It can be your local police, the traffic hawildar , or even someone as simple as a Electric company agent who you call.... ALL of them need money to work.(apart from the salary they get). I am just curious why this happens... why do those bribe askers ,feel its right to ask for bribes to begin with, in other wise morally good society.. ?
Then I went back and studied the demographics of these incidences... apparently north is afflicted by this more than either the west ,east or south of india. Then, it was relatively easy to relate it with the history of the places.
North has been unable to defend itself from hoards of barbaric invaders and then the british imperialists. Typically under these regimes , there was a lot of tax to hindus(jaziya) and few for muslims.
Typically poor people (mostly from lower strata of hindu society) who were fed up by hindu high-casts readily converted to islam.They had couple of advantages doing this. Firstly, they could now be associated with the ruling class instead of being the very bottom of the pyramid.
Now if they proved their worth, they had a chance to attach with a new (relatively nomadic anyways) gene pool of mongols and tatars.
The dynamics of hindu society also changed here. Now the brahmins who were related to the religious structure were extremely aggravated by this since their religious authority was challenged.The Kings who belonged to the kashatriya class were also aggravated by these barbarians who were challenging their rule. The nobles under the king didnt give much fuck because they had their positions no matter who the king was.
A typical comparison in todays world is takeover of a company by other corporation. The new corporation being not as efficient , but having many more resources at its disposal.
Now, the converted class began hating their original hindu higher caste socials. And from this began the culture of demeaning each others religion. The response of hindus was to be morally and intellectually on a higher plane than the bulk of muslims and the new-muslims(low caste hindus).
A point worth noticing is most of the muslims who came to india were either mamaluk (slaves) or mongols(barbaric decendants of genjis kahn).
The other defense mechanism of people like the nobles(sardars) , brahmins was to form a unit which operated on themselves and sustained because of their financial abilities. Muslim couldn't see this game. Now even though the rulers were muslims, the rich class was mostly hindus or other dharmic religions, owners of land were also hindus, so their power increased even under a muslim leader.
The next step obviously was to corrput the law-enforcers by paying them personally. So if you want a jaziya of 10% on my 1000000 mohurs , then I will simply ask you to look the other way for 100 mohurs. Quite frankly the man who was in that post an earlier low-class hindu now a muslim had nothing to do with empire anyways. They had low morals, and hence could easily accept bribes.
Over years this culture developed and was ingrained in the societies of northern india.More so in north west.
Now if we take a look at south, those guys decided to strive for a bigger cause, a hindu empire , marathas and the other people of north india thus had some onus of responsibility and morality. Then its easy to see that these guards wouldnt accept bribes since for them the country was their own, and ruled by their own.
So, in conclusion bribery developed as a counter measure to meaningless and exploitative laws by foreign empires ruling india, a kind of insulation against bad governance that happened in north india for like a thousand years. I am pretty sure moguls were :D very very distressed by this problem and didnt give a shit later on.Leading into rise of noblemen's power.
Then its not a surprise that north indians state have higher corruption perception indexes than states that had local kings. If someone were to do a study on this, I am 100% sure that foreign rule would co-relate very-very highly with bribe givers/takers.
Now, solution is going to be TIME. When people understand and the goveernment really does work for the people, then the general apathetic feeling among officers will eventually decrease resulting into accountability and less corruption.
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