Petty corruption witnesses decline in India: Report

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 27

In the last over a decade petty corruption in India has witnessed a “perceptible decline”, claimed Centre for Media Studies (CMS), an independent think tank, in its report titled “Petty Corruption on Decline: Perception or Reality”.

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The think-tank’s 2017 report, which was released today by NITI Aayog member Bibek Debroy, noted: “Corruption in citizen-centric public services indicates a decline in what people have to pay as bribe. In fact, the decline is significant in case of some public services such as police and judicial services, when compared to 2005 levels.”

As Debroy lauded CMS-Indian Corruption Study (CMS-ICS) survey “a reliable indicator for the trend of corruption in public services”, in its foreword, former Chief Vigilance Commissioner (CVC) N Vittal mentioned that this year’s report is “unique as it brings out the trend that deserve to be taken note further by the academics of the country”.

Incidentally, the CMS in a statement claimed that during the survey it covered more than 3,000 households from over 200 rural and urban clusters of 20 states, which included Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan among others.

It also mentioned the services the survey covered, which included PDS, electricity, health/hospital, school education, water supply, banking services, police, judicial services, land/housing and tax (only urban) related services.

In the statement the think-tank claimed that the bribe that citizen has to pay has “come down more specifically in the last three years”, and particularly in the case of public services which have adopted newer interactive ICT technologies.

Among the key findings of the report revealed that in 2017 one-third of the households experienced corruption in public services at least once during the last one year, while 53 per cent households had reported so in 2005.

“Dependency on basic public services continues to be high. Public services, which were interacted with by more households include banking (75%), PDS (74%), public health/hospital (72%) and electricity (70%). Compared to 2005, households interacting for banking related services saw a huge leap from 10% (2005) to 75% (2017).