Political corruption, the misuse of public office for private gain, is a global phenomenon capable of paralyzing a country's development and diverting its precious resources from the public needs of the entire nation. Corruption creates a black market immune from formal government control; indeed, it generates the "black dollars" that purchase the decision-making power of public officials. The result can be a criminalization of the entire political and bureaucratic system that further restricts the government's ability to enact well-intentioned and much-needed reform. While every nation tolerates a certain amount of corruption, the level of this abuse varies wildly across the globe. In general, the least corrupt nations are almost always the most developed as well.

India, the second most populous nation in the world, is also one of the most corrupt. According to Transparency International's report for 2000, India is the 69th most corrupt country in the world, out of 90 countries surveyed.

Corruption is anti-poor, antinational, and anti-economic development. Out of a population of greater than one billion in India, 26 percent live below the poverty line. Any welfare policies addressing the needs of the poor are greatly limited by the corruption that permeates the bureaucratic apparatus involved with such redistribution. Out of the Rs. 150 million (US$3.75 million) spent in the public distribution system to provide food to the poor, 31 percent of the grains and 36 percent of the sugar were leaked into the black market. This means that nearly Rs. 50 million (US$1 million) worth of subsidies are not reaching their intended beneficiaries; in a sense, food is being snatched away from the mouths of the poor.

Corruption is anti-national. In the fighting over Kashmir, the Kashmiri militants have been financed from outside the national borders of India. To get this money, the militants used the Hawala route--a method of transferring money in and out of the country outside of the official banking system. In the early 1990s, police investigating how Kashmiri militants got their funds stumbled onto the Hawala route and the diaries of Hawala operators. In the expose of the Hawala operation, many members of the power elite in India--namely politicians, bureaucrats, and businessmen--were found to be involved with the redistribution of funds into the Kashmiri revolt.

Finally, corruption is anti-development. According to the UN Development Project Report for South Asia in 1999, if the corruption levels in India came down to that of the Scandinavian countries, India's GDP growth would increase by 1.5 percent, and foreign direct investment would grow by 12 percent. In fact, the black market in India, according to some estimates, constitutes 40 percent of India's economic activity. That means that almost half of the wealth produced in India is unaccountable to the state, and hence untaxable; thus, the population is deprived of the revenue necessary for improvements in infrastructure, health, and education.

Official Response

The process of combating this epidemic in India has been slow in coming. The Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) is the culmination of half a century of momentum to address the issue of corruption.

The Indian government commissioned the CVC to ensure the effective implementation of the Prevention of Corruption Act, which focuses on the leaking of public funds via India's extensive bureaucratic system. The number of public servants in the central government is four million, but the CVC has jurisdiction only over the highest-ranking officials.

The origin of the CVC can be traced to the Mundhra financial scandal in the late 1950s. In response to this scandal, the government-appointed Santhanam Committee recommended setting up a commission that would have jurisdiction over only Indian government officials. However, this administrative order, because of its limited scope, restricted the CVC from effectively combating the roots of corruption within India's basic public services, such as the Indian Administrative Service, which include the Indian Police Service, and the Indian Forest Service.

In order for real progress to take place, the CVC must do more than its statutory position and the law require. But forces within the government have been reluctant to change, and only after four years of debate has the government issued a resolution for the CVC to execute its full authority. As it stands today, the CVC's mandate is to "inquire or cause investigation wherein it is alleged that a non-elected public servant has committed an offense under the Prevention of Corruption Act of 1988." The CVC is the superintendent of all vigilance offices within the federal and state governments.

Over the last 2.5 years, the CVC has tried to adopt effective strategies to tackle the issue of corruption. The first step taken was to define the role of the CVC in a larger context. Consider the story of the three masons building a temple. A visiting saint passing by asked one of the masons what he was doing. The mason replied that he was carrying bricks from one place to another. The saint asked the second mason what he was doing. The reply was that he was working eight hours a day to earn his livelihood. He asked the third mason what he was doing. The mason replied that he was participating in the building of the temple.

The reinvented CVC could have taken the attitude of the first mason, saying that his function was only to dispose of the complaints that were received. After all, the CVC's traditional role was only advisory. The members of the CVC also could have taken the attitude of the second mason and looked upon their positions as nothing more than a steady source of income (a theme that is sadly prevalent among many public servants in the developing world). But we at the CVC have chosen the third option. We wish to use the CVC as an instrument for organizing all the disparate anti-corruption forces in India to fight corruption in this large country.

Roots of Corruption

Corruption in India follows a vicious cycle, but the root of the problem lies in the corruption of the political system. In a democratic government, every political party needs to raise funds, and the sources of such funds greatly affect the motivations and actions of the politicians who benefit from them. Without transparency in the fundraising process, corrupt money begets corrupt political actions. In the days of Gandhi and the struggle for independence in the 1940s, political parties collected funds openly and fully disclosed their sources. But the restrictions on contributions to political parties imposed in the 1960s probably led to the practice of fundraising without official disclosure. Today, the vast majority of political funds in India comes in the form of "black money," which is not regulated by the state, and most likely gained through earlier corrupt deals at the state's expense.