In a nation where some “scam” or “gate” tickles the sensibilities of its citizens for a few hours every few days, the kerfuffle over the Adarsh housing society in south Bombay is remarkable for many reasons.
To start with, there is the utter brazenness of it all: a project in the name of the “martyrs” of the Kargil war falling into the hands of the inglourious basterds.
A 6-storey building magically becoming 31 storeys tall in the shadow of the city and state governments. Confusion over who owns the land after the skyscraper comes up in a cantonment area. And then, the beautiful names of the Congress, NCP and Shiv Sena and their near and dear ones, and their benamis.
What is also remarkable is the sight of an utterly shameless chief minister of Maharashtra, Ashok Chavan, “offering” his resignation not to the governor of the State, at whose pleasure he enjoys office constitutionally, but to the president of his party, Sonia Gandhi. And the employment of the standard operating procedure of the Congress to delay, delay, delay so that the people forget.
Above all, what is remarkable is the number of “scams” and “gates” that occur under the benign gaze of prime minister Manmohan Singh, who, it seems, is completely ignorant or unconcerned about his own personal integrity being used by his party and allies like a smokescreen, as long as an EGoM can be constituted.
And then, there are the illuminated assholes of the armed forces, from the army, navy and air force, who are not beyond selling the blood of their own colleagues and compatriots, using the tricolour of pumped-up patriotism as a figleaf.
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M.J. Akbar writes in Deccan Herald:
“It is entirely appropriate that a nation whose motto is Satyameva Jayate should discover a metaphor for ravenous loot in a Mumbai building society called Adarsh.
“Greed is the new religion and all are welcome to feed at the trough. Nothing else is sacrosanct; not the highest offices in public service: chief minister, army chief, navy admiral, or top bureaucrat through whom the file must pass.
“If there is a flat to be stolen in a housing society sanctioned for the welfare of war widows, then every single one of these crooks are ready to cheat the blood of Kargil martyrs.
“Thomas Friedman did not know how many puns danced on the head of a simile when he called the world as flat and began his journey in India.
“There is no shame left. It is tempting to ask whether there is an India left when most of its ruling class has abandoned every principle in its composite, vulgar commitment to theft, but hopefully India is larger than its ruling class.”
churumuri 
the only solution is system change.
Because current system can work only if office bearers are honest.
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Choosing a prime plot in Mumbai is the root cause of this scam. Any bit of land in Mumbai invites attention from the rich, corupt and venal. Why cannot the war widows be given flats at a cheaper and less corrupt location like Coimbatore or Indore or similar city? It will also be easier to manage with the pension they receive.
I hope that the politicians are punished but then that is simply being naive.
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“India’s most secular religion has to be Corruption”, NO, this should read as
India’s most “so called secular PARTY has to be/ is Corruption”.
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Shameful that such things come up every now and then. We have not yet diagnosed the CWG scam having forgotten all about it in the shadows of some medals that are not worth 1% of the total loot that the committee made. Add to that the numerous ‘dalals’ that walk the street around passport offices, making money getting passports ‘done’, on what seems to be the most security covered process! Hypocrisy at its best. We are the leaders of the world, we want to show the world that we are a growing economy, yet, our poor have no food to feed on, thousands die in droughts and floods, the rich grow richer, the poor poorer. What could be more shameful for an Indian than having to be living in a foreign land holding my Indian chest high in pride of my nationality and belonging, only to be beaten by remorse and mockery over such repeated cases. I once held my head high on being an Indian, but looks like I might have to stoop if I have to survive. Wake up India, WE ARE NOT THE BEST, YET.
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i rose at 6.20 a.m., and playing subrabhatam in the background, i opened today’s packet of Churumuri.
And what did i find? This supremely inspiring piece that corruption is now the religion of the Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic of India. :)
(thanks to Mrs. Gandhi’s 42nd amendment for that preposterously long and inaccurate name)
Nice writing, Churumuri.
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How many such scams I have to see in my last days. I recollect when my uncle was a daffedar in challakere chitradurga dist Karnataka, 1947 movwement was in full swing. I was just a kid of 8 years or so. Protesters were intent on hoisting National flag on AMILDARS’ OFFICE. Stone throwing was in full swing. It happened one of the stone hit Amildar He shouted fire. My uncle who was in command shouted IN THE AIR IN THE AIR. Un fortunately one stone hit a police constable knee. He just lowered his gun and fired. Result was two deaths. A stone which hit another police constable on his nose, it severed and fell to the ground. I was just seeing this way behind. My uncle told why he ordered to FIRE IN THE AIR. He knew this movement will succeed. He did not wanted any casualties He is no more. HAS THESE POLITICIANS (CORRUPT) WITNESSED HOW WE GOT THE INDEPENDENCE. Shame on them. With news everyday one or other scams coming forth I have felt living in this great country is a sin. But I do not have the courage to cmmitt HARAKIRI.
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When the CWG scam broke out, they said let Kalmadi continue till the games are over and we will start inquiry once games are over. Now this Chavan fellow is smugly sitting on his CM gaddi and the Adarsh Scam, and they say let Obama visit Mumbai and go and then we will have an enquiry commission. The basic gameplan is to delay, as they pretty well know that public memory is very short. Once everything is covered up, they go laughing all the way to Swiss banks to count the money they looted from me and you.
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The chaddis are no different from the Congies. Both corrupt to the core. The Congies are the veterans in corruption though with their 60 odd years of experience. Looking at Karnataka, it seems that the chaddis are on the way to emulate their rivals.
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Sudhir,
There is a flaw in your logic. Your logic is that war widows probably may not like such an upscale abode for themselves. It is for them to decide if they want to go to Coimbatore or Kakinada! Let it be them who decide.
