control Corruption:

There are some specific measures to control increasing corruption.

1. The Right to Information Act (RTI) gives one all the required information about the Government, such as what the Government is doing with our tax payments. Under this act, one has the right to ask the Government on any problem which one faces. There is a Public Information Officer (PIO) appointed in every Government department, who is responsible for collecting information wanted by the citizens and providing them with the relevant information on payment of a nominal fee to the PIO. If the PIO refuses to accept the application or if the applicant does not receive the required information on time then the applicant can make a complaint to the respective information commission, which has the power to impose a penalty up to Rs.25, 000 on the errant PIO.
2. Establishment of special courts for speedy justice can be a huge positive aspect. Much time should not elapse between the registration of a case and the delivery of judgment.
3. Another potent check on corruption is Central Vigilance Commission (CVC). It was setup by the Government to advise and guide Central Government agencies in the areas of vigilance.