Bribe report analysis: Integrity plummets in the registration department
2011- The golden era of corruption started with the uncovering of the Telecom sector scam. As politicians came under the scanner in succession ; it seemed like a major face-off. On the other hand one citizens battled against the graft and Anna Hazare emerged as the face of the anti-corruption crusade. The movement for a strong and robust anti-corruption enforcement- the Lokpal, intensified as deliberations and discussions around the various draft versions surfaced. While dialogues centred on the Adarsh society housing scam, the Common Wealth Games scam and the 2G spectrum scam, questions around tackling retail/ transactional corruption continued to hover at discussions.
Retail/ transactional cases of corruption have been a part and parcel of our everyday lives. Like invisible parasites these have been eating away at every aspect of a common man’s life. It has almost become impossible to undertake any transaction or get any work done without having to pay those extra bucks under the table and this is evident from the numerous bribes reported on ipaidabribe.com. Last year between December 26, 2010 and December 26, 2011 we received 11,719 reports amounting to a whopping Rs 32,30,89,660.
Bangalore tops the bribe meter with 2,954 bribes collected only to be followed by Hyderabad at 983, Mumbai at 912, Chennai at 788 and Pune at 586. While these figures indicate the incidences of corruption, the magnitude of corruption across these cities offers a different picture.
Bangalore again tops the bribe amount meter as the total amount collected stands at Rs 97,269,715; followed by Mumbai at Rs 35,121,440, New Delhi at Rs 19,280,289, Kolkata at Rs 15,799,550 and Hyderabad at Rs 13,871,569. As intriguing as it might seem, this shows the correlation of bribe count to bribe amount.
Moving on to our various civic departments, an alarming amount of Rs 7,480,7331 was collected as bribes by the Registration Department! This is followed by the Municipal Services Department at Rs 41,420,943, the Education Department at Rs 39,696,524 and other departments at 32,123,480. However, the dynamics of bribe count to bribe amount is visible even across departments as the Police Department tops the bribe count with 4,435 bribes, followed by the Registration Department at 1563, Motor Vehicles at 1024, and Municipal Services at 959.
While the number of bribes collected by one department may be less than that of another department, one cannot rule out the possibility that the amount collected by the same department maybe more as is clearly seen in the case of the registration department. Therefore, incidences of corruption might not correspond to the magnitude of corruption.
In such a case how do us one decide which department is the most corrupt?
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