Corruption in India: The Unfinished Battle for Integrity

Corruption remains one of the most corrosive afflictions of India’s public life. Despite layers of oversight, an elaborate vigilance framework, and periodic campaigns for transparency, the problem has not abated. If anything, it has adapted — assuming new forms and feeding off both complacency and opportunity.

Every few weeks, news reports of bribery, abuse of office, and manipulation of schemes surface in the media. The revelations are met with predictable outrage, followed by silence. For citizens who care about public probity, such stories provoke both dismay and fatigue. They also raise a persistent question: why does corruption, so widely condemned in principle, continue to thrive in practice?

The conventional understanding of corruption — the exchange of cash for favours — now seems almost naïve. In reality, it operates through subtle arrangements that blend influence, access, and favour-seeking. There are officials who never handle illegal cash yet enable others to profit through quiet facilitation. Others cultivate reputations for rectitude while ensuring patronage networks remain intact.

This invisible variety of corruption is harder to detect and almost impossible to prove. It is reinforced by the tolerance of what is called “adjustment” — a social habit of compromise that erodes the distinction between right and wrong. The result is a system in which integrity becomes an exception rather than the rule.

India’s institutional architecture to combat corruption is elaborate. The Central and State Vigilance Commissions, Chief Vigilance Officers in public sector undertakings, the Central Bureau of Investigation, Enforcement Directorate, and State Anti-Corruption Bureaus together form a formidable structure on paper.

Each year, during Vigilance Awareness Week, the government exhorts citizens and officials alike to treat honesty as a shared responsibility. The intention is laudable, but the impact is limited. The very agencies entrusted with oversight often function under political or bureaucratic constraints. Investigations are slow, prosecutions delayed, and conviction rates remain dismally low.

As long as institutions are influenced by the same ecosystem they are meant to monitor, vigilance risks becoming a ritual rather than a reform.

There was a time when the fight against corruption seemed to have found a turning point. In 1997, the Supreme Court’s judgment in the Vineet Narain vs Union of India case — popularly known as the Jain Hawala case — expanded the definition of “public servant” and brought elected representatives within the purview of investigation. It was a milestone that sought to strengthen accountability in the political class, long seen as immune from scrutiny.

The Court’s directives — mandating the supervision of the CBI by the Central Vigilance Commission and a transparent process for the appointment of the CBI Director — reflected an institutional response to public disillusionment. Yet, nearly three decades later, the persistence of high-level corruption suggests that the structural changes envisaged have not fully translated into practice.

The forms of corruption today extend far beyond the conventional. Electoral malpractice, land-for-job scandals, manipulation of welfare schemes, and recruitment paper leaks point to how deeply the malaise runs.

Subsidy and cash-transfer programmes, though designed for welfare, sometimes encourage dependency and leakages. In states with large beneficiary bases, the political use of such schemes often overshadows their developmental purpose. The same is true for populist promises — from free housing to free education — that are poorly targeted and easily misused.

Equally troubling is the steady growth of illegal mining, flood relief scams, and the misuse of disaster funds. These represent not merely administrative failures but ethical collapses. The nexus between sections of bureaucracy, politics, and business has created a closed circuit of power that resists both reform and accountability.

Perhaps the most damaging consequence of corruption is the loss of public faith in governance. When citizens begin to assume that every process — from recruitment to procurement — carries a hidden cost, the legitimacy of the state itself is undermined. Honest officers who try to resist pressure often find themselves isolated or victimised.

The judiciary, too, cannot be above scrutiny. Instances where courts appear hesitant to confront institutional wrongdoing only deepen cynicism. Judicial vigilance, as much as administrative reform, is critical to restoring confidence in public institutions.

The battle against corruption cannot be left to laws and agencies alone. It requires a civic and moral renewal — a recognition that every act of dishonesty, however small, corrodes the collective good.

Public servants must be encouraged and protected when they uphold integrity; citizens must resist the temptation of convenience that sustains petty corruption. The culture of tolerance for the “small compromise” must give way to a culture of zero tolerance for all forms of graft.

Corruption is not merely a crime; it is a betrayal of trust. No society can long endure when deceit becomes the accepted currency of governance. The task ahead is not to despair at the scale of the problem but to persist in confronting it — through example, enforcement, and education.

This reflection does not claim to be the final word. It is only a reminder that the battle for clean governance is neither seasonal nor symbolic — it is the measure of a nation’s moral resolve.