good news, mumbai has surpassed shanghai on one measurement!
Corruption in India - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In July 2008 The Washington Post reported that nearly a fourth of the 540 Indian Parliament members faced criminal charges, "including human trafficking, immigration rackets, embezzlement, rape and even murder".[8] At state level, things are often worse. In Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections 2002, candidates with criminal records won the majority of seats.
A 2005 study done by Transparency International (TI) in India found that more than 50% of the people had firsthand experience of paying bribe or peddling influence to get a job done in a public office.[9] Taxes and bribes are common between state borders; Transparency International estimates that truckers pay annually $5 billion in bribes.[10]. A 2009 survey of the leading economies of Asia, revealed Indian bureaucracy to be not just least efficient out of Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan, Vietnam, China, Philippines and Indonesia; further it was also found that working with the India's civil servants was a "slow and painful" process.[11].
Officials often steal state property. In Bihar, more than 80% of the subsidized food aid to poor is stolen.[5]
The Indian Corruption League
In fact, while I’m on the subject, I always find it astonishing that in a bandit-capitalist system (as in India) corruption can even be called a crime at all. (By bandit-capitalism I mean that kind of capitalism where the profit motive is the only motive, where – to quote Gordon Gecko – greed is the only good, and where any payment is an investment designed to be recouped in time and at a profit.) Bandit capitalism is the actual soul of capitalism, shorn of the fancy dress of charity (aka guilt money) and regulatory mechanisms that clothes standard capitalism like cosmetics and lace. All capitalism is in its foundations bandit capitalism, because even those regulations and that guilt money are basically meant to hide the rapaciousness of the capitalist system under a mask of acceptability and social responsibility.