No to corrupt Ministers

The largest democracy exercise in the world has just ended.

While Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi put their heads together and decide who gets to be the top brass, we can do nothing but put forward a simple request to them: NO CORRUPT MINISTERS!

The strongest signal that Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi can send out the netas and their babus is to pave the cabinet with honest and elegant men and women. Let us not continue with ministers who have so brazenly bled the system.

the clean-up needs to start at the top.

How can we blame the pitiably paid traffic constable or the lowly government clerk for trying to make a buck on the side when their big bosses- be it politicians or bureaucrats- are making a million times more?

Corruption has become endemic.

Worse, and this is the really sad part, we have come to accept it as a way of life. The fact is corruption penalizes the honest, distorts important decisions and policies, weakens the moral fibre of a society, and, most grievous of all, robs the really needy. In the extreme, it compromises the safety and security of our country and our people and is, therefore, as anti-national as an act of terror.

The people of India have given the Prime Minister and the Gandhis a historic opportunity to make a difference. Manmohan's refusal back down from the nuclear deal and Rahul's insistence on soldiering on solo in UP proves they are made of sterner stuff than they were credited with. Keeping out the dishonest is not going to be easy- especially with nominees of Congress's allies in the UPA- but good governance is also about taking hard, unpopular decisions that fly in the face of political expediency.

It's time we jettisoned our politics of conscience. We are aware that the pundits will laugh this off as the naïveté of the hopelessly idealistic, and say, "that's not how the system works". But change comes because someone somewhere has the courage of conviction- no matter how foolish- to tilt at windmills.