Legalize bribes : NRN

A pioneer of India’s outsourcing industry and leader of one of the country’s biggest IT firms has argued that legalizing paying bribes would help reduce endemic corruption in India. N R Narayana Murthy, chairman of Infosys, said he fully supported proposals from economist Kaushik Basu to make paying bribes legal because this would help members of the public blow the whistle on corrupt officials. Under Basu’s proposals receiving a bribe would remain illegal. “If bribe giving, and not bribe taking, is made legal then the bribe giver shall indeed cooperate with the authorities to expose the bribe taker,” Murthy said in a speech in the western city of Ahmedabad on Tuesday. “This seems to be an interesting idea and I think it should be implemented,” he added. He said graft had damaged India’s growth prospects, adding that “the double-digit growth that has eluded India could have been ours if we had combated corruption.” Transparency International, the global anti-graft body, puts India 87th on its corruption perception index — 10 places below China— with a 3.3-point rating, out of a best possible score of 10.