This refers to Mihir S Sharma's column "Corruption and corrosion" (Policy Rules, October 28). The government should have taken seriously the anti-corruption crusade launched by Anna Hazare and supported overwhelmingly by the public. Had it done so, it would have immediately taken up the task of laying down transparent procedures for the allocation of national resources, and getting rid of the vast discretionary powers vested in the political executive, thereby also giving confidence to the bureaucracy. Instead, we saw brazen doublespeak by the political class, paying lip service to get rid of corruption but doing precious nothing. Even Sonia Gandhi's feeble call to ministers to give up their discretionary powers was ignored. The judiciary and the investigating agencies felt public pressure to act in the cases of alleged corruption, but no action was forthcoming from the political executive to reform the decision-making process. That is why the bureaucracy must have been forced to go slow, lest it suffers at the hands of "over-enthusiastic" agencies and courts.
Kishor Kulkarni Mumbai
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