Corruption In India Quotes

At times there's something so precise and mathematically chilling about nationalism. Build a dam to take away water AWAY from 40 million people. Build a dam to pretend to BRING water to 40 million people. Who are these gods that govern us? Is there no limit to their powers?

The most dangerous people in the world are not the tiny minority instigating evil acts, but those who do the acts for them. For example, when the British invaded India, many Indians accepted to work for the British to kill off Indians who resisted their occupation. So in other words, many Indians were hired to kill other Indians on behalf of the enemy for a paycheck. Today, we have mercenaries in Africa, corporate armies from the western world, and unemployed men throughout the Middle East killing their own people - and people of other nations - for a paycheck. To act without a conscience, but for a paycheck, makes anyone a dangerous animal. The devil would be powerless if he couldn't entice people to do his work. So as long as money continues to seduce the hungry, the hopeless, the broken, the greedy, and the needy, there will always be war between brothers.

Illiteracy does not impede the practice of democracy, as witnessed by the success of democracy in India despite the high illiteracy rate. One doesn't need a university diploma to realize that the ruler is oppressive and corrupt. On the other hand, to eradicate illiteracy requires that we elect a fair and efficient political regime.

We know we are all tarnished, so we doubt everyone else too. It is sad situation, where we need a leader but cannot really trust anyone.

In the West, and among some in the Indian elite, this word, corruption, had purely negative connotations; it was seen as blocking India’s modern, global ambitions. But for the poor of a country where corruption thieved a great deal of opportunity, corruption was one of the genuine opportunities that remained.

India, she now knew, would not be content staying in the background, was nobody's wallpaper, insisted in interjecting itself into everyone's life, meddling with it, twisting it, molding it beyond recognition. India, she had found out, was a place of political intrigue and economic corruption, a place occupied by real people with their incessantly human needs, desires, ambitions, and aspirations, and not the exotic, spiritual, mysterious entity that was a creation of the Western imagination.

Even as I took a long, hard look at some of the obvious downsides (Q: 'What are the three things keeping India down? A: Corruption, corruption and corruption.' ), I still felt the upsides (Q: 'What is so fantastic about the India story? A: People, people and people.') tilted the scales in our favor.

The permutations of English corruption in India were endless

It is impossible to know when and how much water a fish drank, similar is the act of stealing government money by officials.

The most dangerous people in the world are not the tiny minority instigating evil acts, but those who do the acts for them – for a paycheck. To act without a conscience, but for a paycheck, makes anyone a dangerous animal. The devil would be powerless if he couldn’t entice people to do his work. So as long as money continues to seduce the hungry, the hopeless, the broken, the greedy, and the needy, there will always be war between people.

It is easy, from a safe distance, to overlook the fact that in undercities governed by corruption, where exhausted people vie on scant terrain for very little, it is blisteringly hard to be good.

Lack of knowledge and skills, laziness, gluttony, over-indulgence, lustiness, anger, fear, greed and misuse of knowledge, power and designation are the sources of corruption in the government employees.

People often don't understand the engine that drives corruption. Particularly in India, they assume government equals corruption, private companies equal efficiency. But government officials are not genetically programmed to be corrupt. Corruption is linked to power. If it is the corporations that are powerful, then they will be corrupt.

Why is it that we are happy to see change of system happening in movies but, when it comes to real life, we are afraid of it. Are we a Box Office Democracy?

இந்தியாவில் பிடித்தது?" "உழைப்பு." "பிடிக்காதது?" "ஊழல்." "ஆனாலும் இந்தியா முன்னேறியிருக்கிறதே..!" "உண்மை. சேவல் உறங்கும்போது குஞ்சு பொரித்துவிடும் கோழியைப்போல சில அரசியல்வாதிகள் உறங்கும் போது இந்தியா முன்னேறிவிடுகிறது.

If we think it is okay to cheat in exams, lie to a ticket collector in the train about our kids’ ages and pay a bit of money to avoid a big traffic fine, then at some level we clearly don’t care about eliminating corruption all that much. At

Let’s face it. There are good people and bad people everywhere. Illiteracy, poor education, wars, greed , corruption and similar factors were responsible for the problems in both India and Pakistan. Religious fanatics benefited from these factors and developed formidable socio-political strongholds in both countries.

In India, all corrupted politicians, because of Karma, have to undergo, either jailed life or bailed life at-least once.

would go to the length of giving the whole Congress organization a decent burial, rather than put up with the corruption that is rampant,

State first, subject second, statesman last.

M + D = C, Monopoly plus Discretion equals Corruption

I never aspired to be the PM...Why should I quit over a silly issue like corruption? - Devender Singh

Honesty is not a virtue, it is a luxury. Most, who struggle to put bread on the table, face this question every day. And hunger wins this game almost every time, beta (son).

To increase the wealth of the nation, a king should keep knowledge of history, traditions and trade practices. Thieves

It is impossible to know when and how much water a fish drank, similar is the act of stealing government money by officials.   || 2-9-37

Dekhna nahin...karna hai...!

Ministers should be born citizens of the country and their ancestry should well known in the country.

when someone informs king about money theft by government officer, king should call his superior and subordinates individually and ask about it. When that government officer is found guilty, each of these person who lied or given wrong testimony to king should be given same punishment.

The failure of India's public institutions to keep pace with the dramatic political, economic and social transformations under way has led to severe gaps in governance. The end result of this disjuncture has been a proliferation of grand corruption - a malaise made up of a diverse array of regulatory, extractive, and political rent-seeking activities.

