Sandesh Goel

It is interesting to see all the intelligentsia coming in with their magnifying glasses and scrutinizing and critizing the minutae of the proposed draft of the bill. Constructive criticism will no doubt lead to a better bill, but I have an axe to grind with those who are summarily dismissive of the entire proposal. I think we need to step back and look at the larger picture here. It is not the time to stand in impartial judgement over our civic activists. I don't think it's sufficient to be intellectually honest in these times, you have to be politically savvy. You have to figure out which side you are on!!! Politicians are very good at it. When the chips are down, they'll do anything to counter it, and get as close to power as possible. It is them that we are dealing with. Take the allegations against the bhushan's. Each allegation has another dimension to it, which involves politicians. And even if true, I think it ought to be much more damaging to the politicians tha...

I was intrigued the the criticism of the recent movement against corruption (led by Anna Hazare) by a select group of intellectuals. They claim that this threatens to subvert democracy by undermining the politicians, who are our elected leaders. But, what exactly does an elected leader mean in today's India? What motivates a person to run for elections? We all know that election expenses run into crores, and the winner of the election can not recover that much money on a complete lifetime of a politician's salary. So, how can an honest person even stand for an election without going bankrupt? Unless we fix this, we are stuck with politicians who are forced to recover their political expenses through corruption. And once the greed sets in, they don't stop at just recovering the expenses, they end up making tens and hundreds of times the money they spent. So, what's the solution? I propose that we should forbid the election candidates to spend even a single rupee on campa...