Corruption has become so rampant in India that common man doesn't find a way out of it. Recently, a survey was conducted by Transparency International India on corruption turns the focus on where it matters — everyday life. The accuracy of the nation-wide sample survey, conducted by ORG- MARG, on the trials faced by the citizen in delivery of ten public services needs to be established with close scrutiny. But the picture that the estimates paint is an ugly one:
1. As per the estimates, in the year 2002, Indians were forced to pay an estimated Rs. 26,728 crores in delivery of public services in health, education, power, police, the PDS, telecom, taxation, the railways, land administration — and the judiciary. This works out to per capita bribery of Rs. 267 that year. You can very well imagine how bad the situation has become.
2. The three largest sectors where citizens were forced to make illegal payments were health, power and education. The smallest amount extracted was in the Railways, thanks perhaps to the computerization of railway reservation.
3. The sources of corruption as reported by those among the 5,157 people surveyed are familiar. In health, huge payments extracted for better treatment by doctors and nursing staff, for supply of medicines and purchases at higher costs from designated pharmacies. Surprisingly, as much as 77 per cent of the respondents who said they paid bribes, reported they had to make illegal payments to doctors. In education, corruption is in donations for admission and extra fees. (With government school education free, the reporting of corruption in this sector suggests that the respondents were also speaking of additional "costs'' in private schools, although the survey was supposed to be only about corruption in public services. To that extent the estimates of petty corruption in the report must be viewed with caution.)
4. The surprise must be the quantum of bribes extracted in the power sector, in both rural and urban areas, for an electricity connection, for better supply of electricity, for correcting wrong readings and so on. The huge amount of bribes paid in the electricity sector mean that there is another side to the official story in this area, which is of large subsidies and the citizen not paying for the power they receive. Forced payments seem to sit side-by-side with powerful groups stealing electricity and some others enjoying subsidized power.
5. Public services in health and education are used now mainly by the poor and lower middle classes. The quality of these services has also deteriorated in recent years. The huge amount of bribery in these sectors means that the poor have to pay for low quality services.
6. If over Rs. 25,000 crores are paid in the form of petty corruption, large-scale corruption must be as large and more likely double this amount. If the figures are correct, then at least between Rs. 50,000 crores and Rs. 100,000 crores are generated as black money every year — or the equivalent of about 5 to 10 per cent of India's GDP.
No one can escape corruption in every day life. But this is the first time that we have some idea of how large this adds up to.Even after 62 years ofindia's independence , the plight of common man has worsened. Corrupt public servants , corrupt judges , corrupt police , etc are proving to be parasites leading 5-star lifestyles at taxpayer's expense. They in their greed for money , bribe are aiding abetting terrorists , separatists , naxalites, underworld mafia , etc covertly overtly , backstabbing our motherland. These corrupt public servants are more cruel than Jalianwallah Bagh butcher General Dyer of british army. If Mahatma Gandhi was alive today , he would have been disgusted with the present way of democratic government , functioning of public servants would have died heart broken. If our freedom martyrs like sri.Bhagath Singh or Sri. Madan Lal Dingra or Sri.Subhash Chandra Bose would have been alive , they would have given a befitting reply to this corrupt police , corrupt judges , public servants.
Whenever , a common man raises his voice for justice , he is silenced in various ways by the criminal nexus. The said criminal nexus has previously tried to silence me in many ways including attempts to murder , closure of newspaper etc.
