Scams and Naxalite Terror: The Tribune India

Silence over scams
The intelligentsia avoids risks by Kuldip Nayar
THE Indian democratic system, however wanting, has come to have enough openness to ensure that scams and scandals tumble out of the cupboard sooner or later. Former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s purchase of Bofors guns, the manipulations in the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket or the sale by central minister A Raja of 2G spectrum, the mobile band, are some recent stories of corruption.
The public is aghast over the disclosures. The media has criticised them endlessly. Parliament has registered its protest through walkouts or long debates. Yet no head has rolled. No minister has ever been prosecuted. It is business as usual after a scam has hit the headlines.

Two main reasons for lack of action are the absence of morality in politics and the government’s control over the investigating and prosecuting agencies like the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The shame for having been caught with the hand in tiller is no more deterring. The truth is the casualty. The guilty goes scot-free.
Read more: Silence over Scams

Medical Council Of India Scam
Ketan Desai was exposed the second time over and his deputy was seen as a protégé of his who had kept the President’s chair warm for him when Dr Desai was first arrested in 2001 on corruption charges and later acquitted for lack of evidence. That Dr Desai returned to head the MCI again is a telling commentary on how the vast body of medical doctors surrendered their right to be governed by a person of the right moral standards apparently through sheer apathy.

Dr Ketan Desai has indeed brought the whole medical profession under disrepute. The criminal cases registered against him must be pursued with vigour and he must be brought to book. As for the Medical Council of India, the Government must nurse it back to health and then restore to it a measure of autonomy that is the need of every professional body. The doctors on their part must draw the right lessons — never to let the council be hijacked by unscrupulous elements.
Read more: A new medical council- Nurse it back to health

Dangers of Dantewada
Groping in the dark proving costly by Lt-Gen Harwant Singh (retd)
THE massacre at Dantewada was not only a great tragedy but possibly an event of far-reaching consequences. The scale of the tragedy is dismaying. The fact that the police party was ill trained, lacked coordination with local police and poorly led is an issue which needs no elaboration, but the larger issue is the state of Central Police Organisations (CPOs).
Read more: Dangers of Dantewada: Groping in the Dark