<i>Indian politicians seen as corrupt, inefficient</i>
An Indian rickshaw puller waits for customers in front of a Congress Party billboard featuring images of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, All India Congress Committee Chairman Rahul Gandhi and Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi on a street of Dimapur in Nagaland yesterday. Nagaland will join 17 states of India in the first phase of national elections on April 16. Photo: AFP
A majority of Indians believe their politicians are inefficient, corrupt and in politics only to make money, according to a survey published yesterday, a day after elections were announced.
The poll by the Times of India found 83 percent of respondents felt politicians were corrupt while 59 percent believed the main motive of most politicians in the world's biggest democracy was financial gain.
Another 72 percent believed most Indian politicians are inefficient, said the survey, which interviewed an unspecified number of people in 10 major cities nationwide.
"The bad news for the politicians is their own ratings are uniformly poor," said the Times report, which appeared a day after authorities announced general elections would be held in stages over a month from April 16.
The survey "shows how all-pervasive the revulsion with the political class is and how much the leaders are regarded as a venal lot," the newspaper said.
Some 44 percent of respondents predicted politicians would remain corrupt.
But the survey found just over half of voters optimistic they would have no choice but to improve if faced with electoral defeat or being disciplined by regulatory bodies like the Election Commission because of corruption.
Some "voters are convinced that they can force the politicians to mend their ways by voting out non-performing candidates in the coming elections," the Times report said.
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