I paid my first bribe at 18. As an undergraduate in the late 1980s, I often traveled by train to a library in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state and one of the poorest. Ticketless, like most of the other indigent student travelers, I would follow the ticket conductor on his rounds, trying to dodge him. And then one morning I got caught.
My panicky visions of a few days in some squalid prison lasted all of two minutes. After the exchange of a few meaningful glances, I found myself standing in a vestibule, slipping some crumpled rupees into the ticket conductor's eager hands. It was half the cost of the ticket and a lot more affordable than a fine or bail.
My furtive eyes noted the youth of the conductor. He had almost certainly got his job -- one that most young men in the region would have killed for -- largely by funneling bribes up the bureaucratic hierarchy. He had done a lot better than the illegal street-food vendors who regularly had to propitiate local policemen with cash. But he still had to earn back the huge amount he had forked out for his pitifully paid job.
Both of us were part of the fine weave of corruption that, even three decades on, is said to be a primary obstacle to India's rise into the ranks of elite economies. Corruption connects all of us -- from the lowliest inhabitants of illegal slums to big businessmen and rich farmers -- to the police, land revenue officers, school principals, university presidents, members of legislatures and even judges. Even beggars working near much-visited temples or shrines have to grease a few palms before they can hold out their own.
Over the years, I've silently bristled as my middle-class and upper-caste Hindu relatives spoke of the glories of squeaky-clean and meritocratic Singapore and blamed India's backwardness on the political pampering of perennially needy communities -- low-caste Hindus and Muslims -- who form a hard-to-ignore percentage of the electorate.
All around me was evidence of the long centuries of unchallenged elite dominance. Brahmins and other upper-caste Hindus shaped political and economic policies and ran governments. In north India especially, they occupied most of the offices and positions in the bureaucracy, industry and academy.
From these vantage points, they had been able to plunder the resources of the centralized state. Following economic liberalization in 1991, these same elites were best placed to secure privileged access to lucrative contracts in mining, property development and infrastructure -- the sectors that have driven India's recent economic growth.
Despite the scandalized if hushed comments of well-favored Indians, it's not just their coarse, provincial countrymen who are holding back India from its economic potential. 'Among powerful Indians,' Katherine Boo writes in 'Behind the Beautiful Forevers,' her recent account of a Mumbai slum, 'the distribution of opportunity was typically an insider trade.' Indeed, for the 'poor of a country where corruption thieved a great deal of opportunity,' corruption was 'one of the genuine opportunities that remained.'
The problem for India's poor is that these opportunities aren't expanding fast enough. As early as the 1990s, the Indian government started to downsize, leaving fewer public-sector jobs for poor Hindus, not to mention Muslims. Lacking a strong manufacturing base, India's growing economy creates perilously few nongovernment jobs for the millions entering the workforce. Desperation has grown among educated youth, whose suicide rates are the highest in the country. Recruitment drives for even menial jobs have been known to cause terrible stampedes and riots.
For a while, India's globalized economy was held up as the new equal-opportunity game for Indians apparently impoverished by decades of socialism. But for most, it has turned out to be another insider trade. It isn't surprising that India produces few Horatio Alger stories or stirring illustrations of business dynamism in the free market. As Mohsin Hamid points out in his new novel, 'How to Be Filthy Rich in Rising Asia,' 'entrepreneurship in the barbaric wastes furthest from state power is a fraught endeavor, a constant battle, a case of kill or be killed, with little guarantee of success.'
This is true as much for the practitioners of small-scale, survivalist corruption as for big crony capitalists. This winter, I met an unemployed young man who was skimming money off a welfare program that guarantees rural employment to the indigent. He told me about his work, which involved fake contracts, nonexistent construction projects and unfairly high commissions to the officials dispensing cash. I was appalled: He was stealing money meant for the poorest of Indians.
And then, remembering that moment on the train to Lucknow nearly 25 years ago, I felt less angry. At least some of India's underprivileged could still bribe their way to a livelihood and a few scraps of dignity.
Mr. Mishra's books include, most recently, 'From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia.'
