India’s natural resources and institutional corruption

Abstract

An action can be corrupt either morally or legally or in both ways. Legally speaking, corruption is generally defined as ‘misuse of a public office for a private gain’. Public office refers legislature, executive, judiciary, bureaucracy and the police (Patibandla, 2013). The constitution broadly defines the rights and obligations of these public offices. Legislature enacts laws within the framework of the constitution. Implementation of the laws is done by the executive. Politicians and the bureaucracy and even judiciary could collude for discretionary implementation of laws under imperfection information. When the public offices misuse their rights and obligations to derive a private gain it results in corruption. The sources can be traced to scarcity, property rights and their enforcement, transaction costs, informational asymmetries and political position (Patibandla and Sanyal, 2009),