When it comes to paid news, there's silence because, while Ashok Chavan might stand accused, it is the media who are on trial. The year 2010 saw journalists, their associations and unions hold more conferences and seminars on one professional issue than any other. And it wasn't on the Wage Board or the Radia tapes. Hundreds of journalists across the country attended these meetings. Dozens stood up and spoke of their...

Illegality in India today touches almost every economic activity. It is both systemic and systematic. The Indian ruling class faced its severest crisis of credibility in 2010. Its past caught up with it and skeletons and scams were spilling out of its closets. The scams have a symbiotic relationship with the black economy. The number of scams is growing and so is the size of the black economy, which has reached...

Somalia is the world's most corrupt nation, according to Transparency International's 2010 Corruption Perception Index. The 2010 CPI shows that nearly three quarters of the 178 countries in the index score below five, on a scale from 0 (perceived to be highly corrupt) to 10 (perceived to have low levels of corruption), indicating a serious corruption problem. New Zealand, Denmark and Singapore are the least corrupt countries in the world, according...

The term ‘money laundering’ is said to have originated from mafia ownership of Laundromats in the US. Gangsters there were earning huge sums in cash by extortion, prostitution, gambling and bootleg liquor. They needed to show a legitimate source for these monies. Money launderers now resort to the use of apparently legitimate commercial transactions to camouflage their laundering activities. There has been an increasing amount of interest of late in commodity...

Amit Jethwa had just left his lawyer’s office after discussing a lawsuit he had filed to stop an illicit limestone quarry with ties to powerful local politicians. That is when the assassins struck, speeding out of the darkness on a roaring motorbike, pistols blazing. He died on the spot, blood pouring from his mouth and nose. He was 38. Mr. Jethwa was one of millions of Indians who had embraced...