We have become 14 per cent less corrupt!

 Ashok Malhotra, even from behind the bars, would have been really
amused to read the latest report of Transparency International. "A few
counties, most notably India'" the Report went on, "managed to
bootstrap themselves out of the truly corrupt group". In the
corruption perception index (CPI) we scored 3.3 in 2006, up from 2.9 a
year back. That is undoubtedly encouraging.

Corruption comes from three sources. First, it erupts when the market
is not allowed to function. Until recently this was a major source of
corruption. The second is public services including police, judiciary,
land administration, education, and so on. The third which is also the
most intractable is corruption at the political level.

Until 1991 the market remained replaced by controls and regulations.
That gave rise to a scarcity economy in which corruption thrived.
Every commodity right from cars to coal the production and prices of
which were controlled became a source of corruption. In 1991 most of
these controls were knocked off. Industrial licensing which restricted
production capacity, price controls which left unsatisfied demand,
import controls which put foreign goods at a premium, exchange control
which kept the rupee artificially overvalued, and so on had made
corruption a way of life from which the country now finds it
difficult to extricate itself. With marketisation, at least one source
of corruption has been largely eliminated.

Corruption that is still confronted by the common citizen is at public
services level. A survey made last year by Transparency International
revealed that in India police top in corruption followed by lower
judiciary and land administration. The common citizens paid Rs.21,068
crores by way of bribes. Kerala was the least corrupt; it is Bihar and
J & K where corruption was most rampant.

Corruption at the public services level is hard to crack when
officials enjoy discretionary powers but has been reduced to some
extent due to the introduction of e-governance and of the Right To
Information Act (RTI). A lot more improvement can be made with greater
transparency in operations and accessibility of the relevant
information through the internet. Such measures would have made it
possible to detect the recent Malhotra slum scam much earlier or
prevented it altogether.

Corruption at the political level could not be eradicated even in the
most industrialised countries. In democratic regimes elections cost;
and an extra crore of rupees generally gives a contestant an added
advantage over his rival. Possibly State funding of political parties
can reduce the incidence of corruption but cannot eliminate it
altogether.

That Transparency International which has been indexing corruption the
world over should take India out of the most corrupt group is
encouraging. This improvement may be due to increase in incomes and
greater transparency in government. That by itself is no satisfaction.
We still rank 74th among 158 countries. It is therefore important to
pursue administrative reforms more vigorously, enforce greater
transparency in public offices and bring the guilty to book without delay.

(The writer is president, RPG Foundation)