New Society Or Business As Usual?

That there is a new awareness seems indubitable. It really is remarkable that a man who completed a five-year term as prime minister only in May, and was seen internationally as a champion of modernising the economy, should now be charged in two criminal cases with perhaps more to come. No less than 18 of his former ministers have either been charged in a variety of cases or are under investigation. Whether or not any of them are convicted, the image of a thoroughly corrupt Congress government will be indelible.

Nevertheless, it is hard to detect any general sense of moral outrage in India. To the outsider, there seems to be a widespread acceptance of corrupt practices and of rule-breaking in general. Even people who are themselves scrupulously honest have learned, for their own self-preservation, not to raise their blood pressure too much about it. The fact is that corruption is ubiquitous, ranging from your telephone line-man and traffic cop to massive ministerial bribes. This is a sad state for a country to be in.

 

Another uncomfortable fact is that the allegations in many of the present corruption cases have been in the public domain for a long time. Nobody can pretend to be surprised about what was supposedly going on. For example, the story of petrol pump allotments by Satish Sharma first emerged while he was still in office. Allegations about practices in the communications ministry