प्रजासुखे सुखं राज्ञ: प्रजानां च हिते हितम्‌ । नात्मप्रियं हितं राज्ञ: प्रजानां तु प्रियं हितम्‌ ।।   Peoples happiness should be King’s happiness. Welfare of people is King’s welfare. For a king, there is no task which is only individualistic and pleasurable to him only. It is king’s utmost duty to look after progress and welfare of people of his country.

YEARLY OATH AGAINST CORRUPTION “I ________________ do swear in my name, in the name of my spouse ________ and my children _______, … and _______ or my parents _______, ________ or Mother India that I will not take bribes in any form, cash or kind, while holding the office of the ________ and I will not knowingly allow anyone under my charge to take bribes in any form, cash or kind.

Such class-based oddities gave English cricket a somewhat paradoxical reputation. It was at once popular and elite. It was exclusive yet, as a rare forum for gentry and commoners to interact, a source of social cohesion. Hence the historian G.M. Trevelyan’s famous claim that the French aristocrats would have spared themselves the guillotine if they had only played cricket with their serfs.

The right to issue unlimited quantities of anonymously tradable shares, along with the institution of a liquid market for them, created something new: corporations with power so immense, it dwarfed that of their countries of origin, and could be deployed in faraway places assiduously to exploit people and resources. Shareholding and well-governed share markets fired up history, separating ownership from the rest of the East India Company’s activities unleashed a fluid, irresistible force. Unchecked, the East India Company grew more powerful than the British state, answerable only to its shareholders. At home, its bureaucracy corrupted and largely controlled Her majesty’s government. Abroad, its 200,000-strong private army oversaw the destruction of well-functioning economies in Asia and a number of Pacific islands and ensured the systematic exploitation of their peoples.

May be the power lies in the hands of the one who holds the gun... so he just presses the trigger whenever the slightest streak of anger passes his mind... and after a few haunting days he roams freely in the country without fear .. and what about the one who faces the wrath and bears the bullets? He leaves a movement behind... but haven't such movements always been ephemeral? Is death the price you need to pay to open the eyes of those who care but just for a couple of days?

Head of any government department should not be allowed to hold the post for prolonged time, as it may give him chance to establish friendly relationship with the subordinates to coverup his wrongdoings. It may give him time to spread the corruption in lower cadres as well as other functions. People of the society too gets afraid of the fact that official staying longer time in one post, may harm their individual interest directly or indirectly, and they can not complaint against such officials under a threat.   || 2-9-33,34,35

I want much to hear how that tea is received,” Franklin worriedly wrote a friend in late 1773. Parliament had added to the indignity of its continued tariff on tea by passing new regulations that gave the corrupt East India Company a virtual monopoly over the trade. Franklin urged calm, but the radicals of Boston, led by Sam Adams and the Sons of Liberty, did not. On December 16, 1773, after a mass rally in the Old South Church, some fifty patriots disguised as Mohawk Indians went down to the wharves and dumped 342 chests of tea worth £10,000 into the sea.

Within a year or two of Partition – despite all the massacres that had attended it – Hindu–Muslim relations appeared, almost miraculously, to have returned to normal in India. This was highlighted by Pakistan’s maiden Test tour of India, in 1952. It was by far the most prominent interaction between the two countries since their bloody separation. It was also less than five years since their inaugural war, over the former princely state of Kashmir, which was divided in the process. Yet the visiting Pakistanis were feted by India’s government in Delhi (where they also visited the shrine in Nizamuddin) and by rapturous crowds.

We have nothing to destroy," said Rud. "All these things are done for already. They are falling in all over the world. They are dead. No need for destructive activities. But if we have nothing to destroy we have much to clear away. That's different. What is needed is a brand-new common-sense reorganisation of the world's affairs, and that's what we have to give them. I can't imagine how the government sleeps of nights. I should lie awake at night listening all the time for the trickle of plaster that comes before a smash. Ever since they began blundering in the Near East and Spain, they've never done a single wise thing. This American adventure spells disaster. Plainly. Australia has protested already. India now is plainly in collapse. Everyone who has been there lately with open eyes speaks of the vague miasma of hatred in the streets. We don't get half the news from India. Just because there exists no clear idea whatever of a new India, it doesn't mean that the old isn't disintegrating. Things that are tumbling down, tumble down. They don't wait to be shown the plans of the new building. The East crumbles. All over the world it becomes unpleasant to be a foreigner, but an Englishman now can't walk in a bazaar without a policeman behind him...

Noticing the disturbing similarity between the rhetoric surrounding "open government" and new public management, government expert Just Longo speculates that the former might be just a Trojan horse for the latter; in our excitement about the immense potential of new technologies to promote openness and transparency, we may have lost sight of the deeply political nature of the uses to which these technologies are put... In India, recent digitization of land records and their subsequent publication online, while nominally an effort to empower the weak, may have actually empowered the rich and powerful. Once the digitized records were available for the whole world to see, some enterprising businessmen discovered that many poor families had no documents to prove ownership of land. In most cases, this was not the result of some nefarious land grab; local culture, with its predominantly oral ways of doing business, pervasive corruption, and poor literacy, partly explains why no such records exist... The point here, as with most open-government schemes, is not that information shouldn't be collected or distributed; rather, it needs to be collected and distributed in full awareness of the social and cultural complexity of the institutional environment in which it is gathered.

