We live today in an age of uninhibited corruption, where acts of dishonesty and vice are no longer carried out behind closed doors or under the fear of any retribution. Far from it, corruption has sadly, and worryingly, become a new currency to get work done. It is a kind of a parallel world order, if you will, wherein people and companies need to either comply and submit, or suffer and perish. Corruption has emerged as a new business of sorts and business is thriving. 

While there is no lack of literature on corruption and its impact on international business and economy, little work has been done to access the scale and the effect of corruption on SMEs in particular. Although SMEs have emerged as the dominant form of business organization worldwide, accounting for roughly 95 %to 99 %of business enterprises depending on the country, it is also a fact, that many, if not most, SMEs have at one time or another indulged in acts of administrative corruption to get their work done.

This is particularly true in India where corruption has been acknowledged, accepted and even whole-heartedly embraced by some as a means to justify ends. This was conclusively proved, most recently, by a 2011 country wide survey carried out by Tradeindia.com, one of the country's leading B2B portals. The findings of the in-depth survey projected that the biggest fear of the Indian SME segment was that, “If these brazen acts of corruption are not checked, the country's corruption could be a trillion dollar industry in not too distant a future”. Citing personal brushes with corruption, many upcoming entrepreneurs complained of being “forced into corruption”, while some shared instances of being dissuaded from carrying out their business plans due to the red tapism, inspector raj and “official bribery”. 

In the context of these findings, Inc. India's quarterly report attempts to conduct a comprehensive study to highlight the battle with corruption that both global and national SMEs wage and prospective solutions, if any to this mammoth problem.  

Click here to view the entire report.