"Tackling corruption and transforming lives is the title of report of UNDP Asia Pacific Human Development which has been made public recently. The report pats India and its various states including Madhya Pradesh for curbing corruption in the country to a great extent. The report says that initiatives like Right to Information (RTI) and e-governance, computerisation of judicial records for clearing massive backlog of legal cases in courts, the provision of social audit in the implementation of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), computerisation of land records have put an effective check on corrupt practices. The report highlights series of initiatives taken by the Central and state governments for confronting corruption. In recently weeks two major incidents took places vis-a-vis corruption and malpractices in Madhya Pradesh. Some income tax raids were conducted in a couple of cities. One of the premises raided by IT sleuths belonged to Abhay Vishnoi, brother of the then Health Minister Ajay Vishnoi. Income Tax Department sources said that the minister was not connected with the scam in any way. Even then Ajay Vishnoi tendered his resignation on moral grounds, setting a good precedent. This also shows Madhya Pradesh government's resolve. Everyone knows that corruption has taken deep roots during the last 50 years. It cannot be rooted out but curbed to a great extent, reports SMS News and Features.

The report has special words of praise of Right to Information Act, saying that the Right to Information Act 2005 was “one of the most progressive legislations� in the developing world for tackling corruption. Madhya Pradesh also does not lag behind in implementing this Act with a firm hand.

On Friday itself, Madhya Pradesh Chief Information Commissioner Padmapani Tiwari has imposed fine of Rs 25 thousand and Rs 21 thousand respectively on two Public Information Officers. PIO R.K. Shrivastava posted at Madhya Pradesh Pollution Control Board was found guilty of deliberately not giving information sought by the appellant and Rs 25 thousand fine was imposed on him. The Chief Information Commissioner also found Public Information Officer Shri R.N. Gupta posted at Janpad Panchayat Bankheri (district Hoshangabad) guilty of withholding information within the deadline without any appropriate reason and imposed a fine amounting to Rs 21 thousand against him. These precedents would go a long way to instill fear among those who indulge in corrupt practices.

So far as national scenario is concerned, still many other steps are needed to be taken to curb corruption and malpractices, especially Uttar Pradesh and Bihar which mainly 'contribute' to India's 83rd rank in the list of least-corrupt countries.

It is no mystery that underdevelopment and high degrees of corruption are highly correlated. There are causal links between the two and most likely these are bi-directional. Corruption is endogenous in most systems and clearly reflect the dominant cultural traits.

In India, the web of corruption probably has a bureaucratic core. A vast bureaucracy that is instituted to control every aspect of economic life creates the incentives for individual and institutionalized corruption. Then the democratic political system uses that bureaucracy to extract rents that are used for fueling the vast political machinery.

Some intellectuals suggest that dismantling the bureaucracy would be the first step to fixing the problem of corruption in India, followed by reduction of the public sector. This would lead to reduction in the mileage political parties could extract through the bureaucratic machinery and have the salutary effect of getting rent-seeking thugs out of the political system in India. But all these are utopian plans. The network of bureaucracy is so enormous in India that it cannot be dismantled. Instead we would have either to create a clean atmosphere or enact more stringent laws to reduce corruption to near-zero level.