People in Karnataka faced corruption the most in accessing public services, a think-tank has claimed, based on its survey in 20 states. The Centre for Media Studies (CMS) on Thursday released its 11th round of the the annual corruption study — ‘CMS India Corruption Study 2017’ — on Thursday.
According to the survey, “77% of respondents” in Karnataka said they experienced corruption in accessing public services. Himachal Pradesh (3%) was ranked the least corrupt, followed by Kerala (4%) and Chhattisgarh (13%). States that saw the biggest rise in graft were Odisha (68%), Karnataka (65%), Jharkhand (59%), Bihar (59%) and Chhattisgarh (56%).
“This is followed by Andhra Pradesh (74%), Tamil Nadu (68%), Maharashtra (57%), Jammu and Kashmir (44%) and Punjab (42%),” it says.
The survey was conducted over the last one year covering 20 states, including Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, West Bengal and Punjab, and more than 3,000 households from both rural and urban areas.
At the launch of the report, NITI Aayog member Bibek Debroy said, “Big-ticket corruption is linked with electoral reforms.”
The study also found a “definite decline” in both citizens’ experience with and people’s perception of corruption in public services. The CMS report said 43% believes that corruption had reduced in the country’s public services, compared to 73% in a 2005 study.
The Chairman of CMS, N Bhaskara Rao, said, “We have been producing reports on corruption for many years. We wanted the NITI Aayog to take note of this, as they are the policy makers.”
“In 2005, the more corrupt states were Bihar (74%), Jammu and Kashmir (69%) Odisha (60%), Rajashthan (59%) and Tamil Nadu (59%),” the think-tank said.
CMS said a telephonic survey was also conducted in January on the impact of demonetisation to assess citizen’s perception on the level of corruption in public services with a randomly selected sub-sample in all the 20 states.
“More than half of the respondents felt the level of corruption decreased during that period (November-December last year) while 12% opined that graft had increased in that period 21 per cent felt it had remained the same,” the survey said.
Rao said while the level of perception of corruption has gone down, the factors associated with graft has “remained almost unchanged”, which is a sad commentary on the country that has completed 70 years of its Independence.
