Measuring corruption

The Centre for Media Studies, which describes itself as a professional forum, has done a useful study of corruption in India. The study was done on behalf of Transparency International, globally known for such studies.

The study gains credibility as it acknowledges the help of a galaxy of eminent people like B G Verghese, Manubhai Shah and a host of vigilance commissioners, past and present. The methodology appears elaborate and the sample size adequate, along with an appropriate urban-rural distribution. Corruption is hugely important in the fight against poverty as it affects the delivery of public services.

Unless you know the nature of the animal you will not be able to come to grips with it, and without that, state spending on public services can be money down the drain. Also, since there is such enormous development diversity between different Indian states, any meaningful study of corruption in India will have to be disaggregated state-wise.

Hence, the most useful part of this study may be the inter-state comparisons it offers. But there is one gap. Though the services chosen are comprehensive, there is no table giving the ranking of states according to individual services, only some verbal comparisons.

It does not come as a surprise that all the services examined have been found to be among the most corrupt in Bihar (ranked 20 out of 20) and absolutely the least corrupt in Kerala (ranked first). But it is intriguing that Jharkhand (ranked 14), till not so long ago a part of Bihar, is perceptibly less corrupt than the latter.

In fact the difference in rank between Chhattisgarh (sixth) and Madhya Pradesh (18), till lately part of the same state, is even greater. It is also not surprising that Karnataka (rank 14th) is the most corrupt among the southern states but its gap with Andhra Pradesh (rank fourth) is surprising. More so is the rank of Tamil Nadu (12th), which makes it one of the more corrupt states in the country.

The report itself recognises this oddity as Tamil Nadu's public health services and educational set-up are known to be among the best. Equally difficult to figure out is why judicial services should be among the most corrupt in Orissa but among the least corrupt in Rajasthan.

One way of testing the corruption ranking is to compare it with the human development ranking evolved by the Planning Commission. States which have made rapid progress in human development in the nineties, like Tamil Nadu, will suffer in this comparison but still the divergence or otherwise of the two rankings is instructive.

Kerala, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Assam, Punjab, Maharashtra and Himachal Pradesh show the least divergence. So we can say that their level of development has a strong correlation with their level of corruption.

On the other hand, there is wide divergence between the two rankings in the case of Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh. So we can put a small question mark against the corruption ranking of these states.