At this point I realised what it meant to be a man in India. It meant knowing what one could do and knowing what one could only get done. It meant being able to hold onto two patterns simultaneously. One was methodical, hierarchical, regulated and the outcome depended on fate, chance, kings and desperate men. The other was intuitive, illicit and guaranteed. The trick was to know when to shift between the patterns, to peel the file off a table and give it to a peon, to speak easily of one's cousin the minister or archbishop. I did not think I would ever know what these shifts entailed, and that meant, in essence, that I was never going to grow up.

Our greatest national resource was once our self-sufficiency. We could forge our own steel, build our own cars, manufacture our own appliances, construct our own furniture, weave our own cloth—with the hands of our own workers—and were dependent on nobody else for our own survival. Can we say the same thing today? And who has benefitted from the pillaging of this greatest resource? Is it the workers who now sit idle, their jobs shipped off to India and China, while the politicians accuse them of deliberate sloth? Or is it those whose profits were maximized by exporting those jobs, and those in government whom they bribed to make doing so the law of the land?

Sambit Bal may be right that this is a scandal the IPL needed. It certainly brings fans face-to-face with the tangled reality of their amusement, based as it is on a self-seeking, self-perpetuating commercial oligarchy issued licenses to exploit cricket as they please. Whether the fans care is another matter: one of the reasons Indians have embraced economic liberalisation so fervently is a shoulder-shrugging resignation about the efficiency and integrity of their institutions. Given the choice between Lalit Modi, with his snappy suits and his soi-disant 'Indian People's League', and the BCCI, stuffed with grandstanding politicians and crony capitalists, where would your loyalties lie?

We all have our patchwork ideas of India, our notions and opinions and prejudices–often fallacious and absurd–of this enormous, disparate country, which, as I take pleasure in reminding newcomers, bigger in population than all but its own continent: Asia. It is a place onto which foreigners have projected their own exotic fantasies and fears, their explanatory and simplifying schemata. And they never seem quite to make up their minds–as they swing from one extreme to the other–whether this country is of great wealth or of appalling poverty, of spiritual renunciation or of unabashed materialism, of fasting or of gluttony, of erotic sophistication or of sexual puritanism, of corruption or of moral superiority. They probably fail to admit that it might be all these things, and even more so, everything in between.

It isn't a coincidence that the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat happened after September 11. Gujarat is also one place where the toxic waste of the World Trade Center is being dumped right now. This waste is being dumped in Gujarat, and then taken of to Ludhiana and places like that to be recycled. I think it's quite a metaphor. The demonization of Muslims has also been given legitimacy by the world's superpower, by the emperor himself. We are at a stage where democracy - this corrupted, scandalous version of democracy - is the problem. So much of what politicians do is with an eye on elections. Wars are fought as election campaigns. In India, Muslims are killed as part of election campaigns. In 1984, after the massacre of Sikhs in Delhi, the Congress Party won, hands down. We must ask ourselves very serious questions about this particular brand of democracy.

His words were echoed in the House of Lords by the former Prime Minister. William Pitt, Lord Chatham, came from a dynasty whose fortunes were made in India: his father, ‘Diamond Pitt’, brought back from his governorship of Madras the fortune that had made possible Pitt’s career. Pitt did not, however, like to be reminded of this, and now raised the alarm that the EIC was bringing its corrupt practices back from India and into the very benches of the Mother of Parliaments. ‘The riches of Asia have been poured in upon us,’ he declared at the despatch box, ‘and have brought with them not only Asiatic luxury, but, I fear, Asiatic principles of government. Without connections, without any natural interest in the soil, the importers of foreign gold have forced their way into Parliament by such a torrent of private corruptions as no private hereditary fortune could resist.’31

For centuries, pilgrims have travelled to Ayodhya identifying it as the birthplace of Ram. But the exact location of the birthplace of Ram, in Ayodhya, is the subject of great dispute and political turmoil in India. Ever since colonial times, Hinduism has felt under siege, forced to explain itself using European templates, make itself more tangible, more concrete, more structured, more homogeneous, more historical, more geographical, less psychological, less emotional, to render itself as valid as the major religions of the Eurocentric world like Christianity, Judaism and Islam. The fallout of this pressure is the need to locate matters of faith in a particular spot. The timeless thus becomes time-bound and the universal becomes particular. What used to once be a matter of faith becomes a territorial war zone where courts now have to intervene. Everyone wants to be right in a world where adjustment, allowance, accommodation and affection are seen as signs of weakness, even corruption.

For the first time in decades … For the first time in decades, India is experiencing a Revolution. For the first time in decades, there is status quo disruption. For the first time in decades, our Soldiers are receiving the reverence they must get. For the first time in decades, national interest matters more than personal interest. For the first time in decades, the strength of WE is more than self proclaimed VIP Few. For the first time in decades, corrupt politicians are worried about people standing in queue For the first time in decades, let us try not to get brainwashed in inconvenience debate. For the first time in decades, let us not fall prey to tactics of bait. For the first time in decades, we are up in arms against dishonest coward. For the first time in decades, India is feeling empowered. For the first time in decades, we have an opportunity to rise above caste, creed and religion. For the first time in decades, we are hopeful for the bright future of next generation.

