New Prevention of Corruption (Amendment) Act in India and sustainability of the multi-stakeholder initiative discussed at 4th Advisory Group meeting in India

The Alliance for Integrity convened an Advisory Group and Stakeholder Meeting on 28 August 2018 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in New Delhi. The meeting commenced with welcome remarks by Susanne Friedrich, who introduced herself as the new Director of the Alliance for Integrity.

Prasad Chandran, Chair of the Advisory Group and Director of Seegos, identified the new Prevention of Corruption Act in India as a positive step in the right direction. He invited the participants to make use of this momentum and called for concrete action.

Participants agreed on the need to design practical tools for SMEs in order to reduce additional costs due to compliance efforts. Activities shall be set up looking at specific value chains, identifying the areas where most compliance efforts are needed and designing tools and interventions to incentivise companies to tackle them. In this context, the need to elaborate on business case for compliance was emphasised. Therefore, a joint effort of private companies and the public sector, represented in the meeting by the Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs (IICA) with its training programme for SMEs, shall be set up.

Another topic for discussion was the future of the Alliance for Integrity, which is supposed to continue expanding its national and global network, since preventing corruption requires a broad coalition of actors from different stakeholder groups to create an environment where integrity and transparency are the norm rather than the exception. In the light of this objective, three main activities have been identified as fundamental for the success of the network: First: target group-oriented training and peer-to-peer-learning, e.g. gender-related issues or specific value chains. Second: the development and promotion of digital solutions to prevent corruption such as TheIntegrityApp developed by the Alliance for Integrity in 2017. Third: the systematisation and documentation of good practice examples of collective action in order to promote the exchange of experiences between regions and feed the practical lessons into the global debates about corruption prevention and integrity.

Finally, Susanne Friedrich shared the plan to create a so-called “Vision 2025” among partners to assure the sustainability of the Alliance for Integrity’s efforts in the future. The Chair of the Advisory Group thanked Nandini Sharma, former Network Manager India of the Alliance for Integrity, for her engagement and excellent work and closed the meeting by emphasising the need to invite more companies to join and strengthen the Alliance for Integrity’s network for the promotion of business integrity.