ABSTRACT

In this chapter, the author aims to sketch a theory of corruption in South Asia by offering some reasonable, though quite tentative, questions to be explored and hypotheses to be tested. The first task of research on corruption is thus to establish the ingredients of the folklore of corruption and the anticorruption campaigns. These phenomena are on the surface of social reality in South Asia and therefore lend themselves to systematic observation. The data, and the process of collecting them, should give clues for the further investigation of the facts of actual corruption. Analysis of the interplay of folklore, action, and fact and of the relationship of all three to the wider problems of national consolidation, stability of government, and effectiveness of development efforts must necessarily take one into murkier depths of social reality. Corruption can exist only if there is someone willing to corrupt and capable of corrupting.