NEW DELHI: It's a familiar sight during every election in India: a politician sits on one side of a giant scale while supporters heap cash and valuables on the other side until he is lifted into the air.

Politicians also dole out liquor, clothes and money to woo votes from the poverty-stricken masses. Powerful gangsters employed by politicians openly roam India's political badlands - Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh - to force people to vote for them.

Little wonder a survey released this month by Berlin-based Transparency International ranked Indian political parties among the world's most corrupt. The non-governmental organization, which evaluates and ranks corruption around the world, released its 2004 Global Corruption Barometer to coincide with the UN's International Anti-Corruption Day on December 9.

India, the world's biggest democracy and budding economic powerhouse, came in fifth behind only Ecuador, Argentina, Brazil and Peru. "The only honesty benchmark people use is whether a political party accepts money and gets the job done or whether another does not do the work after taking the money," Indian political analyst Yashwant Deshmukh said.

Still, analysts admit, things are changing on the sub-continent. India's economic reforms have over more than a decade been slowly breaking the vicious cycle between bribe money and everyday life. Private competition has been introduced into services ranging from telecommunications to electricity distribution.

"If these economic reforms are deepened, then eight out of 10 corruption complaints could go," Deshmukh said. Nonetheless, "It will be very difficult to root out the corruption as it goes straight from the top to the bottom. We can only reduce it or block it," said Kailash Koddukka, who heads the New Delhi-based anti-corruption lobby group Parivartan (Transformation).

"Too often people are just accepting corruption as a way of life. What we need is a thorough cleansing of our morals," he said. Nearly a quarter of the elected members of parliament face criminal charges ranging from rape and kidnap to murder, and half risk jail on one offence or another, according to a study by the Bangalore-based Public Affairs Centre released in November.

"One out of two among them (over 50 per cent) have cases that could attract penalties of imprisonment of five or more years," the study said. The statistics were compiled on the basis of information candidates filed with the Election Commission after the Supreme Court in March ruled voters had a right to know the criminal and financial history of election candidates.

However, only those who have been convicted are barred from contesting the polls and under India's clogged judicial system it can take years for people to be tried.

Deshmukh said a thorough overhaul of antiquated electoral laws were needed as regulations such as a cap of one million rupees (22,000 dollars) on candidates' election spending were "unrealistic."

"It doesn't cover even a fraction of the costs incurred by candidates. So he (a candidate) does not declare his actual expenditure or source of funding. The amount should be raised at least 10 times.

"And just like in the US, they should be allowed to raise the funds openly from business houses or other contributors," he said. Analysts say another reason for the extent of bribery is that salaries paid to legislators are such a pittance that even if they saved every rupee, it would meet no more than 0.5 per cent of their expenditure on a single election campaign.

The result is that no government has been able to escape the taint of corruption. The previous Bharatiya Janata Party-led government was rocked in 2001 by secretly taped video footage allegedly showing senior politicians accepting cash bribes in exchange for pushing defence deals.

The ruling Congress party-led coalition government has not been able to escape scrutiny either. The BJP has criticized it for appointing "tainted ministers" who face criminal charges.

However, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his team of top economic reformers - Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram and Commerce Minister Kamal Nath - enjoy clean reputations and are working to usher in a new political era.

"I view them as a great improvement over the average calibre level of the politicians. But they have not been able to improve the government over which they preside," said political analyst Pran Chopra. -AFP