Kerala least corrupt state in India

Navhind Times - Panjim,India

UNI New Delhi : The highly literate Kerala is the least corrupt state in the country while Bihar is at the bottom of the list of the list in global corruption watchdog, Transparency International’s first state-wise survey of corruption in Indian bureaucracy.

Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra follow Kerala as the least corrupt states on a list of 20 states surveyed by Transparency International India to find out how much a common man has to pay as bribes to avail public services.

Delhi comes 11th after Chhattisgarh (6th), Punjab (7th), West Bengal (8th), Orissa (9th) and Uttar Pradesh (10th). Tamil Nadu is placed 12th followed by Haryana, Jharkhand, Assam and Rajasthan.

Karnataka is on an unenviable 17th position while Madhya Pradesh is 18th. Jammu and Kashmir is only behind Bihar in the quantity of corruption.

The survey, conducted by Transparency International India along with the Centre for Media Studies (CMS) in 356 villages spread across 151 districts in 20 states, reveals that the common citizens pay bribes of Rs 21,068 crore every year.

Of the 11 public services focused in the survey, the police department comes out as the most corrupt with an overwhelming 80 per cent of the respondents saying they had paid a bribe to register a case or take action in a registered case.

In Kerala, all the 11 public services are ranked the least corrupt in the country. Assam police is the most corrupt in the country while the national capital has the dubious distinction of having the second most corrupt public distribution system after Bihar.

The survey concentrated on “petty corruption” (not involving huge government or corporate transactions) in schools, police, land administration, judiciary, power supply, government hospitals, rural financial institutions, municipal services, income tax, PDs and water supply.

In Maharashtra, the municipal services rank among the top five corrupt in the country while water supply in West Bengal is the most corrupt among the states.

Judiciary and land administration comes across as the most corrupt public services after the police. In judiciary, 41 per cent of those who paid bribes said they did it to influence judgment, 31 per cent to speed up or delay judgment and another 28 per cent for routine jobs like listing cases, says the survey.

In municipal services, nearly three-fourths of the bribe-givers did so for getting their building or modification plans approved. In spite of its notorious reputation, the income tax department comes off as a low corruption department.

Among essential services, government hospitals are seen as the most corrupt while people pay bribes to get admission for their wards in schools. Corruption is also rampant in schools, especially in the case of issuing school leaving certificates and even promotion of children, the survey says.

“The strong tradition of civil society and high awareness have contributed to Kerala being the least corrupt state,” says former Indian naval chief, Admiral (retd) R H Tahiliani, Transparency International India chairman.

Last year, a Transparency International survey on corruption had put India 90th on a list of 143 countries. According to a United Nations conference on corruption in the same year, the annual cost of corruption was estimated at $ 1.5 trillion or roughly 5 per cent of the world gross domestic product.