 
Corruption in India is an issue which affects economy of central, state, and local government agencies. Corruption is blamed for stunting the economy of India. A study conducted by Transparency International in 2005 recorded that more than 62% of Indians had at some point or another paid a bribe to a public official to get a job done. In 2008, another report showed that about 50% of Indians had first hand experience of paying bribes or using contacts to get services performed by public offices. In Transparency International's 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index, which scored 180 countries on a scale from 0 ("highly corrupt") to 100 ("very clean"), India scored 39. When ranked by score, India ranked 93rd among the 180 countries in the Index, where the country ranked first is perceived to have the most honest public sector. For comparison with worldwide scores, the best score was 90 (ranked 1), the worst score was 11 (ranked 180), and the average score was 43. For comparison with regional scores, the highest score among the countries of the Asia Pacific region was 85, the lowest score was 17, and the average score was 45. 
Various factors contribute to corruption, including officials siphoning money from government social welfare schemes. Examples include the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and the National Rural Health Mission. Other areas of corruption include India's trucking industry, which is forced to pay billions of rupees in bribes annually to numerous regulatory and police stops on interstate highways.
The news media has widely published allegations of corrupt Indian citizens stashing millions of rupees in Swiss banks. Swiss authorities denied these allegations, which were later proven in 2015–2016. In July 2021, India's Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) replied to Right To Information (RTI) requests stating undeclared assets of Rs 20,078 crore identified by them in India and abroad following the investigation till June 2021.
The causes of corruption in India include excessive regulations, complicated tax and licensing systems, numerous government departments with opaque bureaucracy and discretionary powers, monopoly of government controlled institutions on certain goods and services delivery, and the lack of transparent laws and processes. There are significant variations in the level of corruption and in the government's efforts to reduce corruption across India.
Politics.
Corruption in India is a problem that has serious implications for protecting the rule of law and ensuring access to justice. As of December 2009[ [update]], 120 of India's 542 parliament members were accused of various crimes, under India's First Information Report procedure wherein anyone can allege another to have committed a crime.
Many of the biggest scandals since 2010[ [update]] have involved high level government officials, including Cabinet Ministers and Chief Ministers, such as the 2010 Commonwealth Games scam ( ()), the Adarsh Housing Society scam, the Coal Mining Scam ( ()), the Mining Scandal in Karnataka, and the Cash for Vote scams along with the Electoral Bond scam. There have also been decades of numerous state and local level scams, for example: the Saradha group financial scandal, the Narada sting operation, the Rose Valley financial scandal, West Bengal teacher recruitment scam ,2024 Sandeshkhali violence and the NEET 2024 scam.
Lack of accountability.
Since the anti-corruption departments in India exist as defunct outfits, the corrupt bureaucrats and politicians keep committing acts of corruption with impunity. This fact is also stated in its annual country report released in April 2022 by the U.S. Department of State.
In an exclusive section, "Corruption and Lack of Transparency in Government", the report asserts that the law provides criminal penalties for corruption by officials at all levels of government in India. However, officials frequently engaged in corrupt practices with impunity while there were numerous reports of government corruption during the year.
The U.S. report further reveals that a lack of accountability for official misconduct persisted at all levels of government in India, contributing to widespread impunity. While investigations and prosecutions of individual cases took place, lax enforcement, a shortage of trained police officers, and an overburdened and under-resourced court system contributed to a low number of convictions, the report said.
The U.S. report adds that corruption in India happens at different levels including the payment of bribes to expedite services such as police protection, school admission, water supply, and government assistance.
Bureaucracy.
Bribery.
A 2005 study done by the Transparency International in India found that more than 62% of the people had firsthand experience of paying bribes or peddling influence to get services performed in a public office. Taxes and bribes are common between state borders; Transparency International estimates that truckers annually pay () in bribes.
Both government regulators and police share in bribe money, to the tune of 43% and 45% each, respectively. The route stoppages at checkpoints and entry-points can take up to 11 hours per day. About 60% of these (forced) stoppages on roads by concerned authorities such as government regulators, police, forest, sales and excise, octroi and weighing and measuring departments are for extorting money. The loss in productivity due to these stoppages is an important national concern; the number of truck trips could increase by 40%, if forced delays are avoided. According to a 2007 World Bank published report, the travel time for a Delhi-Mumbai trip could be reduced by about 2 days per trip if the corruption and associated regulatory stoppages to extract bribes were eliminated.
A 2009 survey of the leading economies of Asia, revealed Indian bureaucracy to be not only the least efficient among Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan, Vietnam, China, Philippines and Indonesia, but that working with India's civil servants was a "slow and painful" process.
Land and property.
Officials are alleged to steal state property. In cities and villages throughout India, groups of municipal and other government officials, elected politicians, judicial officers, real estate developers, and law enforcement officials, acquire, develop and sell land in illegal ways. Such officials and politicians are very well protected by the immense power and influence they possess. Apart from this, slum-dwellers who are allotted houses under several housing schemes such as Pradhan Mantri Gramin Awaas Yojana, Rajiv Awas Yojna, Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna, etc., rent out these houses to others, to earn money due to severe unemployment and lack of a steady source of income.
