Viswanathan K's Thoughts

And now it's the coal scam. Expect the same outcome as the 2G scam: denial of any wrongdoing, no convictions, a new auction, endless delays. In other words, nothing will change. But there is one difference about this scam: it can be laid directly at the doorstep of that “honest” person in the UPA, Manmohan Singh. Because he was in charge of the coal department for years together, including the period when these coal block allocations were made. This either proves politics corrupts everyone, or that Manmohan was never honest to begin with or that he doesn't even have the power to run even a single ministry, let alone the country. And yet, he shamelessly insists on hanging on as the “honest” face of Sonia’s band of thieves. Despite all these scams, will the UPA come back to power in the next election? Possibly, yes. Because India's electorate is “secular”. So the most corrupt politician is preferable to the communal administrator, even if the latter is honest. Sad. And al...

Just when you think Manmohan Singh can’t drag the UPA any lower, he does. Like his recent suggestion to relook the Right to Information Act (RTI). One can see why he feels that way: after all, it was one of the RTI responses that brought to the fore Pranab Mukherjee’s allegation that Chidambaram was (also) responsible for the 2G scam. Another RTI reply cast doubts on the CAG’s assessment of the extent of losses in the 2G scam. For a government that claims it likes and does things for the aam aadmi , it’s surprising that they want to focus their energies on muzzling RTI instead of providing protection to the aam aadmi who asks inconvenient questions. Both politicians and bureaucrats claim that too much transparency hampers government functioning. Of course, it does. Never used to any kind of accountability, one can see how transparency can hamper corruption, incompetence and inefficiencies (or what they call “governance”). Manmohan Singh can be educated in the West and the guy who brou...

When Manmohan Singh finally came out and talked about the corruption scandals that are all in the news, boy, did he make a complete mess! Now I can see why he didn’t want to face the media all this while. It just goes to reaffirm that the guy is not a politician and that he is a very poor liar. Like when he said corruption is inevitable in coalition politics. Really? Didn’t Bofors happen without any coalition? Oh wait, as far as the Congress is concerned, Bofors never happened since it involved their royal family. And in what way were the Commonwealth Games and ISRO spectrum scams connected to coalitions? Did you hear Rahul Gandhi’s take on all the (Indian) black money lying in foreign banks? It belongs to the poor, he says. Really, Rahul? I thought it belongs to all Indian citizens, not just the poor. Manmohan said that the 2G loss is notional and similar to losses due to other subsidies. Wow! That “reasoning” really takes one’s breath away! But see how the Left reacted: they weren’t...