Dec 04 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi) India less corrupt than China: Study TIMES NEWS NETWORK   But Still Ranks With Burkina Faso, Benin For the first time in 18 years, India ranks asless corrupt than China in the annual corruption survey by global watchdog Transparency International.In its annual survey of 175 countries, India ranks an otherwise depressing 85th, but has improved in the index, jumping 10 places. China, on the other hand, has fallen 20 places to rank 100th despite Chinese president Xi Jinping unleashing a massive campaign against corruption, arresting a number of high profile political and military leaders. While India and China were at more or less similar levels in 200607, this is the first time since the rankings started in 1996 that India is perceived to be less corrupt than China. The Corruption Perception Index is compiled by experts like banking institutions, big companies and other organizations based on their view of corruption in the public sector. Transparency International's annual report measures perceptions of corruption using a scale where 100 is cleanest and 0 most corrupt. India's score moved up to 38 from 36. Despite a slightly better showing by India, its contemporaries on the index are countries like Burkina Faso and Benin, nothing to write home about. The Berlin-based organi zation published its 2014 Corruption Perceptions Index of 175 countries on Wednesday .Turkey and China showed the greatest drops in the index. India's perception improvement is attributed to a heightened awareness and public antipathy to corruption from the time Anna Hazare began his agitation in 2012. This was succeeded by the first ever Lokpal Bill being passed in parliament. India's reputation has also been burnished somewhat by the pending anti-corruption bills wending their way through Parliament. Corruption was a major plank in the election campaign in the recently concluded general elections, a central part of BJP's pitch. Even Arvind Kejriwal's short-lived government in Delhi was premised on an anti-graft platform. The top performer is Denmark at 92. In a statement, Transparency International said it is campaigning for countries to adopt a procedure called Unmask the Corrupt, urging the EU, US and G20 countries to follow Denmark's lead and create public registers that would make clear who really controls, or is the beneficial owner, of every company . Times View We could celebrate the fact that India's rank and score have improved in the 2014 rankings over the 2013 ones, but the improvement is too little and from too low a base to warrant such a reaction. India's current score of 38 is way below the 92 that the least corrupt countries like Denmark have achieved and its rank of joint 85th among 175 countries means it is in the middle of the range. If the country is to realize its full economic potential, the situation will have to improve dramatically and soon. The government has a major role to play in ensuring this happens by reducing discretionary powers and making processes more transparent, but civil society too must play its part in the form of anti-corruption movements and constant vigil.

Economic and Political Weekly: Table of Contents

Panacea of 'Structural Reforms'

Vol - XLIX No. 48, November 29, 2014 

• Editorials

The main commitments of the G-20 leadership, touted at the Brisbane summit, sound utterly hollow.

