India considering amending anti-graft law to give immunity to bribe payers, focusing instead on punishing bribe taker
NEW DELHI (TrustLaw) - India is considering amending its anti-graft law to give immunity to bribe payers, focusing instead on punishing the bribe taker as part of a "more intelligent" approach to curbing corruption, a senior government official was quoted as saying on Thursday.
Kaushik Basu, the finance ministry's chief economic advisor, said that since both bribe givers and takers often worked together, penalising the taker would break the nexus between the two and act as a deterrent to those demanding money.
"Complete immunity should be available to the bribe-givers in all cases. If this is done, bribery would indeed go down," Basuwas quoted as saying by the Indian Express.
"One can't bring the economy to a halt in the name of combating corruption. We need more intelligent policies. Even if it means that we have to compromise on growth a bit, one wouldn't mind that, but a ham-handed approach is indeed not what we require," he added.
Currently, India's Prevention of Corruption Act gives protection to the bribe giver only if their intention is to report the the bribe taker to the relevant authorities, said the paper.
A document on government plans to combat rising graft would be ready within a month, Basu said.
In recent months, a series of major scandals have plagued Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Congress-led coalition government as it struggles to emerge from charges that India lost $39 billion due graft in the granting of telecoms licenses in 2008, forcing the resignation of the telecoms minister.
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