Tendering processes and awarding contracts.
A 2006 report claimed that state-funded construction activities in Uttar Pradesh, such as road building, were dominated by construction mafias, consisting of cabals of corrupt public works officials, materials suppliers, politicians and construction contractors.
Problems caused by corruption in government-funded projects are not limited to the state of Uttar Pradesh. The World Bank study finds that the public distribution programs and social spending contracts have proven to be a waste due to corruption.
For example, the government implemented the "Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act" (MGNREGA) on 25 August 2005. The Central government outlay for this welfare scheme is () in FY 2010–2011. After 5 years of implementation, in 2011, the programme was widely criticised as no more effective than other poverty reduction programmes in India. Despite its best intentions, MGNREGA faces the challenges of corrupt officials reportedly pocketing money on behalf of fake rural employees, poor quality of the program infrastructure, and unintended destructive effect on poverty.
Science and technology.
CSIR, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, has been flagged in ongoing efforts to root out corruption in India. Established with the directive to do translational research and create real technologies, CSIR has been accused of transforming into a ritualistic, overly-bureaucratic organisation that does little more than churn out papers.
There are many issues facing Indian scientists, with some calling for transparency, a meritocratic system, and an overhaul of the bureaucratic agencies that oversee science and technology. Sumit Bhaduri stated, "The challenges of turning Indian science into part of an innovation process are many. Many competent Indian scientists aspire to be ineffectual administrators (due to administrative power and political patronage), rather than do the kind of science that makes a difference". Prime minister Manmohan Singh spoke at the 99th Indian Science Congress and commented on the state of the sciences in India, after an advisory council informed him there were problems with "the overall environment for innovation and creative work" and a "war-like" approach was needed.
Preferential award of mineral resources.
In August 2011, an iron ore mining scandal became a media focus in India. In September 2011, elected member of Karnataka's legislative assembly Janardhana Reddy, was arrested on charges of corruption and illegal mining of iron ore in his home state. It was alleged that his company received preferential allotment of resources, organised and exported billions of dollars' worth of iron ore to Chinese companies in recent years without paying any royalty to the state government exchequer of Karnataka or the central government of India, and that these Chinese companies made payment to shell companies registered in Caribbean and north Atlantic tax havens controlled by Reddy.
It was also alleged that corrupt government officials cooperated with Reddy, starting from government officials in charge of regulating mining to government officials in charge of regulating port facilities and shipping. These officials received monthly bribes in exchange for enabling the illegal export of illegally mined iron ore to China. Such scandals have led to a demand in India for consensually driven action plan to eradicate the piracy of India's mineral resources by an illegal, politically corrupt government officials-business nexus, removal of incentives for illegal mining, and the creation of incentives for legal mining and domestic use of iron ore and steel manufacturing.
Driver licensing.
A study conducted between 2004 and 2005 found that India's driver licensing procedure was a hugely distorted bureaucratic process and allows drivers to be licensed despite their low driving ability through promoting the usage of agents. Individuals with the willingness to pay make a significant payment above the official fee and most of these extra payments are made to agents, who act as an intermediary between bureaucrats and applicants.
The average licensee paid Rs 1,080, approximately 2.5 times the official fee of Rs 450, in order to obtain a licence. On average, those who hired agents had a lower driving ability, with agents helping unqualified drivers obtain licences and bypass the legally required driving examination. Among the surveyed individuals, approximately 60% of the licence holders did not even take the licensing exam and 54% of those licence holders failed an independent driving test.
Agents are the channels of corruption in this bureaucratic driver licensing system, facilitating access to licences among those who are unqualified to drive. Some of the failures of this licensing system are caused by corrupt bureaucrats who collaborate with agents by creating additional barriers within the system against those who did not hire agents.
Trends.
Professor Bibek Debroy and Laveesh Bhandari claim in their book "Corruption in India: The DNA and RNA" that public officials in India may be cornering as much as (), or 1.26 per cent of the GDP, through corruption. The book claims most bribery is in government delivered services and the transport and real estate industries.
Bribery and corruption are pervasive, but some areas tend to have more issues than others. A 2013 EY (Ernst &amp; Young) Study reports the industries perceived to be the most vulnerable to corruption as: Infrastructure and Real Estate, Metals and Mining, Aerospace and Defence, and Power and Utilities. There is a range of specific factors that make a sector more susceptible to bribery and corruption risks than others. High use of middlemen, large value contracts, liaisoning activities, etc. drive the depth, volume, and frequency of corrupt practices in vulnerable sectors.
A 2011 KPMG study reports India's real estate, telecommunications, and government-run social development projects as the three top sectors plagued by corruption. The study found India's defence, information technology, and energy sectors to be the most competitive and least corruption-prone sectors.
CMS India claims in its 2010 India Corruption Study report that socio-economically weaker sections of Indian society are the most adversely affected by government corruption. These include the rural and urban poor, although the study claims that nationwide perception of corruption decreased between 2005 and 2010. Over the 5-year period, a significantly greater number of people surveyed from the middle and poorest classes in all parts of India claimed government corruption had dropped over time, and that they had fewer direct experiences with bribery demands.
The table below compares the perceived anti-corruption effort across some of the major states in India.