Italian here. It's not just corruption here but almost every social interaction is built as an exchange of favours. From having a job to not getting screwed from the auto shop, you live off a network of people owing you and you get in their circles by owing them back. It's a very powerful system because everyone understands the honour it's based on, you can't track it because it's immaterial and it's so widespread that you get huge pressure to cave in and become part of the system.
I was born and raised in the USA, but my parents emigrated from Italy.
About 20 years ago, my brother applied to grad school @ MIT (physics department).
Somehow, my father got it in his mind that he would "help out" by contacting the US Congressman in our district (whom he knew somewhat well) so that the Congressman could contact the physics department and facilitate my brother's acceptance.
Predictably, my brother blew a head-gasket. He tried explaining that:
* he would feel incredible shame if he was accepted due to outside meddling.
* the chances of this working to my brother's advantage were approximately zero.
* it might even _reduce_ the likelihood of acceptance.
The funniest part was that my father was bewildered by our reaction. His attitude was _"I don't understand you people. This is how you get things done!"_
That's the terrible thing about corruption. Sometimes it's not based in selfishness, but in honor and generosity.
It's just that old ideas about being honorable, a good provider, putting family and friends first and all that, are actually pretty terrible in modern bureaucracies.
Or the "old ideas"?
Corruption could be fallout of illiteracy, or maybe, lack of corruption could be a fallout of advancing literacy.
India still has terrible public education, so it may take them longer to catch up.
India is a _very_ big country; as big as all of Europe, if not bigger. There are parts of India that are highly educated; in fact, the southern Indian state of Kerala has nearly 100% literacy. And corruption is plentiful there too.
Dismantling this is hard work, and you cannot simply destroy a bureaucracy without having a replacement ready (or chaos). WWII was good for Europe in some ways, because it massively destroyed the aristocracy and a lot of bureaucracy along with it. It was effectively a reboot of society, backed by a lot of cheap funding.
Yes, you can find corruption over there and especially a lot of influence and favour trading BUT at least people are aware that it is both criminal and wrong, not a way of life or "the way things work".
EDIT: typo
Generators without internal resistance are fine, but don't short them, if they are high energy.
If corruption was lower where I'm from, Portugal, we could easily double our GDP.
Corruption makes people miserable and not only the ones forced to pay the bribes.
It's like an unwritten and arbitrary set of rules that turns simple transactions into negotiations.
This not only saps energy and time but it is also deeply unfair as you are raised in a set of official written rules and moral guidelines that in practice are not observed are useless and can downright hurt you if you follow them naively.
I think corruption is one of the reasons why Southern European countries are so economically conservative and risk averse. It is much more difficult to have a business in these environments.