The Greeks, on the other hand, were passionately interested in logic and reason. Plato (ca. 428–ca. 348 BCE) was continually occupied with problems of epistemology and the nature of wisdom. Much of his early work was devoted to the defense of Socrates, who had forced men to clarify their ideas by his thought-provoking questions but had been sentenced to death in 399 on the charges of impiety and the corruption of youth. In a way that was not dissimilar to that of the people of India, he had become dissatisfied with the old festivals and myths of religion, which he found demeaning and inappropriate. Plato had also been influenced by the sixth-century philosopher Pythagoras, who may have been influenced by ideas from India, transmitted via Persia and Egypt. He had believed that the soul was a fallen, polluted deity incarcerated in the body as in a tomb and doomed to a perpetual cycle of rebirth. He had articulated the common human experience of feeling a stranger in a world that does not seem to be our true element. Pythagoras had taught that the soul could be liberated by means of ritual purifications, which would enable it to achieve harmony with the ordered universe. Plato also believed in the existence of a divine, unchanging reality beyond the world of the senses, that the soul was a fallen divinity, out of its element, imprisoned in the body but capable of regaining its divine status by the purification of the reasoning powers of the mind. In the famous myth of the cave, Plato described the darkness and obscurity of man’s life on earth: he perceives only shadows of the eternal realities flickering on the wall of the cave. But gradually he can be drawn out and achieve enlightenment and liberation by accustoming his mind to the divine light.

With or without the Chinese, Calcutta was dead. Partition had deprived it of half its hinterland and burdened it with a vast dispirited refugee population. Even Nature had turned: the Hooghly was silting up. But Calcutta’s death was also of the heart. With its thin glitter, its filth and overpopulation, its tainted money, its exhaustion, it held the total Indian tragedy and the terrible British failure. Here the Indo-British encounter had at one time promised to be fruitful. Here the Indian renaissance had begun: so many of the great names of Indian reform are Bengali. But it was here, too, that the encounter had ended in mutual recoil. The cross-fertilization had not occurred, and Indian energy had turned sour. Once Bengal led India, in ideas and idealism; now, just forty years later, Calcutta, even to Indians, was a word of terror, conveying crowds, cholera and corruption. Its aesthetic impulses had not faded – there was an appealing sensibility in every Bengali souvenir, every over-exploited refugee ‘craft’ – but they, pathetically, threw into relief the greater decay. Calcutta had no leaders now, and apart from Ray, the film director, and Janah, the photographer, had no great names. It had withdrawn from the Indian experiment, as area after area of India was withdrawing, individual after individual. The British, who had built Calcutta, had ever been withdrawn from their creation; and they survived. Their business houses still flourished in Chownringhee; and to the Indians, products of the dead Indian renaissance, who now sat in some of the air-conditioned offices, Independence had meant no more than this: the opportunity to withdraw, British-like, from India. What then was the India that was left, for which one felt such concern? Was it no more than a word, an idea?

Changes in population growth and productivity growth can require decades to take effect, but clearly they can affect countries’ economic growth rates. In the 20th century, the U.S. surpassed Europe as an economic power. Then Japan seemed to sprint forward in the 1970s and 1980s, threatening to take over the world, until the late ’80s, when it fell back into negligible growth. The emerging markets—and especially China—were the site of rapid growth over the last few decades, and while their growth is slower at the moment, they may well outgrow the developed world in the next few decades. India has human resources that can make it a rapid-growth economy if it can increase its efficiency and reduce corruption. And frontier nations like Nigeria and Bangladesh stand behind the emerging nations, waiting for their turn as rapid growers.

Africa, I believe, is embarking upon an era of sharp divergences in which China will play a huge role in specific national outcomes—for better and for worse, perhaps even dramatically, depending on the country. Places endowed with stable governments, with elites that are accountable and responsive to the needs of their fellow citizens, and with relatively healthy institutions, will put themselves in a position to thrive on the strength of robust Chinese demand for their exports and fast-growing investment from China and from a range of other emerging economic powers, including Brazil, Turkey, India, and Vietnam. Inevitably, most of these African countries will be democracies. Other nations, whether venal dictatorships, states rendered dysfunctional by war, and even some fragile democracies—places where institutions remain too weak or corrupted—will sell off their mineral resources to China and other bidders, and squander what is in effect a one-time chance to convert underground riches into aboveground wealth by investing in their own citizens and creating new kinds of economic activity beyond today’s simple extraction. The proposition at work here couldn’t be more straightforward. The timeline for resource depletion in many African countries is running in tandem with the timeline for the continent’s unprecedented demographic explosion. At current rates, in the next forty years, most African states will have twice the number of people they count now. By that same time, their presently known reserves of minerals like iron, bauxite, copper, cobalt, uranium, gold, and more, will be largely depleted. Those who have diversified their economies and invested in their citizens, particularly in education and health, will have a shot at prosperity. Those that haven’t, stand to become hellish places, barely viable, if viable at all.

…it also emphasizes the danger of the improper sequencing of different elements of political development: too much rule of law too soon can strain the development of an effective state, as happened in India; electoral democracy introduced in the absence of an autonomous bureaucracy can lead to clientelism and pervasive corruption, as happened in Greece. Even the societies in which a proper balance of democracy, rule of law, and an effective state has been struck in the past are susceptible to political decay when rent-seeking extractive elite coalitions capture the state, as has happened in the United States.

that they take part in most of the festivals and ceremonies of Muslims and Hindus, mixing with the people. They pay great respect to accomplished scholars of whatever sect.’ Intermarriage, he wrote, was common, though the Indian women who took European partners were, he maintained, rarely respectable: ‘The women of people with no future, of corrupt Muslims, of evil Hindus, who of their own desire enter into the bonds of wedlock with the English, they do not interfere with their religion nor compel them to leave purdah veiling; when any son born of the union reaches the age of 4, he is taken from his mother and sent to England to be educated.

