One in three Indians 'utterly corrupt': Former CVC

[johnroshan]

Almost one-third of Indians are "utterly corrupt" and half are "borderline", the outgoing head of the country's corruption watchdog has said, blaming increased wealth for much of the problem.

Pratyush Sinha, who retired as India's Central Vigilance Commissioner this week, said the worst part of his "thankless job" was observing how corruption had increased as people became more materialistic.

"When we were growing up I remember if somebody was corrupt, they were generally looked down upon," he said. "There was at least some social stigma attached to it. That is gone. So there is greater social acceptance."

Almost one-third of Indians are "utterly corrupt" and half are "borderline", the outgoing head of the country's corruption watchdog has said, blaming increased wealth for much of the problem.

To hear this coming from a retiring anti corruption officer, I can't help but feel depressed about the sad state of affairs. I for one, don't see any plausible steps to solve this problem. There is no way this situation is going to change top down. Bottom up, grassroots level change is required.

[izquierdista]

1. A stage they are going through

Groups of people mature, just as individuals do. When your group is so poor they only have one pot to piss in, people take turns and wait for their turn and learn how to share. When the group has a moderate level of wealth, there is plenty of snatching and grabbing, just to help establish the social hierarchy. When the group is flooded with an excess of a commodity and can't give it away (say for example stray cats), then there is no need to fight over it and people that collect such excess are thought of as eccentric.

[The Backlash Cometh]

2. You're assuming that India was pure as the driven snow before there was wealth?

Can people be that naive? I grew up in a Central American country and I wouldn't make that claim. If I had to make a sweeping generalization it would be that the outer areas were able to hold onto their pure communities longer than the communities in the big city.

As for India, where do you get the idea that they were starting out right using a caste system? At least in South America, wherever the Catholic religion was most successful, there was an understanding that the poor must be taken care of.

[izquierdista]

3. Much further back

Most hunter-gatherer societies are pretty egalitarian and look after the less able members of the tribe. Especially if they don't have domesticated draft animals to carry their stuff.

[Vehl]

4. not really

"As for India, where do you get the idea that they were starting out right using a caste system? At least in South America, wherever the Catholic religion was most successful, there was an understanding that the poor must be taken care of."

The caste system is no more and no less worse than the feudal system of Europe. The very same feudal system which was actively supported by the Christian clergy in Europe.


So is it a-ok to say that Christianity supports the feudal system? nope...people who at times hold power in the name of Christianity supported the feudal system, not Christianity per se. The same could be said about Hinduism...Hinduism does not support caste based discrimination, but some people do.


Actually, speaking of wealth, till the late 1700s(and the subsequent colonialism) India and China made up more than half the world's GDP.This changed drastically the moment India became a colony.


as for the topic in general..no one denies that corruption is a huge problem in developing nations, but i really doubt that nearly 700million people(as per the claim made by this official) are corrupt/and or supportive of it. This seems to be a gross generalization. Maybe a lot of companies/traders this particular official knew of might have been that way, but to extrapolate the same percentage to the entire population based on such a small slice seems to be a highly dubious way of making a statement, to say the least.

[dkf]

5. Anyone heard this stuff before?

It's new to me.

[Codeine]

6. Read "Maximum City" by Suketu Mehta.

The whole system runs on graft and bribery.