7/22/2015 ARE INDIANS CORRUPT BY NATURE ?

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The huge scams which are unearthed in India every other day, IS THERE A
trigger an important question: are Indians more corrupt than in SAFFRON
TERRORISM?
other countries of the world? This is an assumption which many
Indians accept as a fact, and which contributes to a very negative ABOUT INDIAS
SUPPORT OF
image of themselves. Yet this postulation is totally wrong: Indians
PALESTINE
have just inherited a system, post-independence, which breeds
corruption. It is this very system which makes people corrupt. 6 BILLION
PEOPLE AND
First you are supposed to get elected with ridiculously low SECOND HAND
amounts, a leftover from the socialist days of Nehru. There is no OPINIONS

way today, when an aspirant politician needs, to look genuine, a

THE SYMBOL OF
caravan of 100 cars, constant helicopter trips, posters, gifts of AYODHYA
saris, dhotis, cycles, even TVs, to every constituent, that he can
NEEM, THE
manage with the stipulated budget. Hence, he needs to resort to GREEN GOLD
black money and it opens the door to corruption. Secondly, even if THAT INDIA
IGNORES
our elected MP, say from Tamil Nadu, still has some mental
honesty left in him after having had to sacrifice some principles to WHY DOES THE

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get elected, when he arrives in Delhi and gets his car, his WESTERN
MEDIA ABHOR
bungalow, peons, privileges, and attends this extraordinary un- NARENDRA
vastu (no air, no natural light) building of the Indian Parliament, MODI ?

where he sees MPs behaving worse than in a fish market, his

REMEMBERING
beliefs are even more dented. But more than that, the amount of THE KASHMIRI
power he wields is totally disproportionate to his or her brief: PANDITS: THE
ROLE OF
hundreds of people line-up daily in his office for favours, BENAZIR
businessmen come to him for licences to open factories, offering BHUTTO

bribes, journalists queue to interview him or her... And there, in

Indian MUSLIMS :
this big, arrogant, ignorant bubble, which is Delhi, so far away how to vote ?
from the rural reality of his Tamil Nadu, he loses not only sight of
THE
his initial aspiration, but also his head. One of the great calamities SUPERHUMAN
of modern India is that everything is hopelessly centralized, to the TASK BEFORE
MODI
point that at this moment, every important decisions is taken by
one lone person sitting in her Delhi residence. Prithviraj

Yes, ultimately some blame has to be pinned down. There is no Chauhan

&Muhammad
doubt, that the Bofors scam set a precedent: henceforth political Ghori /Narendra
parties needed hundred of crores for elections and the (black) Modi & Sonia
Gandhi
money had to come out of scams. Part of the blame has to be
also attributed to the Indian Media. In the times of Bofors, the LETTER TO AN
Indian Express single handedly broke the story;, but today, the AMBASSADOR

Media is often docile and sometimes blatantly sides with the SMRITI IRANI &
Congress party. INDIANIZING
EDUCATION
In this context, it is highly symbolic that tapes of conversations
between lobbyist Nira Radia and three of the most preeminent TIPPU SULTAN,
FRANCOIS
journalists in India have come to light. These top editors have
RIPAUD &
been found to be not only lobbying for the Congress, but also HINDUS
using their good names, their columns or their prime time, to put
THE WHITE
across views which are at not their own. When one knows how WOMAN AND
much money the companies that Nira Radia represents have, INDIA

there is a good chance that these journalists have been bought.

THE EMPRESS
What is staggering is that so far, even though there are thousands OF INDIA
(64.000) of tweets and posts on this scandal on the Net, the
MAHARASHTRA,
mainstream press and television channels have chosen to sit tight THE THAKERAYS
on this story. It is a real conspiracy of silence. Is it because they AND MAHARAJAS

want to spare fellow journalists famous ones at that ? Or do they

Teesta Setalvad,

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also want to spare themselves, because many of these channels Javed Akhtar and
Alyque
and newspapers are too - overtly or covertly - putting across the Padamsee
point of view of the Congress, while coming down hard on Hindus: violate FCRA
rules
the arrest of swami Asimanand blanked out all news of the Nira
Radia tapes? Whether they are paid or not, is another matter. It is SRI SRI RAVI
not always necessary to give cash: a Padma Bushan does the SHANKAR AT 17

trick. Barkha Dutt, one of the journalists exposed in the Open and SRI
Outlook magazines stories, has got one from the Congress govt; AUROBINDO,
THE
and so has Teesta Seltavad, who repeatedly committed perjury in
FORGOTTEN
court, while going all guns after the Chief Minister of Gujarat. GIANT OF
People ask me: was it better when I was a reporter covering INDIAS
INDEPENDANCE
South Asia? Well, journalism is about Truth, about reporting
honestly, as much as possible, given the fact that each journalist SHIVAJI, A HERO
FOR MODERN
possesses a particular atavism, which make him or her, look at
INDIA
the world with slightly tainted glasses. It cant be helped, but some
mental sincerity is always there, at least in the initial stage of
ones career.
Nothing can be further away from this mental honesty and
aspiration for truth, than the selling of editorial space, which
makes publicity, or outright lies, appear as genuine articles, or as
a TV documentary. This is a crime against journalism which
started after my time.
The largest selling newspaper in India, was the first to introduce
this unethical practice and it minted loads of money, ast has
been reported in a recent Outlook magazine issue. In the same
way, the TV channel which also claims it is the most widely viewed
in India, started the practice of selling some of its programmes.
Others had to follow suit for fear of bankrupcy: many newspapers
and TV channels sell today their editorial space and programmes.
These newspapers and TV channels might appear glittering and
triumphant at the moment, but what they have done is make the
foundations of Indian journalism so unethical, so rotten, that the
whole edifice has to collapse one day for a fresh start.
As for scams, one needs a government which is bold and
courageous enough to change the political system. The ceiling of
donations to political parties has to be freed. At the same time

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they have to be made transparent. This will take care of all the
black money that goes in the coffers of parties. Secondly, the
election commission, which has been incredibly biased towards
the Congress since a few years, should ban all gifts during
elections, which is just a bribe to buy votes. Thirdly, there has to
be a decentralisation of Indian Politics. Delhi is too far away from
the heartlands of India, not only in the South, but even from Central
India. MPs have to be made to spend more time in their
constituencies and federalism of the kind practiced in the US, has
to be encouraged, so that more power is devoluted to the states.
Then will the true Indian genius takeover and give back to this
great country and great people, who are no more corrupt than
others, the instruments to become a truly world power, eventually
surpassing China.

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