What this implies is that corruption in the country, arguably the first and foremost obstacle in its progress and development, is at an all-time high.
Nowhere was it better exposed in all its ugliness than during the current pandemic, with COVID patients and their loved ones virtually facing extortion when trying to procure oxygen, life-saving and essential drugs and even hospital beds.
Ironically, in the run up to the Republic Day celebrations, some media reports pointed out irregularities even in the process to choose and manufacture a new combat uniform for the Army.
What’s more, the Electoral Bonds scheme is akin to institutionalised corruption, given that the ruling party gets the lion’s share of such money in hundreds of crores ‘donated’ to it by crony capitalists. It is evidently a quid pro quo arrangement, an ‘official’ channel for money to change hands.
Meanwhile, big ticket instances of corruption by those at the top seem to be simply getting swept under the carpet, either by those entrusted to call it out who are failing to do so or by the so-called mainstream media which fails to expose them for obvious reasons.
If at all, news of such ‘scams’ will likely tumble out years later. By then, it may be too late to do anything about it. The perpetuators would have long retired from public service or politics. The damage would have been done by then, irreversibly in many cases.
The Modi govt would do well to take cognisance of the report and take urgent and effective measures to tame this demon which affects the day-to-day quality of citizens’ life in ways that are too numerous to detail here.
But it has, in the recent past, summarily dismissed global reports such as those terming India as an ‘electoral autocracy’ and as being only ‘party free’. Even reports by experts and the international media pointing out that the official death toll because of COVID in India was a huge under-estimation were brushed aside as some sort of a global conspiracy to ‘defame’ India.
The Global Hunger Index released in October last year, which pegged India’s rank at 101 out of 116 countries, too failed to move the Modi govt, despite the fact that even our neighbouring nations fare better. The government of a nation whose citizens are forced to go hungry, and where children are dying due to malnutrition, in the second decade of the 21st century ought to have been alarmed by this revelation, but quite clearly, this is par for the course for it.
Going by all this, we are all pretty much on our own.
(Views are personal)
