Political corruption and bureaucratic corruption in India are major concerns. A 2005 study done by Transparency International in India found that more than 15% of the people in India had firsthand experience of paying bribe or peddling influence to get any type of job done in a public office. Taxes and bribes are a daily life fact, common between state borders; Transparency International estimates that truckers pay annually US$5 billion in bribes.
For 2010, India was ranked 87th of 178 countries in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index. As of 2010, India is amongst the most corrupt governments in the world, though one of the least corrupt in South Asia. India needs to deal with the malice of corruption and improve governance in Asia's third-largest economy, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on 18 March 2011.
For 2010, India was ranked 87th of 178 countries in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index. As of 2010, India is amongst the most corrupt governments in the world, though one of the least corrupt in South Asia. India needs to deal with the malice of corruption and improve governance in Asia's third-largest economy, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on 18 March 2011.
Criminalization of Indian politics is a serious problem. In July 2008 The Washington Post reported that nearly a fourth of the 540 Indian Parliament members faced criminal charges, "including human trafficking, immigration rackets, embezzlement, rape and even murder". An international watchdog conducted a study on the illicit flight of money from India, perhaps the first ever attempt at shedding light on a subject steeped in secrecy, concludes that India has been drained of $462 billion (over Rs 20 lakh crore) between 1948 and 2008. The amount is nearly 40% of India's annual gross domestic product..
India tops the list for black money in the entire world with almost US$1456 billion in Swiss banks (USD 1.4 trillion approximately) in the form of black money. According to the data provided by the Swiss Banking Association Report (2006), India has more black money than the rest of the world combined. Indian Swiss bank account assets are worth 13 times the country’s national debt. Indian black money is sometimes physically transferred abroad. The CEO of a Mumbai-based equity firm recently told journalists that the money is flown abroad in "special flights" out of Mumbai and Delhi airports to Zurich. Indeed Indians would be the largest depositors of illegal money in Swiss banks, according to sources in the banking industry. The estimated average amount stashed away annually from India during 2002-2006 is $27.3 billion US dollars.
Independent reports have recently calculated India's traditionally ruling family's (Gandhi's) financial net worth to be anywhere between $9.41 billion (Rs 42,345 crore) to $18.66 billion (Rs 83,900 crore), most of it in the form of illegal monies. Harvard scholar Yevgenia Albats cited KGB correspondence about payments to Rajiv Gandhi and his family, which had been arranged by Viktor Chebrikov, which shows that KGB chief Viktor Chebrikov sought in writing an "authorization to make payments in US dollars to the family members of Rajiv Gandhi, namely Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Paola Maino, mother of Sonia Gandhi" from the CPSU in December 1985. “The recent scams involving unimaginably big amounts of money, such as the 2G spectrum scam, are well known. It is estimated that more than trillion dollars are stashed away in foreign havens, while 80 percent of Indians earn less than 2$ per day and every second child is malnourished. It seems as if only the honest people are poor in India and want to get rid of their poverty by education, emigration to cities, and immigration, whereas all the corrupt ones, like Hasan Ali Khan are getting rich through scams and crime. It seems as if India is a rich country filled with poor people,” the organizers of Dandi March II in the United States said.
Despite this, India is sitting on unused foreign aid of over Rs.100,000 crore (US$22.2 billion) reflecting inadequate planning by ministries like urban development, water resources and energy, a report by government auditor Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has said. “As on March 31, 2010, underutilized committed external assistance was of the order of Rs.1,05,339 crore,” the CAG said in its report tabled in Parliament on 18 March 2011. In fact, the Indian government has paid commitment charges of Rs.86.11 crore (US$19.12 million) out of taxpayer-money during 2009-10 in the form of penalty for not timely utilizing the aid approved by multilateral and bilateral lending agencies.
