The only consistency of the various Congress governments through 60 years is that it kept India poor. Our villages remained without electricity, water, sanitation and health. Even education was neglected. All because the money for these schemes was siphoned off from the leaders downwards to the bureaucrats and petty officials. The corruption at the top was so endemic that officials down the line thought nothing of following their leaders in lining their own pockets.

Rajiv Gandhi famously said that of every Rupee spent on alleviating poverty only 16 paisa reached the poor. But till the Modi government came to power no government had thought of ways to curb it. Our Prime Minister, however, will have problems in trying to get the huge amounts of money siphoned abroad in the decade that the UPA was in power. Apart from tax treaties with countries he has also to get tax havens like Panama, Cayman Islands and several such on board.

A very close friend of mine Aruna HarPrasad, a wellknown film maker who has lived in India but travelled to several countries abroad, in the course of her work, came to me with a brilliant idea, which she explained thus:

Why not make corruption a human rights issue? Why not give it legitimacy that will take it from a simple white collar crime to a hardcore criminal activity like murder?