Yup, it is mindbogglingly unimaginable to people who spent their whole lives living in the west, but as someone who moved out of Russia over a decade ago, it is the exact same thing there. Extremely normalized in every single aspect.
Applying for a passport? Well, you can do it normally, wait 9-12 months, hope papers don't get lost in the process (again), and maybe eventually you will be able to get it after a 2nd or 3rd try. Maybe not, who knows, you might just give up.
Or, instead, you could give "little something" to the passport clerk and their boss, and your passport will get reliably done in 3-4 months. And this "little something" is pretty much expected, and most people who can afford will pay it. A lot of governmental services are just built with an expectation of a bribe. If a bribe isn't present, then the process will almost definitely go wrong in every single way possible.
Same with cops, except worse, because much more is at stake. Routine "ID check stops" are expected, and you better have a bribe ready, unless you want to get in trouble for "insubordination" or something much worse.
Pretty much any interaction with government or anything even tangentially related, where you need to get something done, you are going to be almost ostracized and make your life miserable if you don't bribe. Bribing gets truly awful and scary when it is an everyday expectation on even the most routine levels.
EDIT: People in comments have pointed out that India isn't like that at all. My comment wasn't meant to have anything to do with India. I have never been there, so I cannot make a statement on it either way. I was only trying to describe the realities of "bribes are the expected norm in everyday life" experience using the place I was personally familiar with, which was Russia.
Absolutely this.. Things in India have changed a lot in the last decade. Passports are one example. It used to take months when I was a kid. My first passport took 3 months from application to getting it in hand and needed an "agent". My last one was through "taktal" - expedited application by paying extra fees and I got an SMS that the passport was sent to the printers by the time I walked out of the passport office. Another sms that it was dispatched next day and the day after I had it in my hand. No bribes, no agents, super smooth.
For the common person, the most corrupt organizations they would encounter is around land and house registration, cops and maybe the DMV. If you work for the government, then it gets even worse as you are expected to pay for the job, pay for transfer to a nicer place etc. However, it is getting better every year.
I suspect things may have improved in Russia since then, there is plenty of screwed up stuff but in my adult life I (and as far as I know my friends) had never been forced to bribe someone to accomplish something (passport, driving license, etc.), much less routinely do so. But then I was a small self-employed fish, and in fact due to my expectation of bribery I chose not to execute any business ideas in Russia. (Which so far seems not to have been a bad decision.)
It might also depend on where in Russia specifically. Moscow and Saint Petersburg are its own thing pretty much, so I can totally believe that things have improved there. But imo the further away you go from those two largest cities and the smaller the population is, the worse it would get.
I lived in a city of about half a million people about 800 miles east of Moscow (still in the European part of it though, not past-the-mountains regions), and it was definitely still the case there as of a few years ago (because my dad moved back there a while ago).
Not European part. I agree it matters where, but it does not seem to be so black and white that the country works on bribes anymore.
Perhaps that is why that foul regime enjoys popular support: people see is it not so awful anymore, but to consider it could have been even better is not acceptable.
Applying for a passport? Well, you can do it normally, wait 9-12 months, hope papers don't get lost in the process (again), and maybe eventually you will be able to get it after a 2nd or 3rd try. Maybe not, who knows, you might just give up.
Or, instead, you could give "little something" to the passport clerk and their boss, and your passport will get reliably done in 3-4 months. And this "little something" is pretty much expected, and most people who can afford will pay it. A lot of governmental services are just built with an expectation of a bribe. If a bribe isn't present, then the process will almost definitely go wrong in every single way possible.
Same with cops, except worse, because much more is at stake. Routine "ID check stops" are expected, and you better have a bribe ready, unless you want to get in trouble for "insubordination" or something much worse.
Pretty much any interaction with government or anything even tangentially related, where you need to get something done, you are going to be almost ostracized and make your life miserable if you don't bribe. Bribing gets truly awful and scary when it is an everyday expectation on even the most routine levels.
EDIT: People in comments have pointed out that India isn't like that at all. My comment wasn't meant to have anything to do with India. I have never been there, so I cannot make a statement on it either way. I was only trying to describe the realities of "bribes are the expected norm in everyday life" experience using the place I was personally familiar with, which was Russia.