It is true that the corruption at lower levels that is seen in India is orders of magnitude higher than in developed societies.

But at the higher echelons, where politics and business and the arms industry meet, India is small potatoes when it comes to corruption. Americans don't have "bribes" ... they have sanitized words like "lobbyists", "power-tips", "pork-barrels" and so on. Rich societies fall over themselves selling arms to all factions in countries riven by war and poverty and starvation, while making pious pronouncements about freedom and right to exist.

The giver of the bribe is just as corrupt as the receiver.