Friday, April 8, 2011

Corruption in India

Corruption is using of power for illegitimate private gain. Political corruption and bureaucratic corruption in India are major concerns.  For 2010, India was ranked 87th of 178 countries in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index. As of 2010, India is amongst the most corrupt governments in the world, though one of the least corrupt in South Asia.India needs to deal with the malice of corruption and improve governance in Asia's third-largest economy, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on 18 March 2011.

India tops the list for black money in the entire world with almost US$1456 billion in Swiss banks (USD 1.4 trillion approximately) in the form of black money. According to the data provided by the Swiss Banking Association Report (2006), India has more black money than the rest of the world combined.Indian Swiss bank account assets are worth 13 times the country’s national debt. Indian black money is sometimes physically transferred abroad.

Criminalization of Indian politics is a serious problem. In July 2008 The Washington Post reported that nearly a fourth of the 540 Indian Parliament members faced criminal charges.An international watchdog conducted a study on the illicit flight of money from India, perhaps the first ever attempt at shedding light on a subject steeped in secrecy, concludes that India has been drained of $462 billion (over Rs 20 lakh crore) between 1948 and 2008. The amount is nearly 40% of India's annual gross domestic product.Independent reports have recently calculated India's traditionally ruling political-family's (Gandhi's) net worth to be anywhere between Rs.42,345 crore (US$9.4 billion) to Rs.83,900 crore (US$18.63 billion), most of it in the form of illegal monies.

Despite this, Government of India is sitting on unused foreign aid of over Rs.100,000 crore (US$22.2 billion) reflecting inadequate planning by ministries like urban development, water resources and energy, a report by government auditor Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has said. “As on March 31, 2010, unutilised committed external assistance was of the order of Rs.1,05,339 crore,” the CAG said in its report tabled in Parliament on 18 March 2011. In fact, the Indian government has paid commitment charges of Rs.86.11 crore (US$19.12 million) out of taxpayer-money during 2009-10 in the form of penalty for not timely utilising the aid approved by multilateral and bilateral lending agencies.

It's Time to Wake up and Fight Against Corruption!

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