<p>Corruption not only has become a pervasive aspect of Indian politics but also has become an increasingly important factor in Indian elections.</p> <p>The extensive role of the Indian state in providing services and promoting economic development has always created the opportunity for using public resources for private benefit.</p> <p>As government regulation of business was extended in the 1960s and corporate donations were banned in 1969, trading economic favours for under-the-table contributions to political parties became an increasingly widespread political practice. During the 1980s and 1990s, corruption became associated with the occupants of the highest echelons of India’s political system.</p> <p>Rajiv Gandhi’s government was rocked by scandals, as was the government of P.V. Narasimha Rao. Politicians have become so closely identified with corruption in the public eye that a Times of India poll of 1,554 adults in six metropolitan cities found that 98 percent of the public is convinced that politicians and ministers are corrupt, with 85 percent observing that corruption is on the increase.</p> <p>The prominence of political corruption in India in the 1990s is hardly unique to India. Other countries also have experienced corruption that has rocked their political systems. What is remarkable about India is the persistent anti-incumbent sentiment among its electorate. Since Indira’s victory in her 1971 “garibi hatao” election, only one ruling party has been re-elected to power in the Central Government.</p> <p> </p> <p>In an important sense, the exception proves the rule because the Congress (I) won reelection in 1984 in no small measure because the electorate saw in Rajiv Gandhi a “Mr. Clean” who would lead a new generation of politicians in cleansing the political system. Anti-incumbent sentiment is just as strong at the state level, where the ruling parties of all political persuasions in India’s major states lost eleven of thirteen legislative assembly elections held from 1991 through spring 1995.</p> <p>Corruption in simple terms may be described as ‘an act of bribery’. Corruption is defined as the use of public office for private gains in a way that constitutes a breach of law or a deviation from the norms of society. Scales of corruption can be Grand, Middling or Petty and payment of bribes can be due to collusion between the bribe taker and the bribe giver, due to coercion or even anticipatory.</p> <p>This was the outburst of Mahatma Gandhi against rampant corruption in Congress ministries formed under 1935 Act in six states in the year 1937. The disciples of Gandhi however, ignored his concern over corruption in post-Independence India, when they came to power.</p> <p>Over sixty years of democratic rule has made the people so immune to corruption that they have learnt how to live with the system even though the cancerous growth of this malady may finally kill it. The Tehelka episode surcharged the political atmosphere of the country but it hardly exposed anything that was unknown to the people of this biggest democratic polity.</p> <div class="code-block code-block-5"> <p> </p> </div> <p>Politicians are fully aware of the corruption and nepotism as the main reasons behind the fall of Roman Empire, the French Revolution, October Revolution in Russia, fall of Chiang Kai-Shek Gov­ernment on the mainland of China-and even the defeat of the mighty Congress party in India. But they are not ready to take any lesson from the pages of history.</p>