Somehow, I was doubtful. It wasn’t Singh’s fault. He had done his part, following the playbook of liberal democracies across the post–Cold War world: upholding the constitutional order; attending to the quotidian, often technical work of boosting the GDP; and expanding the social safety net. Like me, he had come to believe that this was all any of us could expect from democracy, especially in big, multiethnic, multireligious societies like India and the United States. Not revolutionary leaps or major cultural overhauls; not a fix for every social pathology or lasting answers for those in search of purpose and meaning in their lives. Just the observance of rules that allowed us to sort out or at least tolerate our differences, and government policies that raised living standards and improved education enough to temper humanity’s baser impulses. Except now I found myself asking whether those impulses—of violence, greed, corruption, nationalism, racism, and religious intolerance, the all-too-human desire to beat back our own uncertainty and mortality and sense of insignificance by subordinating others—were too strong for any democracy to permanently contain. For they seemed to lie in wait everywhere, ready to resurface whenever growth rates stalled or demographics changed or a charismatic leader chose to ride the wave of people’s fears and resentments. And as much as I might have wished otherwise, there was no Mahatma Gandhi around to tell me what I might do to hold such impulses back.

IN MANY RESPECTS, modern-day India counted as a success story, having survived repeated changeovers in government, bitter feuds within political parties, various armed separatist movements, and all manner of corruption scandals. The transition to a more market-based economy in the 1990s had unleashed the extraordinary entrepreneurial talents of the Indian people—leading to soaring growth rates, a thriving high-tech sector, and a steadily expanding middle class. As a chief architect of India’s economic transformation, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seemed like a fitting emblem of this progress: a member of the tiny, often persecuted Sikh religious minority who’d risen to the highest office in the land, and a self-effacing technocrat who’d won people’s trust not by appealing to their passions but by bringing about higher living standards and maintaining a well-earned reputation for not being corrupt. Singh and I had developed a warm and productive relationship. While he could be cautious in foreign policy, unwilling to get out too far ahead of an Indian bureaucracy that was historically suspicious of U.S. intentions, our time together confirmed my initial impression of him as a man of uncommon wisdom and decency; and during my visit to the capital city of New Delhi, we reached agreements to strengthen U.S. cooperation on counterterrorism, global health, nuclear security, and trade.

In India, corrupted politicians, earn huge money and deposit it in foreign countries. Thus, they are indulged in “Corruption-Pandemic.

The fact that it took five years for the BJP government to appoint a Lokpal and that it diluted the 2013 act it had backed, along with Anna Hazare, was "an indication of how the party [was] reneging with impunity on its poll promise of a corruption-free India,

it is evident that the two-way relationship between corruption and black income generation constitutes a central problem of India’s political economy.

Tax-Evasion of Rs.200 crores by fraudulently claiming that signals beamed by NDTV in Delhi to Hong Kong (STAR TV) by NDTV was export and claim tax benefits on that when no goods was taken away from India to a place outside India and nothing crossed Custom barrier of India; by bribing corrupt IRS officer Shumana Sen, in a quid pro quo, and who was given an “all-expenses paid free yearly vacation abroad with her entire family” which cost about Rs.1 crore for each of such several trips abroad.

The world's highest point of dishonest, corrupt, non-neutral, and even non-qualified media is first Pakistani and second Indian media; indeed, that represents and shows the picture of the mentality and character.

Compassionate AI envisions a political system free from politicians, where every citizen is guaranteed equal empowerment and inclusion.

This dynasty grew to become the most powerful of all south Indian empires after their defeat of their rivals: the Pallavas, their one-time overlords, were vanquished in 903; the Pandiyas of Madurai fell before their armies in 920; and the Cheras of Kerala in 993. Their control of the entire southern coastline is still commemorated in the Tamil term for the eastern coast: Coromandel is a corruption of Chola Mandala, the ‘Circle of Chola Rule’.86

On election days, the burdens of poverty and corruption and of a creaky economic system are put aside, and India celebrates. Many voters dress especially for the occasion... None quite voice the thought, but those who came in a steady stream to vote seemed to be saying that India may have fallen far behind its neighbors in the struggle for prosperity, but as long as it can choose its governments, it can hope for better in the future.

To become a developed country, therefore, India’s GDP will have to grow at 12 per cent per year for at least a decade. Technically this is within India’s reach, since it would require the rate of investment to rise from the present 28 per cent of GDP to 36 per cent, while productivity growth will have to ensure that the incremental output-capital ratio declines from the present 4.0 to 3.0. These are modest goals that can be attained by an efficient decision-making structure, tackling corruption, increased Foreign direct investment (FDI) and use of IT software in the domestic industry.

Salim looked surprised. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘The upper levels do the match-fixing and we have no involvement. Also not all teams are manageable. But we know which team will win. Pakistan is the best team for match-fixing.’ ‘We hate Pakistanis!’ Salim’s accomplice chipped in. He looked and sounded very angry. ‘Why?’ ‘Because they say we are not good Muslims. It’s like you are Christian and some Christian country-wallah says you are not good.

