A recent issue of Outlook had a cover story on Koda, the former Chief Minister of Jharkhand, who is alleged to have looted Rs 4,000 crore from the state. A related article in the magazine was on all the scams that have taken place in India and how little we seem to care about all those stories on corruption.

The Reddy brothers, YSR’s family, Koda, Raja – these are just the latest additions. They are the tip of the iceberg. For the record, all of them get away with the loot, and continue to be in positions of influence. Indeed, I cannot think of a single politician who has put behind bars for corruption.

This is a cancer that is not restricted to any particular political party. It infects the whole system. An honest politician has become an oxymoron.

Politics has become a way – and perhaps the only way in India today – to amass unimaginable wealth in the shortest possible of time. Of course, entry to the club is becoming increasingly difficult because politicians have realised that getting one or more of their offsprings into politics is the surest way of ensuring the ill-gotten wealth stays. The façade of ‘youth’ is being used to legitimise power and money procured by dubious means.

We, the voters of the country, are as much to blame. We don’t demand accountability. We keep voting back to power the same folks who keep ripping us off. And in all this, we stay a poor country – waiting forever for the date with destiny.

It was a day of shameful firsts.

A member of the legislature was assaulted inside the Assembly for the first time in Maharashtra’s legislative history, by four debutant MLAs whose party — the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) — is being represented for the first time in the House.

On Monday, four MLAs from Raj Thackeray’s party assaulted Samajwadi Party leader Abu Azmi after he refused to take the oath of office in Marathi.
The Speaker has suspended all four — Shishir Shinde, Ram Kadam, Vasant Gite and Ramesh Wanjhale — for four years. The MNS has 13 legislators in all.

Though a standoff was expected as Azmi, a migrant from Uttar Pradesh, had insisted on taking the oath in Hindi and Thackeray had demanded all MLAs take the oath in Marathi, nobody had anticipated violence inside the legislature.

The suspended MLAs were also charged with manhandling a woman MLA, Meenakshi Patil from the Peasants and Workers Party, who tried to help Azmi.

The drama began when Azmi started reading the oath in Hindi.
Before he completed the first sentence, Wanjhale rushed to the dais and uprooted the podium. Within seconds, his colleagues stormed the well, displaying pro-Marathi banners and shouting slogans.

As they tried to pull Azmi down from the dais, members of the Congress, Nationalist Congress Party and Republican Democratic Left Front ran up to help him. Surrounded by others, Azmi completed his oath in Hindi but as he walked to his seat he was manhandled by Shinde and slapped more than once by Kadam.

The MNS remained unrepentant of its MLAs’ actions.
“We are proud of our act and will repeat it if anyone dares to insult Maharashtra,” MNS spokesman Shirish Parkar said.

CM Ashok Chavan and his deputy, Chhagan Bhujbal, condemned the incident and asked protem Speaker Ganpatrao Deshmukh to deal with the attackers strictly.

The MNS has decided to appeal before the high court. INFAMOUS FOUR SHISHIR SHINDE: Constituency: Bhandup, Northeast Mumbai A ex-Shiv Sena activist who shot to fame for digging the pitch at Wankhede stadium in 1991 to protest against Pakistan’s cricket tour of India.
RAM KADAM: Constituency: Ghatkopar (East), NE Mumbai He shot to fame during the Dahi Handi festival last year offering prize money of Rs 25 lakh.
Defeated the late BJP leader Pramod Mahajan’s daughter Poonam in the last elections.
RAMESH WANJHALE: Constituency: Khadakwasala, Pune A contractor, Wanjhale is referred to as `golden boy’ for wearing 2 kg gold on his person.
VASANT GITE: Nashik. Former Mayor of Nashik, he was blamed for threatening North Indian labourers in the city during the MNS’s agitation against North Indians a year ago. OPTIONS FOR MNS It can apologise to the assembly and try to get the suspension reduced or revoked. How the Congress-NCP will respond is anybody’s guess.

