It is now widely recognized – a recent editorial in the New York Times proclaimed it openly – that the Trump presidency is by far the most corrupt in American history, a history characterized by several none-too clean presidencies. The continuous self-dealing, brazen self-enrichment of Trump and his family, involvement in sleazy crypto-currency deals, numerous cases of insider trading (3,600 lucrative stock trades reported in the first quarter of this year alone, in what looks like a scam run from within the Oval office itself), presidential pardons for crooks in a well-organized system of quid pro quo, now attempts to exempt Trump and family from auditing by tax authorities, a pre-emptive exoneration of the Trump family from financial crimes, as well as looting from taxpayers to create a slush fund to reward cronies and other criminals – the list goes on and is unprecedented. As for the country itself, according to the Transparency International ranking – which, though flawed, is one of the few of its kind available – in 2025 it reached its worst ranking ever: 29th. In other words there are 28 countries less corrupt than the US.
India, of course, has generally been more corrupt than the US. Its Transparency International ranking in 2025 was 91. But the country’s political leadership is by no means as kleptocratic. In fact, the current regime came to power in 2014 after a major backlash against the corruption scandals of the previous government (though it turned out that these were somewhat overblown by the media and the incoming BJP, as well as a government audit agency that had an exaggerated estimate of the amount of money involved). With much fanfare, the new regime promised to clean up India’s act.
Then in 2016, Modi announced a drastic measure: ‘demonetization’ – withdrawing 86 per cent of the paper currency in order to eliminate corruption, ‘black (i.e., tax evaded) money’ and illicit cash. He famously asked the public endure the hardships of the policy for ‘50 days’, and said he was willing to accept any punishment if it did not succeed. It proved disastrous for the poor, particularly those working in the vast informal sector, cash-dependent small businesses and daily wage labour. By most accounts this sector had not recovered from the blow even years after. Most independent observers today would say the move hardly made a dent in corruption. India’s Transparency International ranking was 79 in 2016 – and so according to this (relative) measure, corruption appears to have gotten worse. An alternative international measure, the ‘control of corruption’ index in the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators, also shows some deterioration over the past decade.
It is sometimes claimed, with some justification, that in a few administrative matters in India, technology has reduced the scope for corruption – for example, with welfare payments, where direct digital transfers have reduced the number of intermediaries, or outsourcing the issuing of passports and drivers’ licences. On the other hand, some safeguards have been weakened. The Prevention of Corruption Act of 1988, for instance, has been diluted by increasing the burden of proof and making it difficult even to investigate an official without the prior approval of a political or administrative authority. The Right to Information Act of 2005 has also been substantially enfeebled by compromising the structural independence of the Information Commissioners, their offices rendered ineffective through unfilled vacancies and the consequent massive backlog of cases, and by data privacy laws that have created new exemptions.
In the corruption literature a distinction is often made between petty or everyday corruption in public offices and ‘grand corruption’ which usually involves the unholy nexus between top politicians and big business. In India you see traffic police taking money from overloaded trucks quite openly – the public face of petty corruption. But a single, dubious, closed-door defence contract with the Pentagon may involve much more money than the sums thousands of Indian traffic officers collect in a year. Much of the international data – like that used by Transparency International – is likely to refer more to petty corruption in the streets, offices and the courts than the latter kind of grand corruption. In ascertaining the level of grand corruption, at least two interconnected factors are particularly important. One relates to the monetized nature of politics and the other to ‘crony capitalism’.
In both the US and India, the influence of corporate power in election funding, lobbying and media-capturing has been substantial for quite some time. But with corporate concentration rising in both countries, this influence is now staggeringly high. In the US, the 2010 Supreme Court decision on the Citizens United case effectively removed most restrictions on political spending by the ultra-rich and corporations. Since then, their political donations have exploded – increasing 17-fold between 2010 and 2023, according to one estimate. A disproportionate amount went to the Republican Party. Trump has rewarded the billionaires with huge tax cuts, lucrative government contracts, crypto-currency deals and regulatory favours (including exemption from environmental regulations and unregulated AI, a potential danger to the whole of humanity). Well-financed lobbying does not only improve access to legislators; in the US, lobbyists now actually develop and draft the legislation in some cases (for a vivid account, see Lee Drutman’s The Business of America is Lobbying). For practical purposes most laws in the US are for sale.
