50% of Indians bribed babus for services last year, says survey

NEW DELHI: Almost five of 10 persons admitted paying bribes in the last one year to avail primarily government services and eight of those did so at local level to police, municipal officials and matters relating to property registration and VAT, according to a survey by an online platform.

LocalCircles, which conducted the India Corruption Survey, claimed the poll received one lakh responses to a set of eight questions with participants from 200 cities.

When asked how many times they had to grease palms, 25% said they did this several times and another 20% said they paid bribe once or twice in the last one year.


According to the survey, 84% respondents who paid bribes said they did so to local government or administration.

Another 9% said they paid bribe for works relating to provident fund, income tax, service tax, railways and for tenders. Over one-third of respondents said they felt paying bribe was the only way to get work done while about 20% felt saying no would have resulted in delay in service. The survey found that over half of the respondents felt state or local governments have not taken steps to reduce corruption in the last year.

About 42% respondents felt though some measures had been taken, these were ineffective.

Respondents admitted that reporting corruption is a tough job and only 9% respondents said their state government has a functional hotline.