In February 2002 three Kashmiri militants, under arrest in Delhi, confessed that they had been hatching a plan to kidnap Tendulkar and India’s then-captain, Sourav Ganguly.

And as they started laying about the bowling, the crowd started shouting appreciation for them too: ‘Sachin Zindabad!’ and ‘Sehwag Zindabad!’ And suddenly thousands were shouting ‘India Zindabad!’ A group of youths were tearing around the boundary line holding the Indian tricolour and green flag of Pakistan knotted together. ‘India Zindabad! Pakistan Zindabad!’ the crowd thundered. Had I not heard it, I would not have believed it was possible. In mad, murderous Karachi, the crowd was working itself into raptures over these Indians who, despite everything they knew about the city, had trusted to come to it to play cricket.

Besides batting, Inzy mainly liked eating and sleeping. Like most Pakistani cricketers, he was pious and uncomfortable speaking English and his batting was largely uncoached. On occasion his manners let him down. As when, fielding on the boundary in a hilariously misnamed ‘Friendship Cup’ game against India in Toronto, an Indian heckler had insulted him, calling him ‘mota aloo’, or fat potato. Inzy then called for a bat and leapt into the crowd with it to try to brain the heckler.

A more interesting question was asked by a small boy, who had been brought along by his elder sister: ‘You’re a Muslim,’ he said to the fast bowler Irfan Pathan, ‘so why aren’t you playing for Pakistan?

As India’s last wicket fell, the Chennai crowd rose to applaud the victorious Pakistanis. It was a reminder that some Indian fans could still appreciate a good game, whatever the result. Barely believing what they were witnessing, the Pakistani cricketers went on a slow victory lap of the stadium. Audibly moved, the Indian television commentator Harsha Bhogle intoned, ‘If you ever wanted to see a victory for sport, here it is in your television screens, in your drawing rooms.

Yet Azhar also had it tough. When India played Pakistan, the pressure on him to perform was enormous. Indian Muslims needed his runs for inspiration; Hindu nationalists needed them to be convinced of his loyalty. When Azhar once scored a match-winning century, Thackeray declared him a ‘nationalist Muslim’, a phrase that was doubly insidious.

Yet Baig never scored another fifty for India. Early in 1961 he was dropped after scoring just 34 runs in five innings, during three home Tests against Pakistan. It was subsequently revealed that he had received hate mail accusing him of deliberately underperforming against his fellow Muslims. ‘I was flabbergasted,’ Baig recalled. ‘I mean, it hadn’t even occurred to one that anyone could connect my poor form to my being a Muslim.

Sunil Gavaskar and the Pakistani batsman Zaheer Abbas roomed together in Australia during the 1971 Indo-Pakistani war, while playing together for a Rest of the World side. They were said to have ‘shared the tension by consoling each other’.

The uplifting 1952 Test series was won by India 2-1. The next two series, in 1954 and 1960, were held against a backdrop of rising tensions over Kashmir, and this was sadly reflected in the cricket. Terrified of losing, both teams played very defensively, producing ten consecutive and extremely boring draws.

I would like the public of Bombay to revise their sporting code and erase from it communal matches. I can understand matches between colleges and institutions, but I have never understood the reason for having Hindu, Parsi, Muslim and other Communal Elevens. I should have thought such unsportsmanlike divisions would be considered taboo in sporting language and sporting manners.

As early as 1952 this led India’s great batsman Vijay Merchant to predict that India’s fast-bowling stocks would suffer as a result. ‘Above all, the partition has deprived India of future fast bowlers,’ he wrote. ‘In the past, India often relied for fast bowling on the North Indian people, who because of their height and sturdy physique, are better equipped for this kind of bowling than the cricketers of Central India or the South.

The joke was that Vizzy hunted tigers – of which he claimed to have bagged over 300 – by placing a transistor radio in the jungle and boring them to death with his commentary.

When I got out for a duck, they said I was no good because I’d only got one eye. And when I got a hundred, they said there must be nothing wrong with my eyesight after all. I’m afraid Indians are a very cynical people.

It was said he once chastised one of his batsmen, Chandu Borde, for wearing a Maharashtra state cricket cap on India duty; at which Borde pointed out that Pataudi himself often wore his Sussex cap. ‘Ah, Chandu,’ Tiger replied, ‘but Maharashtra is not Sussex.

Educated at Harrow and Cambridge, Nehru jokingly called himself the ‘last Englishman to rule India’.

He was the sort of accomplished, anglicised Indian the British had sought, as a matter of policy, to create. He was, as Lord Macaulay would have noted approvingly, ‘brown in colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.

This was a service often provided by the batsmen, on occasion by Tiger’s own monocular medium-pace. One commentator referred to the tactic as India’s ‘non-violent bowling policy’.

It opens magnificently: ‘Cricket is an Indian game accidentally discovered by the English.’ Nandy then argues that cricket’s success on the subcontinent was testament to the game’s intrinsic compatibility with ancient Hindu culture. With reference to the Hindu epic, the Mahabharata, he argues that Indians prefer slow-burning dramas and endless digression, that they have an equivocal view of destiny, in which victory and defeat are always partial.

that there’s a rhythm, if not an algorithm, to cricket that many South Asians identify with. No one’s fully defeated; no one’s fully victorious. Just when you think you’re fully defeated, someone scores a double-century.

