36 per cent Mumbaikars feel government is ‘very corrupt’

Despite the BJP’s claims of zero tolerance against corruption, a significant portion of the population seems to have a deeply sceptical view of the government. In the latest report of evaluation of the BJP-led state government’s performance by Praja Foundation, as many as 36 per cent of Mumbaikars feel that the government and MLAs are “extremely corrupt.”

In its first MLA report card, after the BJP-led government took over the state reigns in late 2014, Praja Foundation had asked respondents to rate MLAs on perceived personal corruption on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being completely clean.

Under this, the people gave 7.23 marks to their representatives. It means that in the initial period government 36 per cent of citizens felt that the government and MLAs were corrupt.

This is in stark contrast to the BJP’s claims of clean governance. Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis has repeatedly stressed on the concept of zero tolerance against corruption. Amidst a string of corruption allegations, he has vowed that no minister will be kept in the Cabinet if proven guilty of irregularities.

In 2014, which was the Congress-led government’s last year in power, 57 per cent of citizens had felt that the government and MLAs were “very corrupt” and 60 per cent of citizens felt their quality of life has shown improvement. The average score of city MLAs is an impressive 65.11 percent in the survey. While the BJP clearly figures higher than the Congress in terms of link between corruption and quality of life of citizens, Nitai Mehta, gounder trustee of Praja, has a word of caution. “When the new governments come to power, people have high expectations, which results in better ranking. But the enthusiasm slowly starts waning and the ranking starts dropping.”

“During the last (12th) Assembly, the average scores of the MLAs showed a decline over the four report cards from 61.23 per cent in 2011 to 59.17 per cent in 2014. We would expect that the current group of MLAs defy the trend and increase their average performance from the current 65.11 per cent till 2019,” he said.