In India the lobbying process is murkier and less documented. The executive under the current regime regularly introduces important laws without any consultation and rams them down the throat of the legislature with little scope for discussion. As for election funding, the sleazy electoral bond scheme introduced in 2017 enabled the ruling party to access undisclosed sources of cash, and some potential extortion schemes (there is now evidence that companies raided by the government investigative agencies hurried to increase their buying of electoral bonds). Even after the Supreme Court’s much-delayed halting of the scheme, the non-partisan Association for Democratic Reforms has estimated that in the election year 2024-25, the BJP received more than ten times the donations of the other five national parties combined. Some part of this money is suspected to have been spent on opposition politicians in states where the election results were close to ensure that the BJP could form a government there. Central investigative agencies vigorously pursue corruption charges against opposition politicians, but those charges are waived if those politicians decide to switch sides. The ruling party is now widely described in India as a giant ‘washing machine’ for corrupt politicians.
As for crony capitalism, there is little doubt that oligarchy is a dominant feature of the economies of both the US and India. And these oligarchs do not hesitate to identify their financial interests with those of the nation. In 2023, when the New York investment firm Hindenburg Research accused the Indian conglomerate, the Adani Group, of fraud and stock manipulation, representatives of the Group described the allegations as ‘a calculated attack on India’ (and made sure that there was a big Indian flag behind them when they said it). Of course, the government used its brute majority to resist all demands for parliamentary inquiries into the allegations. Likewise, when Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., recently invited US financiers to invest in his private equity firm, 1789 Capital, he described doing so as an act of ‘patriotic capitalism’.
Since the playing field is much narrower in India, the number of conglomerates for which favours and special regulatory dispensations are reserved is accordingly smaller. Rules are routinely changed to help this coterie of crony companies to win bids, manipulate auctions, indulge in ‘predatory pricing’ to wipe out competition (while the so-called Competition Commission looks the other way) or violate environmental regulations. The government, by strenuously prohibiting investigation of questionable business deals or financial scandals, provides a kind of ‘sovereign guarantee’ of impunity.
Outside the government there are very few serious investigations. The watchdog NGO Voice has been largely muffled through intimidation. The capture of much of the media and repression of the rest means that investigative journalism into corruption is almost extinct (bar a few courageous but feeble attempts by small-scale, under-funded or crowd-funded organizations – among the latter I have often kept track of the accounts by a group called the Reporters’ Collective). In the US, despite the efforts of the Trump administration to intimidate or get cronies to buy them out, the media have kept the tradition of investigative journalism alive. But NGOs accused of helping immigrants or ‘terrorists’ are having a hard time.
Crony capitalism is, of course, corrupt capitalism. It is likely that this is on the rise in India. The Economist from time to time publishes its ‘crony capitalism index’, mainly based on wealth data for billionaires. In 2023 it estimated that over the previous decade, the part of India’s billionaire wealth derived from ‘rent-thick’ or crony sectors had increased from the equivalent of 5 per cent of GDP to about 8 per cent. Rent-thick sectors include those involving mining of natural resources, building infrastructure and wherever government permits or regulations are important. Crony capitalism has now started distorting and polluting the whole climate of private investment in India, hence also economic growth.
In the US, according to the same index, in 2023 the share of billionaire wealth from rent-thick sectors like oil, mining and casinos came to about 2 per cent of GDP. But if you include the tech industry (which has some ‘crony’ characteristics), the figure rises to 6 per cent. Over the last couple of years, we have seen how not just Elon Musk and Peter Thiel but most of the tech titans, beneficiaries of government contracts, have openly cosied up to the Trump administration, helping to finance his campaigns and now his White House ballroom project.
A recent news story indicates the ways in which corruption in India and the US are joined at the hip. It involves the link between the Trump administration and the Adani Group, which is quite cosy with the Modi regime. According to an indictment by the Biden administration, Adani Green Energy was charged in a big bribery case in Andhra Pradesh, where it allegedly paid Indian officials and politicians $265 million between 2020 and 2024 to get a state-owned company to accept a $6 billion contract in solar energy. The charge by the US was that in doing so the Adani company had misled the American investors in the project. At the time the long-standing Foreign Corrupt Practices Act was still in operation; one of Trump’s first executive orders after returning to office in January 2025 suspended it.
The day after Trump’s election victory in November 2024 Gautam Adani, the head of the Group, congratulated him on social media, calling him ‘an embodiment of unbreakable tenacity, unshakeable grit, relentless determination and the courage to stay true to his beliefs’. One week later, Adani promised $10 billion in investments in the US. He then proceeded to hire a new legal team led by one of Trump’s personal lawyers, Robert J. Giuffra. On 18 May this year, US federal prosecutors asked a judge to drop the bribery-related charges against Adani and his co-defendants. In a brief letter, prosecutors said that they had decided ‘not to devote further resources to these criminal charges’. Adani has shrewdly discerned the transactional attitude of the Trump administration. Meanwhile at home in India, he can be sure that there will be no official investigation. This is part of the sovereign guarantee.
An earlier version of this article was published on the author’s Substack.
Read on: Pranab Bardan, ‘The “New” India’, NLR 136.