According to Zaheer Khan, one of India’s few successful recent fast bowlers, ‘Indian bodies are not designed to bowl fast.’ This is a popular theory. When, in the 1990s, the south Indian Javagal Srinath – one of India’s few genuine pacers – proved to be an exception to it, the reaction was wryly self-deprecating. Srinath was hailed in India as ‘the world’s fastest vegetarian’.

The best explanation for India’s shortage of fast bowlers is not religious or physiological: India has 30 million Punjabis of its own and an awful lot of tall people. It is cultural. India’s biggest cricketing heroes have been batsmen, from Nayudu to Gavaskar and Tendulkar. Some see in this a continuation of the old British snobbery favouring gentleman-batsmen over working-class bowlers.

Pakistanis love cricket as fervently as Indians – maybe even more. Geoff Lawson, the former Australia fast bowler and Pakistan national team coach, told me he thought Pakistanis cared more about cricket ‘because there’s not a whole lot else for them to do. It’s either cricket or the mosque’.

It is the duty of Muslims to prove they are not Pakistani,’ declared Shiv Sena’s leader, Bal Thackeray, ahead of a big match. ‘I want them with tears in their eyes every time India loses to Pakistan.

Cricket is an Indian game accidentally discovered by the English.’ Nandy then argues that cricket’s success on the subcontinent was testament to the game’s intrinsic compatibility with ancient Hindu culture. With reference to the Hindu epic, the Mahabharata, he argues that Indians prefer slow-burning dramas and endless digression, that they have an equivocal view of destiny, in which victory and defeat are always partial. These qualities, Nandy argues, are provided by cricket. Thus, Indians did not merely acquire the game of their colonial occupier – in some deep cultural sense, they owned it all along.

The problem is greatest at youth level. In 2007 one of the DDCA selectors was alleged to be demanding sex from mothers in return for picking their sons for his age-group side. On learning that this was a sure-fire route to getting his son picked for Delhi, one ambitious father was reported to have fixed up the selector with a 5,000-rupee-a-trick prostitute, masquerading as his wife. If this happened, commented Kadambari Murali of the Hindustan Times, it was ‘far less than what some parents have allegedly paid to get their sons to play for Delhi’.

Either cry for exchanging new currency notes for couple of days or crib for corruption for ages and generations with old one. Choice is yours.

scientifically speaking - you cannot. Accept it. You simply cannot make any nation completely corruption-free. It is only an absurd fairytale. It feels good to talk about it, but it cannot be made a reality.

Do you think AAP (Aam Aadmi Party) will win?’ The question dripped with hope, as if an AAP victory would bring a revolution that could change his fortunes. AAP was the new pro-poor party led by anti-corruption crusaders. The unrealistic hopes he pinned on a party of amateurs was telling. In the bleakness of his situation, it was hope alone that had kept Patel going.

One of the most damning statements regarding the government’s apathy towards corruption and recovery of black money was made by the Swiss ambassador in March 2011. He publicly stated that the Swiss government had not received any requests from India for the release of data regarding money illegally stashed in Swiss banks during his tenure. So much for our government’s determination to fight corruption!

Manmohan Singh’s lost opportunity The anti-corruption agitations of 2011 provided a wonderful opportunity for the prime minister and his government to start the process of purging the system of corruption and retrieving black money illegally stashed away in foreign banks. The government had two options to get our money back. The first, to behave like a responsible, honourable and strong nation and demonstrate political will to fight corruption using the ample machinery available through international and bilateral legal instruments, the Tax Information Exchange Treaties (TIEAs), Double Taxation Avoidance Agreements (DTAAs) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) automatic exchange route. The Swiss have volunteered cooperation; and India can follow the example of the US and UK, and get India’s stolen money back to the country. Or, the government can take the other option and behave like a banana republic and a failed state, plunder capital from their own country through a UPA-sponsored version of imperialism, perpetuate poverty and backwardness by denying the people of this country their rightful development dividend while repeatedly rewarding and incentivizing the looters with amnesty schemes. Mr Singh’s government has continuously concealed information on black money by fooling the people of our country, shielding the corrupt and guilty who have illegal bank accounts in foreign banks, and by creating obstacles for any progress in the matter instead of taking proactive measures to obtain the information from the foreign governments concerned. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh could have chosen the former option and gone down in history as a great patriot and leader of our country, a pioneer against corruption. But sadly, he has lost the opportunity and chosen such, that history will remember him as having presided over the greatest frauds practised on this poor and gullible nation.

