It may not be wrong to say that a major part of the black money arises from corruption, and that it is usually the downtrodden who is affected the most.

A book published in 2011 by economists Bibek Debroy and Laveesh Bhandari titled Corruption in India: The DNA and the RNA talks about how corruption affects the general public. In the wake of ongoing debate on black money, it may come handy to re-look at the points made in the book.

At one instance, the publication refers to The India Corruption Study 2008 that focused on BPL households, mostly in rural India. The study covered 22,728 households across the country. As per the study, BPL households paid a total bribe of Rs 8,830 million in availing 11 key public services.

According to the authors, the table suggests that “those services that are associated with urgent need of the citizen are associated with the highest level of corruption”.