LONDON: India often finds itself embarrassingly high on the corruption index, rating among the most corrupt countries in the world. However, in a recent experiment, the country’s commercial capital Mumbai presented a different picture. The ruse was a simple, abandoned wallet lying on the road, and recording how many people stumbling on it return it to its owner. This uncomplicated trick established Mumbai as the second most honest city in the world.

An average Mumbaikar returned nine out of 12 wallets he or she found lying on the road, each carrying Rs 3,000 in cash – not a small amount. The experiment was carried out in 16 cities across four continents with 192 lost wallets, dropped in crowded places like shopping malls, sidewalks and parks in cities as diverse as New York and Zurich. Each of the wallets contained a cell phone number, business cards and a family photo.

Those carrying out the experiment waited to see how many people from each of these places call back to return the wallet. Outside India, the wallet contained $50 or its equivalent in local currency. The experiment saw around 47% – or nearly half of the wallets being returned. Finnish capital city of Helsinki topped the list of honest cities returning 11 of the 12 wallets.

Interestingly, some cities generally believed to be safe and honest figured at the bottom of the honesty heap, for example Zurich, where only four out of 12 wallets were returned. London, too, fared badly with seven of the 12 wallets pocketed by the finders.

Only five of the 12 dropped wallets were returned in Warsaw and six in Berlin. In Prague, four of the 12 wallets made it back while in Madrid, 10 were never returned. Only a third of those dropped in Bucharest and in Rio got back to their owners. In comparison, eight of the 12 wallets dropped were returned in Budapest with a similar count for New Yorkers.

Residents of Amsterdam also returned seven out of 12 wallets. Lisbon in Portugal was the most dishonest city with one wallet returned and that too by a couple on a holiday from Netherlands.