The Sunday Guardian, in its issue of 22 August, 2010 stated, on the basis of credible information, that a settlement took place at the Ritz Hotel in Paris and that it was worked out by Warren Anderson and a personal friend and representative of the then prime minister of India. Under this unofficial settlement, the government wanted to be paid secretly, under the table. When Union Carbide officers raised serious doubts regarding the Supreme Court’s acceptance of this unfair and corrupt settlement, they were assured that the Supreme Court was not their worry. The negotiators would manage everything. And manage, they did. The entire manifestly illegal and corrupt settlement did go through the judicial filter. A somnolent Supreme Court permitted composition of non-compoundable offences and quashed proceedings without falling under the well settled rule of quashing jurisdiction. Surely, if there was an honest and real negotiated settlement between Union Carbide and the Indian government it would require large and complex correspondence evidencing genuine bargaining prior to the settlement being finalized. Such huge claims are not settled by a telephonic talk of which no record exists. It is worth recalling here an interesting faux pas that occurred in connection with the financial settlement of the Bhopal gas tragedy. When N.D. Tewari became external affairs minister, he went to the United States to plead with potential investors to come to India. The consul general of India was present at the meeting addressed by the minister. The minister innocently referred to the Bhopal gas tragedy and the inadequate compensation received from Union Carbide. A Union Carbide representative present in the audience, stood up and caused consternation by declaring in public that Union Carbide had paid almost everything that India had asked for, but a large part of the amount was paid as out of court settlement, ostensibly for the purposes of the Congress party. If the Indian government denies the truth of the story that some people in or connected with the government swallowed a big fortune, they must produce the documents which were exchanged during the pre-settlement negotiations and until their final termination. The government must produce them even now. The people of this country are entitled to know how a claim of $3.3 billion came to be settled for a paltry amount of $475 million. However, neither has the government given any explanation, nor has the story been refuted till today.

Indira Gandhi left behind several legacies—dynastic rule, economic control through populism—such as, bank nationalisation, Garibi Hatao and the 20-point programme—but most importantly, she left behind a centralised institutionalisation of political corruption that has matured into another Frankenstein, devouring the nation and the poor of India.

This was an extraordinary exercise of judicial power, to say the least. Apart from the meager settlement of the civil claim, criminal proceedings arising out of the disaster, wherever they may be pending, would stand quashed. What was surprising was that five Supreme Court judges, the learned attorney general of India, others taking daily interest in the litigation, and the press, which gets terribly hot under the collar about lesser matters, did not object to this unusual settlement reeking of corruption. This settlement, agreed upon without consulting either the victims, the NGOs working for their welfare, or their well wishers has been characterized by Prof. Upen Baxi, India’s best scholar jurist, as an ‘unconscionable settlement’ by an unscrupulous Congress government.

His brother Najib owned an auto-parts store at bustling Shikarpur Gate, the mouth of the narrow road linking their village to the city—an ancient byway that had once led southward through the passes all the way to India. At dusk it is clogged with a riot of vegetable sellers’ handcarts beset by shoppers, Toyota pickup trucks, horse-drawn taxis, and three-wheeled rickshaws clambering around and through the throng like gaudy dung beetles. Nurallah’s brother Najib had gone to Chaman, just across the border in Pakistan, where the streets are lined with cargo containers serving as shops, and used motor oil cements the dust to the ground in a glossy tarmac, and every variety of automotive organ or sinew is laid bare, spread out, and strung up for sale. He had made his purchases and set off back to Kandahar. “He paid his customs dues”—Nurallah emphasized the remarkable point—“because that’s the law. He paid at every checkpoint on the way back, fifty afghanis, a hundred afghanis.” A dollar or two every time an unkempt, underage police boy in green fatigues slouched out of a sandbagged lean-to into the middle of the road—eight times in the sixty-six miles when last I counted. “And then when he reached the entrance to town, the police there wanted five hundred afghanis. Five hundred!” A double arch marks the place where the road that swoops down from Kabul joins the road leading in from Pakistan. The police range from one side to the other, like spear fishermen hunting trout in a narrows. “He refused,” Nurallah continued. “He said he had paid his customs dues—he showed them the receipt. He said he had paid the bribes at every checkpoint all along the way, and he was not paying again.” I waited a beat. “So what happened?” “They reached into his window and smacked him.” “They hit him?” I was shocked. Najib might be a sunny guy, but Kandahar tempers are strung on tripwires. For a second I thought we’d have to go bail him out. “What did he do?” Nurallah’s eyes, beneath his widow’s peak, were banked and smoldering. “What could he do? He paid the money. But then he pulled over to the side of the road and called me. I told him to stay right there. And I called Police Chief Matiullah Qatih, to report the officer who was taking the bribes.” And Matiullah had scoffed at him: Did he die of it? The police buzzards had seen Najib make the call. They had descended on him, snatched the phone out of his hand, and smashed it. “You call that law?” Now Nurallah was ablaze. “They’re the police! They should be showing people what the law is; they should be enforcing the law. And they’re the ones breaking it.” Nurallah was once a police officer himself. He left the force the day his own boss, Kabul police chief Zabit Akrem, was assassinated in that blast in the mosque in 2005.1 Yet so stout was Nurallah’s pride in his former profession that he brought his dark green uniform into work and kept it there, hung neatly on a hook in his locker. “My sacred oath,” he vowed, concluding: “If I see someone planting an IED on a road, and then I see a police truck coming, I will turn away. I will not warn them.” I caught my breath. So maybe he didn’t mean it literally. Maybe Nurallah wouldn’t actually connive with the Taliban. Still, if a former police officer like him was even mouthing such thoughts, then others were acting on them. Afghan government corruption was manufacturing Taliban.

In 2012, Vigilance Commissioner R. Sri Kumar cited an internal study to say that the CBI’s conviction rate in corruption cases was a shocking 3.96 per cent. The CBI analysed 264 corruption cases in which 698 people were accused, including 486 government officials. On an average, the CBI took more than thirteen months to conclude investigations and just eight out of the total accused were convicted after twenty-six years of investigation and trial, Sri Kumar said. ‘There is no certainty of punishment for corruption and that is why corruption has increased,’ said Sri Kumar, who, as a member of the Central Vigilance Commission, was officially tasked to supervise the CBI.