There is something worse than corruption
Dr Sanjay Kumar Cardiac Cardiothoracic Heart Surgeon India
Corruption in public life is not as much of a threat to economic growth as political instability. Cross-sectional and time-series evidence would show this. The starkest example is the hugely successful China of today. Mao's more ideologically pure and politically committed cadres ran a less corrupt system than Deng's disciples. But see who made China a rising power!
Closer home, India's "best performing" states, according to an exhaustive study by economists Bibek Debroy and Laveesh Bhandari, are Gujarat and Tamil Nadu. Gujarat is home to Narendra Modi's government which has acquired the reputation of being one of India's less, if not least, corrupt governments.
Tamil Nadu's two major ruling parties, the Dravida Munnettra Kazhagam (DMK) and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), have often been criticised for running governments that have been symbols of "efficient corruption" - work gets done - compared to the "inefficient corruption" in states like Jharkhand.
What Gujarat and Tamil Nadu have had, which has helped both states maintain high rates of growth over long periods of time, is political stability. Maharashtra is a good example of a state that has been afflicted with both corruption and political instability. The double whammy has hurt Maharashtra in the past decade.
Andhra Pradesh, on the other hand, is an example of a state that experienced high corruption during the politically stable era of both Chandrababu Naidu and the late Y S Rajasekhara Reddy. Corruption during both regimes did not hurt the state's growth as much as political instability has in the past two years.