The country has earlier faced the vexing and long drawn issue of setting up an Ombudsman as Lokpal. This issue pending since 1971!

The malignancy of corruption has caught everybody's attention since last year when a series of scams, involving people in high places, burst out on the national scene. Anna Hazare sought to bring this into clear focus with his fast, and, now Swami Ramdeo is threatening to do the same.

How does India fare with the rest of the world on corruption? Transparency International publishes an annual report on Perception of Corruption globally. They assign countries on a scale of 1-10. Higher the index cleaner the country's perception among its citizens is. 

The graph below shows India's slow and tortutous journey toward improving the people's perception towards corruption.

This is based on data till 2010 from Transparency International. I have projected the trend till 2015.

Notice from the trend line that the country hit its cleanest image in 2007 but, unfortunately, public preception could not sustain that!

Notice also the projection beyond 2011. At this rate of slow growth it will take 4 years to breach through the 4.0 barrier, to come up to the level of Kuwait, Georgia and Croatia! There were 68 countries (out of 178) that scored more than 4 in 2009!

The battle on corruption needs to itensify! It may need new (policy) weapons as well!