on corruption in India

yeah, I know this is one topic on which thousands of people have written millions of words, with no results so far. I am not expecting any results either. just trying to let out my frustration with some instances of corruption I know of personally.
1. There is this little peon in the Sales Tax Department whose husband is a clerk in another government department. Guess what, she has five houses to her name in a small town in Kerala!
2. Someone I know applied for a home loan some time ago. You'd think that with the recession and the government lowering rates and encouraging housing loans, that would be an easy mission. wrong! you need about 10 documents to prove who you are, who owns lands next to you, where your house is located(your house deed is not good enough for this..i don't know why though), etc, etc. The poor man ran around and got all the documents and gave it to the village officer and waited for her approval. He waited for about two weeks and was finally told that things were getting delayed because he'd failed to bribe the VO. So, he had to give her Rs 500. and so he waited in the hope that he'd now get madam's signature. but the approval never came. so the man went to the VO and asked her why things were again getting delayed. pat came the reply: "oh, the clerk is refusing to move the file". The man says,"but I gave u money. Why don't u order him to finish the work?" the VO replies: "oh, he won't listen to me. He also wants a bribe". so another Rs 500 is given to the clerk and all the documents are approved!
3. you would think things would be better in temples of learning(colleges, universities etc). wrong again! lectureships are sold for lakhs of rupees. in universities, only those people who have godfathers or who can pay can get in. For this, you would have to do teeny-weeny little things like buying groceries for your professor, driving his car whenever the driver is on leave etc.
I know these stories are a little long and you are probably tired of reading them. The point I want to make is corruption is all pervasive in our country. Rajiv Gandhi once said that out of one rupee spent on the people, only five paise reaches them due to corruption. I am sure that now, probably only 3 paise reaches the poor. Corruption is helped by bureaucratic red tapism like the ones I described in case 1. To cut the red tape, u don't have an option but to bribe public servants. This is precisely why even government peons live in bungalows. Politicians of course do nothing against this menace because a) they are part of the system and they themselves are corrupt and b) government servants are a huge vote bank in this country.There is no way this country is going to progress unless something is done to root out corruption.
I'd suggest one way to check corruption:
A law should be brought making it mandatory for every government servant(from the lowest to the highest ranks) to declare his/her assets at the time of joining service. Make it mandatory for them to declare their assets every years so that you know whether they have disproportionate assets. An agency should be established to check these assets. Also, these declarations of assets by government servants should be made public and brought under the purview of the Right to Information Act.
One slight problem though, given the level of corruption in India, what happens if the officials of the agency which is entrusted with checking these assets are themselves bribed by the very officials they are supposed to watch over?
I'd love to hear from you guys about your views on corruption.
p.s: This is not to say that all government officials in India are corrupt. There are a few who are committed to their jobs and who hate the very idea of corruption. But they are helpless to act against their corrupt brethren. But I'd still say that a majority of government officials are corrupt.