A perspective on bribes, scams and corruption
Posted: September 5th, 2011 | Author: naduism | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: corruption, data-viz, india | 6 Comments »This is an effort to compare and contrast the amount of money lost by the Government in various scams to that of the money exchanged when the country’s citizens take the shortcut or the easier path to get things done quickly, or in some cases where they are forced to pay bribes to Government officials.
Bribes exchanged in the Passport process
In Passport issuing process, there are couple of police verifications that are done. Basically, a policeman would come to your residential address and ensure that you are physically present there at the given address. Of course, that’s not always possible because say you are studying in a college in Chennai and your Passport has been applied at the Passport Office in Mumbai (because your parents stay there). So, the policeman might be happy to take a bribe to help you out in this situation. This might be the same with the “CBI verification process”. In other cases, sometimes citizens are required to pay extra “chaai-paani” so that the file is passed from the Police officer’s desk to the next Officer in the Passport Issual process.
As per this article, Pune issued 1.29lakh passports in 2010. Lets take an estimated figure of 15 lakh Indian passports total being issued in 2010. Assuming 75% of the people pay Rs. 100 each bribe for the police verification and the CBI verification. So the amount =
15 Lakhs * 0.75 * 200 = 2250 Lakhs = 22.5 Crores of money in bribes for issuing a passport. This amount is about 1/8th of the amount of money lost by the Exchequer in the Taj Corridor scam.
Driving offenses and bribes
Now lets take the case of driving offenses in India. According to this article, a total of 2,41,392 challans were issued in Haryana during 2010 while Rs 6,36,10,640 was recovered as fines. Now, assuming that 70% of the time challans were issued and the rest of the time, people got away paying a bribe. The loss to the Government ~= 2.725 crores in Haryana, extrapolate it to 10 major states of India, we will reach a ballpark figure of 30 crores – which is around 1/3 of the amount of money that the Exchequer lost because of the bungling of contract terms for setting up the Timing, Scoring and Results System during the Commonwealth Games 2010. (Source)
Bribes exchanged in the Registration process (land registration, birth & death certificates etc)
On the site ipaidabribe.com, under the registration category, the amount of bribe reported to have been paid is around 809 Lakhs of rupees. We can take say, 75% of that figure as the bribe paid per year (as it is spread around 1.5 years) and then extrapolate the amount of bribe paid in the entire country for registration. So 75% of 809 Lakhs and then say around 10 times for the entire country. Why 10 times? ipaidabribe.com is accessible to only to educated people with an internet connection to submit their grievances. So, 10 is a good (conservative) estimate for the entire country.
So, the ballpark amount paid in registration bribe per year is ~= 60.67 Crore rupees. That is around 70% of what was the loss to the Exchequer in the Kargil Casket Scam (around 85 crores).
Ticket-less travel
As per this article in the Financial Express, the Indian Railways loses around 1000 crore rupees in ticketless travel in a year. 1000 Crore is a huge number. To put it into perspective, it’s about twice as big as the Telgi Stamp paper scam.
It’s interesting to observe that the amount of money that is exchanged/lost in the bribing process or say taking short cuts to get our work done quickly, can at times compare to some of the pretty big scams in our country. Sidin Vadukut phrased it pretty well – “Anti Corruption begins at home”
References
- http://www.financialexpress.com/news/fine-on-1cr-ticketless-travellers-helps-rlys-rake-in-rs-399-cr/640191/1
- http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-05-23/gurgaon/29574000_1_challans-road-accidents-gurgaon-traffic-police
- http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/cwg-scam-first-cbi-chargesheet-likely-today-kalmadi-may-figure-107065
Telgi Scam is estimated to be Rs. 20,000 Cr
http://www.financialexpress.com/news/telgi-scam/83736/0
Nadu.. there are so many levels of corruption. . in total they ll add to much more than the scams.. the water chabhiwallas take money to open taps.. as for the money lost to exchequer add the amount lost by people not paying taxes.. people hooking electricity.. sso on n on.. also the so called bolloywood support how much they pay to the underworld.. everybody is corrupt n yet people can pin down everything on the goverment n blackmail it
agreed that the amount of money the exchequer lost if we add the smaller bribes is at times much bigger than the ones in the scams. But the question still is which is the greater evil? I think the scams are worse as in the end they affect more people. The amount of loss that a scam results is greater than just the amount of money eaten up by the politician. Also, the money that passed hands in the scam is actually the money paid by people generally in taxes. whereas when a bribe is paid, its generally not as big an amount, the person accepting the bribe will also not become a millionaire by indulging in them and maybe sometimes the money that the government is paying for his services is not just enough.
This ofcourse does not mean that i am in favour of giving bribes.. But to the country a scam is more harmful than a small bribe..
Yes, I agree that the scam money is greater. But then we also do these things that impact the country in general. Say evasion of taxes by people. Blowing up your HRA so that tax deducted is lesser. All these small things feel small to us but if added can become as big as a scam in itself. We cannot be doing something wrong ourselves and justify it saying that their exists a greater evil
I have always felt that it is us, the people, who are more responsible and to put it differently, more corrupt. We avoid our duties and ignore the equivalent evils our friends do and this is as good as a 2G scam, say, only, we do it at our level. I don’t think keeping money or stealing it alone is bad. Corruption goes beyond money and we, the people, are responsible for all that. If we can’t be the change we want, we can’t see the change. Your post and the statistics confirm that.
Very good post Nadu.