It’s international anti-corruption day today, and despite the rise of India as a growth engine in the world economy and attractive for investors and new businesses to set up, its culture of bribery does put off its charm quite a bit. According to a just-released survey, 66 per cent of Indian businesses paid bribes in recent months to get things done.
More worrisome, 54 per cent of businesses said they were forced to pay up. Most bribes are still cash-based in the country, with the aim primarily to speed up processing of documents and clearances, qualifying a supplier, secure quotations and orders and even to collect due payments. While more than half of those surveyed admitted they paid in cash, the next popular way, with 30 per cent of respondent claims, was to pay through a third-party agent.
The India Business Corruption Survey 2024 was done by LocalCircles, which came up with the findings based on the more than 18,000 responses they got from some 159 districts across the country.
Ironically, the findings come days after Union Industries Minister Piyush Goyal launched the CII Ease of Doing Business portal. India has also moved up on the Ease of Doing Business index, though from the face of it, a lot more needs to be done to make processes transparent and process-based, as well as give teeth to the Prevention of Corruption (Amendment) Act 2018.
“Government offices across states continue to be the breeding ground for bribes paid by businesses despite some measures implemented to reduce corruption,” said a statement released by LocalCircles, “It must also be noted that public sector enterprises and even some private sector enterprises also have officials engaging in bribery when someone is doing business with them.”
However, all is not gloomy. The trends show that bribery has actually come down in the last one year. Twenty-six per cent of those who responded to the question on how bribery demands have changed in the past 12 months, said that there were fewer transactions with lesser amounts exchanging hands, while 15 per cent said that transaction numbers remained the same, though the aggregate value of bribes given came down.
Some believe digitisation of government offices or introduction of systems to remove human interfaces could be a reason behind the seeming reduction in bribery practices in the country.
