The latest Supreme Court order appointing two former justices to superintend the special investigation team (SIT) on black money is a serious indictment of government. It reflects a widespread sentiment about the laws of government motion: government is a body that will not move unless compelled by an external force. A shameless government is provoking a thousand saviours to step in and save the country. The Supreme Court is, rightly,...

Vinod Rai’s searing honesty in his job as the country’s CAG has the government in many a bind CAG Catch 1     2G Spectrum, 2010     The CAG audit over a six-year period from 2003 finds loopholes in the implementation of norms, leading to DoT allocating spectrum at 2001 prices. Estimated loss to exchequer: the now-household figure of Rs 1.76 lakh crore.     Outcome Former telecom minister A. Raja, MP Kanimozhi, telecom and...

The government is returning to a 1970s mentality. This mentality used a presumptive distrust of citizens as an excuse for enhancing state power. It sought accountability, not through intelligently designed transparency norms, but greater discretionary power in state officials. And finally, it sought to curb citizens’ freedoms, not by directly assaulting them, but by embedding them in a structure of regulation that deters free expression. This mentality connects three recent sets...

What does it take to get the government to fight corruption? One answer could be: a medical facility with an air-conditioned Intensive Care Unit, a team of 60 doctors, a media centre, 1,300 toilets, seven large screens to pipe live action, television sets, and a storage facility of 100,000 litres of water. This is some of the infrastructure behind Baba Ramdev’s fast that starts on 4 June at New Delhi’s Ramlila grounds. Ramdev...

Do we, the Indian middle class, see the corruption within us? I was too busy being corrupt to join Anna Hazare’s camp last week. For four days, I heard nothing but stories of our Tahrir Square-like revolution against the corrupt unfurling right under our noses in Delhi’s Jantar Mantar. But it was school admission time and I had some serious palm-greasing, document-fudging, string-pulling, weight-throwing and tout-chasing to do. I had...