Time to rank the corruption perception of Indian states

The Germany-based non-governmental organisation Transparency International (TI), which monitors and tracks corruption in public life in various countries through Corruptions Perception Index (CPI), has proposed a special index for Indian states. The organisation believes that such an index would be well received by the Indian audiences as corruption has been one of the major issues in public life of late.

“India is very rich and diverse in cases of corruption,” Transparency International India chairman PS Bawa said, “Our Indian office has been mostly helping the parent organisation in getting the survey data and running small projects inside the country, but we realised that a state-based CPI could be something that might work.”

Bawa cited the example of UNDP’s Human Development Index (HDI) that ranks countries on a mix of parameters like measure of life expectancy, literacy, education, etc, and releases annual rankings. Similar methodology was adopted and a national HDI was calculated by Union ministry of social justice and empowerment, putting Kerala on top and Bihar at bottom.

“If we can have HDI, why can’t we have a national CPI for Indian states?” the Transparency International India chairman argued, “For long, associates of Anna Hazare have wondered if there was more corruption in Gujarat or Maharashtra; such an index could be helpful in such debates.”

Although Transparency International refused to comment or speculate on the possible ranking of Indian states in the current scenario, the news has led to widespread speculations by experts.

“It depends,” said Atul, a second-year MBA student who is an expert on various issues, “While scams happening in different states are straightforward cases and could be weighted according to their magnitude, how do we treat a case like 2G spectrum scam that happened at the Centre and whose magnitude is notional as per Kapil Sibal? Apart from measuring the magnitude, how do we allocate the share of the loot to various states?”

In a group discussion that followed to unilaterally help Transparency International, Atul and his friends couldn’t reach any conclusive methodology. There were differing views on procedures that should be allocated to fix ‘share’ and ‘responsibility’ of different states in a national scam.

While a group argued that state cadres of IAS officers and parliamentary constituencies of implicated bureaucrats and leaders should be taken into account respectively, the other group found the methodology flawed and “unfair” as the current scenario could put Tamil Nadu on top.

“State cadres to IAS officers are allotted arbitrarily and there are some joint cadres that mix more than one state in the NE region,” Brijesh, another expert, pointed out, “And of late, we have seen businessmen, criminals and entertainment professionals also being a party to a scam. We need a uniform and fair solution applicable to all.”

Other experts too have expressed concerns over the methodology, but conceded that such an index could help the government.

“We are eager to find out data on presence of caste groups in different regions as it could help in formulating policies, then why are we shying away from data on corruption?” said Satish Choudhary, a sociologist, “It will help the government regulate supply of honesty and integrity, a scarce national resource, to various parts of India.”

— Rahul Roushan thinks he can make some sense through nonsense. He attempts the same through his news satire website www.fakingnews.com