Public sector shames the country

India’s public sector is perceived as significantly corrupt by ‘business people and country experts’, according to a survey done by Transparency International which was released in Delhi on Wednesday. The 2012 Corruption Perception Index (CPI) reveals that India’s score is 36 on a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 represents highly corrupt and 100 very clean. Two thirds of the 176 countries on the survey list score below 50. “It shows public institutions need to be more transparent and politicians and government officials more accountable,” Transparency International India said.

Further, 93 of the 176 countries are less corrupt than India, with India ranking at the 94th position. Denmark, Finland and New Zealand are seen as the least corrupt, followed by Sweden and Singapore.  Afghanistan, North Korea and Somalia are on the other extreme. Due to change in methodology, the data cannot be compared with last year’s data which had India ranking 95 out of 183 countries.

The CPI is a ‘survey of surveys’, and the data is collected by various institutions specialising in ‘governance and business climate analysis’. Some of the data sources include the World Bank, World Economic Forum survey, Transparency International Bribe Payers survey among others.

“In the last few years, media and civil society organisations have played a very proactive role in highlighting corruption at the level of governance. This could be one of the reasons for the perception of high corruption in India,” said Anupama Jha, executive director of Transparency India.

While corruption has always been a malaise cited by people when talking about India’s ills, last year has seen the rise of the Anna Hazare and Arvind Kejriwal led anti-corruption movement at the National level, now split and making electoral inroads.

The survey, though, restricts itself to the public sector, and cannot be seen as representative of all public opinion. For that, Jha explains Transparency has a survey called the Global Corruption Barometer. She said GCB also includes private sector and media. With the levels of corruption in the private sector becoming the focus of corruption exposes recently, and words like ‘crony capitalism’ appearing in the public debate, that would make for an interesting survey.