It may challenge the decision in the High Court. But constitutional experts say the court is unlikely to overrule the assembly’s decision.

It may ask its suspended MLAs to resign from the Assembly, and face by-elections, making a political issue of the suspension.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR THEM The MNS will surely try to derive political advantage from the incident. It has already forced the Shiv Sena to reluctantly support its demand that all MLAs take their oath in Marathi.

Losing four MLAs out of 13 will also impact the party’s relevance as a political force. If it wants the suspension revoked, it will have to soften its stand.
Maharashtra Navnirman Sena MLA Ram Kadam who allegedly slapped Mumbai Samajwadi Party president Abu Asim Azmi in the assembly for taking oath in Hindi on Monday said he had no regrets for his action and was ready for any sacrifice to uphold the glory of Marathi language.

When asked if his actions were not an insult to the assembly, Kadam said Azmi had insulted the 11-crore Marathispeaking population of Maharashtra in the 50th year of the state’s formation.

“It is Mumbai and Maharashtra that has made him big and can’t he take the oath in the local language? He had lots of spare time and couldn’t he mug four lines of the speech in Marathi?” Kadam asked.

When pointed out that it was not appropriate to act violently in the assembly, he said, we had to teach Azmi a lesson in the language he understood.

Once a close associate of late BJP leader Pramod Mahajan, Kadam shot to limelight when he sponsored a Rs 25-lakh prize for Dahi-Handi festival last year.
He defeated Mahajan’s daughter Poonam from the Ghatkopar East seat. A builder by profession, he was arrested a day after the election for allegedly manhandling a constable.

Ironically, Kadam was addressing the media in English and Hindi, besides Marathi. “The Shiv Sena-BJP did not utter a word despite tall talks of Marathi pride and it is for the Marathi manoos to see,” Kadam added.

Echoing Kadam, MNS spokesperson Shirish Parkar said: “We are proud of our act and will repeat it if anyone dares to insult Maharashtra.

“For years, this man has been intimidating Maharashtrians and today he crossed the limits,” Parkar said. “If he does not understand civil language, we have to make him understand in a language he understands.”

Corruption hurts everyone, and it harms the poor the most. Sometimes its devastating impact is obvious:

• · A father who must do without shoes because his meagre wages are used to pay a bribe to get his child into a supposedly free school.
• · The unsuspecting sick person who buys useless counterfeit drugs, putting their health in grave danger.
• · A small shop owner whose weekly bribe to the local inspector cuts severely into his modest earnings.
• · The family trapped for generations in poverty because a corrupt and autocratic leadership has systematically siphoned off a nation’s riches.

Other times corruption’s impact is less visible:

• · The prosperous multinational corporation that secured a contract by buying an unfair advantage in a competitive market through illegal kickbacks to corrupt government officials, at the expense of the honest companies who didn’t.
• · Post-disaster donations provided by compassionate people, directly or through their governments, that never reach the victims, callously diverted instead into the bank accounts of criminals.
• · The faulty buildings, built to lower safety standards because a bribe passed under the table in the construction process that collapse in an earthquake or hurricane.

Corruption has dire global consequences, trapping millions in poverty and misery and breeding social, economic and political unrest.

Corruption is both a cause of poverty, and a barrier to overcoming it. It is one of the most serious obstacles to reducing poverty.

Corruption denies poor people the basic means of survival, forcing them to spend more of their income on bribes. Human rights are denied where corruption is rife, because a fair trial comes with a hefty price tag where courts are corrupted.

Corruption undermines democracy and the rule of law.

Corruption distorts national and international trade.

Corruption jeopardises sound governance and ethics in the private sector.

Corruption threatens domestic and international security and the sustainability of natural resources.

Those with less power are particularly disadvantaged in corrupt systems, which typically reinforce gender discrimination.

Corruption compounds political exclusion: if votes can be bought, there is little incentive to change the system that sustains poverty.

The conclusion – Corruption hurts everyone.