Corruption in India: A Quantitative Analysis

Borooah, Vani (2011): Corruption in India: A Quantitative Analysis. Published in: Economic and Political Weekly , Vol. 4, No. 28 (2012): pp. 23-24.

Abstract

This paper represents one of the first attempts at quantifying the level of corruption in India. This was made possible by the unique website ipaidabribe.com which invites people who paid a bribe to record their experience. By choosing a specific issue - identity verification by a police officer prior to issuing a passport - it was able to focus on a "harassment" bribe: a bribe paid for something a person was legally entitled to. Nearly half the persons using this website to report "passport verification" bribes were from the eight major Indian cities of New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, and Ahmedabad. This fact is, perhaps, less an indication of the concentration of corruption in these cities and more of the greater propensity of metropolitan residents to record their grievances. Of these cities, residents of New Delhi had to pay the largest amounts, and residents of Ahmedabad the smallest, in passport verification bribes.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Corruption Bribes India
• Subjects: H - Public Economics > H4 - Publicly Provided Goods; K - Law and Economics > K4 - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior > K42 - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law

References

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