Khera Insight reel links India’s corruption score to infrastructure failures; the examples are real, but corruption causation is unproven

An Instagram reel from Khera Insight argues that India has become “more corrupt than last year” and points to failed public works—including Delhi airport’s Terminal 1, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj statue at Rajkot Fort in Sindhudurg, and roads that deteriorate quickly—as visible evidence of corruption.

What the reel claims

The reel combines two propositions. First, it says India’s corruption rating has worsened. Second, it treats highly visible infrastructure failures as evidence explaining that deterioration. Those propositions need to be tested separately: a corruption index is not a direct engineering-quality measure, and an infrastructure failure does not by itself establish bribery or corrupt contracting.

India’s latest corruption score

Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) measures perceived levels of public-sector corruption on a 0–100 scale, where lower scores indicate worse perceived corruption. India scored 38 and ranked 96th in CPI 2024. In CPI 2025, released in February 2026, India scored 39 and ranked 91st of 182 countries. On the latest year-to-year comparison, India therefore improved by one point rather than becoming more corrupt. The change is small, and the CPI is a perception-based composite index rather than a count of corruption cases.

The infrastructure examples need qualification

Delhi airport Terminal 1: a forecourt canopy collapsed during exceptionally heavy rain on 28 June 2024, killing one person and injuring eight. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had inaugurated an expanded Terminal 1 in March, but government and contemporaneous reporting said the collapsed canopy was at the old departure forecourt/Terminal 1D, not the newly expanded structure that had been inaugurated. The Civil Aviation Ministry appointed an IIT Delhi-led expert committee and ordered airport operators to conduct third-party structural-stability audits. The incident is therefore a serious infrastructure-safety and oversight case, but the reel’s compressed chronology can leave the misleading impression that the newly inaugurated structure itself collapsed.

Rajkot Fort statue: Narendra Modi unveiled the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj statue at Rajkot Fort, Sindhudurg, on 4 December 2023. It was damaged/collapsed on 26 August 2024—about nine months later, not three months later as the reel says. The Indian Navy and Maharashtra government formed a joint technical committee to investigate the cause. Reporting also documented a criminal case against the contractor and structural consultant. These facts justify scrutiny of design, construction and supervision, but they do not by themselves establish that corruption caused the collapse.

Road quality: the reel’s broad complaint is not verifiable as a single national claim, but official audits show that premature road deterioration and weak quality control are real governance problems in some projects. CAG audits have documented potholes, cracks, inadequate quality assurance and failures to conduct required material or safety checks in sampled road works. Such findings support scrutiny of contracting, supervision and maintenance; they still do not prove that every failed road, or infrastructure failure generally, results from corruption.

What the evidence reveals

The stronger public-interest issue is infrastructure accountability. Failures soon after construction or public opening can expose weaknesses in design review, materials, contractor oversight, maintenance, inspection and institutional accountability. Corruption can be one mechanism behind poor public works, but establishing it requires evidence of bribery, collusion, procurement manipulation, undue benefit or another specific abuse—not simply a structural failure or a poor CPI score.

The reel is therefore partly supported but materially misleading in its causal framing: it correctly points toward genuine infrastructure-quality and accountability concerns, but its latest corruption-score claim is outdated/incorrect, one timeline is wrong, the Delhi airport example conflates old and newly inaugurated structures, and the evidence reviewed does not establish corruption as the cause of the cited failures.

Why it matters

Infrastructure failures can cause death, injury, disruption and repeated public expense. The appropriate accountability question is not merely whether a country’s corruption ranking moved, but whether procurement, construction, inspection and maintenance systems identify defects, disclose responsibility and impose consequences. The cited incidents justify that scrutiny; they do not support a blanket inference that corruption caused each failure.