Summary – Anti-Corruption Workshop on India

Is India at a tipping point in the fight against corruption? Public interest in changing the status quo around corruption has never been higher. The legal and regulatory framework for addressing the problem of corruption in India is well developed. However, lack of enforcement is often cited as a major impediment to promoting real change, especially in the business environment. Moreover, lack of coordination and conflicting mandates between the different actors – business, government, civil society – reduce the effectiveness of anti-corruption and transparency measures. Additional key anti-corruption legislation has been held up for years, sometimes decades, leading to a perceived lack of political will to tackle corruption at its highest levels. As a result, business development is impeded and economic growth weakened. Corruption, appropriately viewed as a strategic business risk, calls for a coordinated “architecture” to improve effectiveness of anticorruption initiatives and engender transformational change in both business and government.