not so transparent survey

Political parties are perceived to be the most corrupt institution by the Indians, according to 2009 Global Corruption Barometer. The Barometer, a global public opinion survey, released today by Transparency International (TI), found 58 per cent of the Indian respondents identified politicians to be single most corrupt individuals. 45 per cent of the people sampled feel that the government is ineffective in addressing corruption in the country.

Civil servants /public officials were rated by 13 per cent of respondents as the second most corrupt institution in the country. Other institutions that were polled included the parliament/legislature , the private sector, media and the judiciary.

if civil servants are perceived as corrupt by only 13% of those surveyed in india by transparency international, there must be something very right with india and all those people living on less than a dollar a day each must only be spending less because they're saving up to buy big things in the near future- like holidays trips across the world, large houses, fancy cars etc.,

or something must be very wrong with the survey or those surveyed. who were surveyed?

The Barometer, now in its sixth edition, surveyed 73,132 people in 69 countries including 12 countries from Asia Pacific. In India, the survey was conducted in five metros – Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Bangalore. The main findings for India are as follows :

· 10 per cent of the respondents feel that Parliament and law making bodies are corrupt

· 9 percent of those surveyed consider business and private sector to be corrupt

· 8 per cent consider that corruption in media affect the lives of people, and

· 3 per cent consider the judiciary to be corrupt.

there. everyone except the politicians are almost clean- looks like the people surveyed must be working in the government/the organized public or private sector/ or are media, law or other professionals.

most of india's organized sector is concentrated in the metros. so is the government, the media and the judiciary. if you conduct a survey in the metros, you'd most likely meet many of those folks. and if you ask the folks working in any of those fields who in their view is the most corrupt, politicians will naturally score very high. because a judge or a lawyer would come from the same family as a jounalist or bureaucrat and you wouldn't expect them to point fingers at their own families, would you?

moreover, the brahminized classes dominate those sections. the same classes which now root for a technocrat as a prime minister. if it wasn't manmohan singh, their next best options would be narayana murthy, nandan nilekani, ratan tata and so on. one of them, not a career politician like mayawati or sharad pawar or whoever. politics is dirty because that's the only area where the polluting classes have a significant presence or have been pushing for a significant presence these days. so you can't trust them- politicians have to interact with the hoi polloi every day, make deals with them, sleep with them. for their filthy votes. bureaucrats, corporate leaders, the legal fraternity, media don't have to depend on them for survival.

you don't need two hands to clap? if the babus, the legal fraternity, the corporate leaders, the professionals of all kinds are clean- how do the politicians manage to make all that money?