Corruption Under Democracy In India

Corruption became a part of our administrative and political culture. Our sixty six years of existence as an Independent nation and sixty three years of working of the constitution have resulted a common experience to all Indian citizens, one cannot go to any public organization or offices today and get the services which they are supposed to get with¬out either paying bribe or bringing influence by way of recommendations or references from VIPs. Corruption has affected our total political, administrative, economic system like a cancer disease. Despite having reforms to curtail and control bureaucratic discretion, licence raj, open the economy to the rest of the world, improve the transparency and accountability, corruption has scaled up even further. Corruption is a major serious problem country facing today. Highly corrupt India is poorly governed may be the main reason for rampant and widespread corruption in India. Pnenomenon that one has to face practically at every level and in every walk of life. In India administrative and political cor¬ruption is no longer surprises, it is a common thing. Corruption became a part of our administrative and political culture. Generally, term corruption means misuse of public authority or office for the benefit of personal gain. As Santhanam commit¬tee pointed out “corruption can exist only if there is someone willing to corrupt and capable of corrupting” our Ancient state¬craft text Kautilya’s Arthasastra noted about corruption “It was not easy to detect corruption, just as it was impossible to know when a fish moving in water is drinking it or not so, it was not possible to find out when the government servant incharge of public business misappropriates money or not. He therefore prescribed very heavy penalty for corrupt officials, he did not recommend any punishment to the bribe giver because he con¬sidered such person to be victim of the corruption. He advocat-ed the compensating the bribe given for the loss”.