Is corruption the biggest threat to India’s future? - The HinduPublished - July 24, 2026 02:17 am ISTCorruption has shaped elections, toppled governments, and sparked some of the biggest public protests in independent India. With digitalisation and the Right to Information (RTI) Act, citizens were promised greater transparency. Yet has India actually become less corrupt?This question has become pertinent as thousands of students hold protests seeking accountability after the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) paper was leaked earlier this year. Their campaign has revived memories of the India Against Corruption movement that galvanised the country more than a decade ago.Is corruption the biggest threat to India’s future? Shailesh Gandhi and Anjali Bhardwaj discuss the question in a conversation moderated by Nivedita Varadarajan. For many, corruption is paying a bribe to get a service delivered. Has digitalisation helped reduce such petty corruption?Anjali Bhardwaj: Corruption in India goes from the highest to the very lowest offices in the country and people find it difficult to access even their basic rights and entitlements. Unfortunately, digitalisation is being pushed as a magic wand, as if it would make everything alright. But experience on the ground shows that digitalisation by itself is not going to prevent corruption. If you just go into any government office today, it’s an open secret that there will be somebody who will expect to be bribed.In fact, with digitalisation, another layer has been added for the poor and the marginalised who find it very difficult to access services because they are often unlettered and do not have access to the Internet. They can’t easily fill up forms on their own. Another middleman has been added. They have to go to these private cafes where they are charged obnoxious amounts [to get government services].A proper grievance redressal mechanism needs to be put in place, where if somebody is facing corruption, they can file a complaint and it will be redressed in a time bound manner. A grievance redressal law is required, and it has not been brought through although Parliament had discussed it in great detail in 2014. The Right to Information Act was intended to make the government accountable. Has the Act lived up to its promise?Shailesh Gandhi: The Act was one of the best transparency Acts in the world. However, it has been murdered by Supreme Court judgments and bureaucracy. The law has now been modified to such an extent by the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023, that all information relating to corruption can be denied. A lot of countries do not have vigilance departments in most government departments. We have them in almost every government department, but they don’t work. Now we also have a Lokpal burning ₹50-₹60 crore a year delivering nothing. Lokayukta has been there for years and yet we are not getting accountability.Section 19 of the so-called Prevention of Corruption Act used to say that sanction for prosecution was required if a public servant was accused of corruption. In 2018, Section 17A was introduced, requiring government permission to investigate corruption charges. Our judicial system is creaking. Unless we enforce the rule, corruption cannot reduce. How is DPDP undermining the RTI Act?Shailesh Gandhi: The original Act had an 87-word definition for personal information. It said personal information which was not part of public activity or was intrusion of privacy could be denied, but with a caveat that information shall not be denied to Parliament or State legislatures; only that information could be denied to citizens. It was misinterpreted in the Girish Ramchandra Deshpande judgment which said that all personal information could be exempt. The Puttaswamy judgment also created such a theory without ensuring that there was a balance between right to information and right to privacy. In fact, right to privacy has been called a fundamental right without a balance act; it has made it easy for the government to refuse sharing all kinds of personal information. Your name is personal, your age is personal, everything is personal. Information is being denied and will slowly finish the RTI Act. Does that make uncovering corruption so much harder now than before?Anjali Bhardwaj: The RTI Act came because of a very strong demand for an information access law. It has been used to access information to hold governments accountable.We see that every year about six million RTI requests are filed in our country. Its the highest anywhere in the world. The law is used very vibrantly, not just to ensure accountability in the delivery of basic rights, but also to expose big ticket corruption. I can hardly remember any big scam that has got exposed in the country in the last 20 years where the RTI has not played a seminal role. Whether it is the Vyapam scam, the Adarsh Housing Society scam or the electoral bond scheme, the Act has been used. The Act has been very effective in exposing corruption and wrongdoing.Unfortunately, we are also seeing how the CBI, the ED and the Lokpal have been completely compromised. Big-ticket corruption cases are just not being tackled. Do weak institutions enable corruption, or does corruption weaken institutions?Shailesh Gandhi: My submission is that we make great laws, but do not implement them. Unless there is punishment, corruption cannot be contained. Let me give you a bit of information. This was a study done by the Indian police general in 2008. A study observed the performance of the CBI’s entire anti-corruption branch from 1980 to 1984. What was the outcome of that? About 280 people were accused of corruption in courts. 144 got convicted. The average time for investigation was 13.4 months, whereas the average time for the first trial was 88 months. In 2008, it was found that only four people had been in prison for more than 20 days — just four people.Today, corruption is an ‘all-profit, negligible-risk’ activity. So long as this continues, there will be people who will take advantage of this. We make laws and we break laws. We should demand a road map for judicial delays to be less than one year. In less than one year over 90% cases should be decided; this is being done in various countries in the world.Second, all Information Commissioners are appointed without any transparency. We expect people who are selected in a non-transparent manner to deliver transparency. How does this work? Lakhs of people were there on the roads of Delhi for the Lokpal. After the Lokpal was created, everybody lost interest. Nobody bothers whether they are delivering or not.Thirdly, the RTI Act should be strengthened. The amendment by the DPDP Act should be taken back. Finally, the media should take it on itself to track 10-15 celebrity corruption cases, track them and see how they have progressed.Anjali Bhardwaj: In a democracy, it is important to ensure that institutions of accountability, which are the Executive, the Judiciary, and the Legislature, remain accountable to the people of India and function properly. Unfortunately, these institutions have been systematically weakened.The government has understood that the best way to not be transparent is to continue to work behind a veil of secrecy. To do this, they need to subvert the Information Commissioners’ functioning. A way to do this is to not make appointments to the Information Commissions. Since May 2014, when the BJP came to power, not a single Information Commissioner has been appointed to the central information commission till people approached the Supreme Court or the judiciary.When the courts order an appointment, they are made in a completely non-transparent manner. We are also seeing that institutions like the ED, the CBI or the Lokpal, simply don’t do the investigations that are required of them to hold those in power accountable. It’s almost as if corruption is only being done by the Opposition. Is corruption the biggest threat to the future?Anjali Bhardwaj: Well, yes, because corruption has a very real human cost. How can a country expect to be developed if corruption is not addressed? If there is massive corruption in the delivery of basic rights, like rations or healthcare or education, how can we hope to become a developed country? When there is corruption and crony capitalism, there is every incentive for those in power to subvert institutions.Shailesh Gandhi: If India is at the 79th position in the rule of law index, we have no hope of being among the top nations of the world. We need to change that. We need to ensure that corruption cases are disposed of in less than a year.Listen to the conversationShailesh Gandhi is Former Central Information Commissioner. Anjali Bhardwaj is a transparency activist associated with Satark Nagrik SangathanPublished - July 24, 2026 02:17 am ISTSign in to unlock member-only benefits!Access 10 free stories every monthSave stories to read laterAccess to comment on every storySign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single clickGet notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products${ ind + 1 } ${ device }Last active - ${ la }