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Editorials Giving Dengue Its Due The increasing severity of dengue outbreaks is not being taken seriously. Read more	Commentary Karnataka's Smart, New Solar Pump Policy for Irrigation Tushaar Shah, Shilp Verma, Neha Durga The runaway growth in states of subsidised solar pumps, which provide quality energy at near-zero marginal cost, can pose a bigger threat of groundwater over-exploitation than free power has done so far. The best way to meet this threat is by... Read more
Commentary Crowdfunding in India A Tale of Misplaced Regulations Jitendra Soni, Kanad Bagchi The Securities and Exchange Board of India has, in a consultation paper, proposed a framework for regulation of crowdfunding of investment in start-ups, and small and medium enterprises. A critique of SEBI's approach. Read more	Commentary BSP in Punjab Analysing Its Failure Nirmal Singh Dalits constitute over 31% of the population of Punjab, and 42% of the Doaba region. Yet there is no consolidated political force that has emerged to take up their issues. The Bahujan Samaj Party has failed to gain a foothold in the state, mainly... Read more
Commentary Exclusionary Inclusion Pushparaj V Deshpande The Bharatiya Janata Party has calculatingly couched their anti-minority slanted race myth in the idea of nationalism, and combined it with a protest against fossilised institutions and political norms. This has helped produce a potent illusion... Read more	Commentary 'Modernity from Below' M S S Pandian’s Life and Mission Arun K Patnaik Two tributes to M S S Pandian - scholar, activist and EPW contributor - who passed away recently in New Delhi. Read more
Commentary M S S Pandian and His Critical Pen Janaki Nair How does one speak about a figure who has in equal measure been lionised, vilified, celebrated, denigrated, by all those whom he wished to influence, convert, contest, teach or quite simply annoy? How, except by admitting that he succeeded in... Read more	Book Reviews The Evolving Forms of Caste Hugo Gorringe Caste in Contemporary India by Surinder Jodhka (New Delhi: Routledge), 2014; pp xvii + 252, Rs 695 (hardback). Read more
Book Reviews Ordinary Humans, Extraordinary Inhumanity Rudolf C Heredia Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence: Naxalites and Hindu Extremists in India by Chitralekha (London, New York, New Delhi: Routledge, Taylor and Francis), 2013; pp xxi + 326, Rs 795. Read more	Book Reviews India's Formidable Stakes in West Asia Samir Pradhan Developments in the Gulf Region: Prospects and Challenges for India in the Next Two Decades edited by Rumel Dahiya (New Delhi: Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, and Pentagon Press), 2014; pp xxxi + 177, Rs 695. Read more
Book Reviews Outside the 'Closed Boxes' Svati P Shah Gendered Commodity Chains: Seeing Women's Work and Households in Global Production edited by Wilma A Dunaway (California: Stanford University Press), 2013; pp 312, $29.95. Read more	Perspectives World-class Universities The Indian Experiment T Ravi Kumar Recent developments in the University of Delhi suggest that, while there is no coherent national policy on higher education, Indian industry certainly does have a detailed operational blueprint. The university has been targeted for inclusion in... Read more
Review of Urban Affairs / Review Issues Rethinking Governance of Public Toilets Lessons for Swacch Bharat from Hyderabad Indivar Jonnalagadda, Sandeep Tanniru Based on an audit of public toilets in Hyderabad, this article argues that public-private partnership projects seem to have compounded the problems of inequitable spatial distribution and inefficient operation of toilets. They have also failed to... Read more	Review of Urban Affairs / Review Issues Mapping the Coastal Commons Fisherfolk and the Politics of Coastal Urbanisation in Chennai Mukul Kumar, K Saravanan, Nityanand Jayaraman Multiple, overlapping logics of urbanisation are transforming Tamil Nadu's coast. Real estate, infrastructure, tourism, and urban beautification plans are putting unprecedented pressure on the coastal commons. Fisherfolk, whose everyday life... Read more
Review of Urban Affairs / Review Issues Analysing Urban Growth Boundary Effects on the City of Bengaluru Madalasa Venkataraman Bengaluru is encircled by a green belt, instituted as an urban growth boundary to contain sprawl, ensure equitable growth, and preserve lung spaces. Urban growth boundaries the world over are typically known to drive land prices higher in the... Read more	Review of Urban Affairs / Review Issues Delusory Transformations Transportation Projects under JNNURM in Dehradun Gaurav Mittal Many policy experts have pointed out that the lack of capacity in urban local bodies resulted in poor implementation of projects under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission. This paper presents findings from case studies of two... Read more
Review of Urban Affairs / Review Issues Selective Inclusions and Exclusions Land-Use Planning and Development in Ratnagiri Ratoola Kundu, Geetanjoy Sahu Ratnagiri, a small town on the western coast of Maharashtra, is an important urban settlement in the Konkan region. This article examines the town's uneven spatial and economic development by focusing on the fishing and tourism sectors,... Read more	Special Articles Has Microfinance Lost Its Moral Compass? David Hulme, Mathilde Maitrot This paper argues that microfinance in south Asia, like mainstream finance in North America and Europe, "has lost its moral compass". Microfinance institutions have increasingly focused on financial performance and have neglected their... Read more
Special Articles From Margins to Mainstream? State Climate Change Planning in India Navroz K Dubash, Anu Jogesh In 2009, the Government of India requested states to develop State Action Plans on Climate Change. Based on a detailed analysis of five state climate plans, this article finds that climate plans provide an important institutional platform to... Read more	Special Articles Responding to Sexual Violence Evidence-based Model for the Health Sector Sangeeta Rege, Padma Bhate-Deosthali, Jagadeesh Narayana Reddy, Sana Contractor This paper is based on the results of establishing a comprehensive health-sector response to sexual violence. Eliminating existing forensic biases to rape and the neglect of healthcare needs of survivors, the model uses gender-sensitive protocol... Read more
Notes BJP's Victory in Haryana Riding on the Modi Wave or a Smart Social Coalition? Sanjay Kumar, Pranav Gupta, Shreyas Sardesai The Bharatiya Janata Party pulled off a win in Haryana despite never having had a significant support base in the state or projecting a specifi c leader as its chief ministerial candidate. Aided by infighting in the Congress and the ineptness of... Read more	Postscript Treading on Holy Ground Daulat Ras A visit to London, home to Sherlock Holmes, Dr John H Watson and the world of detection created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, proved to be an unexpected, not quite elementary, privilege. Read more
Postscript New Tweets, Blind Likes Afiya Shehrbano Zia Thanks to social media, home-based analysts in Pakistan can now serve as public intellectuals. Read more	Postscript Has the Yo Gone Out of Yoga? Meenal Annachhatre The modernised commodification of yoga is a commercially exploitative affront to an ancient tradition. Read more
Postscript Our Own Coventry M S Prabhakara Some of the “remote corners” of the country, like Aizawl in Mizoram, seem to function as convenient dumping grounds for political rejects. Read more	Web Exclusives The Ferguson Verdict Tracing the Movement Against Racism Divya Ravindranath, Maxine Davis, Beth Prusaczyk, Whitney Sewell The reactions to the grand jury’s verdict in the Ferguson case has proved that the US government is incapable of understanding the growing resentment against racial divide and inequity in the country. A group of students from St Louis trace... Read more
Reports From the States / Web Exclusives Skewed Development Policies The Utkal Alumina Project Deba Ranjan Unnecessary and often excessive use of force by the government to silence legitimate protests of the adivasis and tribals affected by the Utkal Alumina project in Odisha, makes one wonder about the orientation of the state’s development... Read more	Web Exclusives On Teaching Sanskrit and Mother Tongues An Open Letter to Smriti Irani Sowmya Dechamma If German is a foreign language to millions of Indians, so is Sanskrit and Hindi. An open letter to the Education Minister questions the policy to teach Sanskrit in schools and raises fundamental points on “local” language(s) and... Read more