-The Indian Express The Corruption Perception Index generates short-lived hype/hysteria but rarely prompts a Pygmalion effect. Measurement of corruption has remained a perennial problem. transparency International’s (TI) first Corruption Perception Index (CPI) released in 1995 was a bold initiative. Until then, corruption was a taboo topic. International financial institutions regarded corruption as an internal policy matter of the respective countries. Does the CPI nudge governments to initiate anti-corruption reforms, referred to as...

-The Indian Express New Delhi: On Tuesday, the government of the United States named Anjali Bhardwaj among 12 individuals from across the world as the recipients of the newly-instituted Anti-Corruption Champions Award. “When we don’t get ration, what do we do with information?” Sometime in 2005, right after the implementation of the Right to Information Act, activist Anjali Bhardwaj was holding an awareness camp at a Delhi slum when a woman threw this...

-NDTV According to a statement from the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the award recognises individuals who have worked tirelessly, often in the face of adversity, to defend transparency, combat corruption, and ensure accountability in their own countries. Washington: The United States on Tuesday honoured Indian social activist Anjali Bhardwaj with the International Anti-corruption Champions Award. According to a statement from the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the award recognises individuals...

In order to understand why the Union Budget 2021-22 is being termed as ‘transparent’, it has to be read simultaneously with the 15th Finance Commission Main Report for 2021-26. But first, let us discuss 'fertilizer subsidy'. The budget documents for Union Budget 2021-22 show that the spending on ‘fertilizer subsidy’ was slashed from Rs. 1,33,947 crore in 2020-21 (revised estimate) to Rs. 79,530 crore in 2021-22 (budget estimate). However, the budgetary...

-Hindustan Times Here are three charts which can help us understand this. If there is one point on which the Union Budget 2021-22 has received bipartisan praise, it is the fiscal transparency it has brought into budgetary calculations. By bringing hitherto uncounted expenditure heads into the budgetary numbers, and accounting for past dues, the budget has done away with the dubious practice of artificially underreporting the fiscal deficit numbers. While this is a...