Corruption in India: understanding the institutional context to counter

Abstract

Corruption has been an issue of concern for most societies and India is no exception. The earliest references to corruption among government officials in India have been made in Kautilya’s Arthashastra dated to the 4th century BC (Rangarajan, 1987), which contains several prescriptions to stop and reduce it. There is little reason to believe that corruption would ever have been completely eliminated since that time. Corruption was quite widespread in India under Mughal rule and also when it was a British colony. Even Mahatma Gandhi admitted that he had to compromise his principles and pay commissions, which may be termed grease money, when he practiced as a lawyer in the courts of Bombay and Rajkot in the early 1890s after his return from England (Gandhi, 1940).