Monday, August 25, 2008

India Watch-11: "Rs 900 crore Bribe for Civic Amenities!"

Poor paid Rs 900-crore Bribe in 2007 for Civic Amenities
Police Force Most Corrupt Service: Study
Agencies
The Times of India, Chennai, June 30, 2008

One third of the people living below the poverty line(BPL) in India paid bribes to access healthcare, education and water among otehr basic facilities, says a new study which also dubs the police force the most corrupt among the services surveyed.

The joint study by Transparency International India and the Centre for Media Studies(CMS) in 2007 found that one-third of BPL households paid Rs.900 crore as bribes in the year to avail of one or more of the 11 public services covered in the survey. The services include the public distribution system, hospital service, senior secondary school education, electricity and water supply. Need-based services including national rural employment guarantee scheme, land records and registation, forest, housing, banking and police service.

The "TII-CMS India Corruption Study 2007" revealed that the police top the chart as far as corruption in 11 selected public services is concerned.

Of the 5.6 million BPL households that interacted with the police last year, a whopping 2.5 million paid Rs.2,150 million as bribes for some work or the other and most of them went to the police station for simple registration of a complaint, it said.

Land records and registration services comes secon d in terms of monetary contribution as nearly 3.5 million BPL households paid Rs.1,224 million as bribes. A total of 22,728 BPL households were surveyed across the states throughout the country.

Courtesy: The Times of India, Chennai, June 30, 2008.
Wikipedia article on "CORRUPTION IN INDIA":
Grateful thanks to The Times of India and Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

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