Idea of free will is so loathed by “Chachawad”. Chachawadi wants everything for himself in the name of socialism, which itself is so alien to human experience. If someone is flying a canard that flats are so upscale that war widows may not find it matching to their living standards it should be nipped in the bud. That is just a red herring to justify scumbags who loot public money.
Let all the flats be confiscated. Let the government babus who benefitted be sacked. Let the flats be sold in open market and money be distributed to war widows.
Original sin was committed by Chacha when his cabinet of 1935 looted public money so ravenously that Gandhi exclaimed “I would go to the length of giving the whole congress a decent burial, rather than put up with the corruption that is rampant.”
Chacha also introduced nepotism in India by shamelessly promoting friends and family in Indian politics. Rascal Menon not only cooked up Kashmir problem also brewed mistrust between India and China that resulted in a war and soured relations.
Indians have to understand that history they read has been twisted to suit chachawad so much that every Indian kid is taught to relinquish the reasoning ability to perpetrate chachawad for one more generation.
Corruption is a symptom of our inability to link development with honesty. This linkage becomes apparent, only when people are educated. When the people are not educated leadership makes or breaks a country’s future. Sadly India got one of the worst possible candidate foisted on herself as her first prime minister. A candidate who lost in 13 of the 17 constituent assemblies was forcefully anointed the king and he went on to fleece the country for four more generations thanks to his bevy of imbecile off springs.
Mudgal case (1951), Mundra deals (1957-58), Malaviya-Sirajuddin scandal (1963), and Pratap Singh Kairon case (1963) all happened during Chacha’s time and everyone of them went scot free. Imagine what would have happened to the nations belief in law if some of these had got exemplary punishment! Until we get a leader who would keep principles above his family and friends(see the operative word is family and friends,that way current prime minister Manmohan Singh though said to be personally honest is still a crook for turning a blind eye to the misdeeds of chacha coterie) We had Lal Bahadur Shastri and to some extent AB Vajapayee who had some principles but Shastri did not get enough time and ABV had become too old when he became PM. Unless we get a godsend we are destined to be stuck in the cesspool thanks to our inability to link corruption to poverty and our fastidiousness in genuflection of our elders however idiotic things they may be saying. That way corruption is new religion. Religion is accepted blindly with no test of rationality and so is corruption!!!
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time for indians to come together instead of fighting amongst ourselves and go after the corrupt politicians
the more we keep fighting among ourselves as bjp corruption versus congress corruption, the better it is for politicians
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Just opened a temple to ‘karrupsan-mata’.
Donations welcome, no receipts will be issued :)
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How can Sushma Swaraj demand the resignation of the entire Maharashtra Cabinet? Her ‘ children ‘ the Reddy brothers are accused of the biggest scam in India. Her party in Karnataka is running the most corrupt government in the entire country. BJP has no moral right to demand action against Chavan.
Instead Sushma and Co should demand the resignation of Reddys and Yeddys!!
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We dont have to be surprised in this latest scam… Congress has been built on the foundations of such scam.
The modus operandi of the Congress is quite simple. Let the foot soldiers do all the dirty work and supply the king and the queen with money. If not caught, these soldiers will be rewarded with tit bits in the form of some ministership etc. If caught, they are promptly replaced by other foot soldiers. And in the whole process, the dirt never sticks to the royal family.
However, the present plight of Congress in Maharashtra is quite hilarious. Even if the royal family wants to replace the present foot soldier, it cannot do so for the simple fact that the other foot soldiers have also turned out to be equally corrupt!!!
In the 2G spectrum case, SC has also admonished CBI on the shoddy work it has done. Still this shameless central government is protecting its minister. We all know how much money CWG has made for the Royal family. No wonder no action has been taken on the poor foot soldier Kalmadi. Now this latest one…
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@DPS,
keep toeing this line and in a yrs time you might make editor or even anchor :) Good job
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@Narayana
In principle you are right but it doesn’t work in practice. When will war widows be given a chance to decide anything?
The last thing one would wish for them is that their property is grabbed because they were given flats in India’s most expensive and upscale area. Better a plot and house in low-cost Kakinada and lesser corruption to boot. As it happens, there are plenty of war widows awaiting flats in Delhi, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad etc? Do you think they stand a chance of getting them? Land is the most scarce commodity in Indian cities & just about everyone and his uncle is angling for a piece of it. So the best option in such cases is to fly under the land sharks’ radar, stay away from the big cities.
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@ D P Satish Sir…
Sushma Swaraj has asked for the resignation of the entire cabinet simply because almost every one in this cabinet is involved in this scam. Chiefoo, homeoo, revenueoo, food and civil suppliesoo, MLAsoo, MLCoos, practically everyone…Still we will give you the benefit of doubtoo.. if Congress had removed its chief minister, that would have sufficed.. but that did not happen Sir….not in this case, not in any other cases…
Sir, what happened to Kalmadi? Barring the news tidbits that he was humiliated by not getting invited to tea parties and dinner parties, nothing seems to have happened. And please spare us if you want us to believe that only Kalmadi had his hand in the honey pot…. no Sir.. the honey must have flown in the reverse direction all the way till the Royal Family Sir.
I am happy you are asking for the resignation of BJP government in Karnataka, Sir. Atleast it proves one point. Congress and its supporters are brazen enough to put under a carpet all their wrong doings and cry hoarse at even the simplest of the simple wrong doings of BJP. And when things do not turn out to be the way they want it, they cry foul. Like how it manifested in Karnataka in the last couple of months. A legally elected government was tried to be pulled down by the opposition parties not on the basis of any issue. But on the basis of a few disgruntled souls who they tried to reap..
I am also sure you remember this, Satish Sir, the disappointment written all over the faces of Sri Rajdeep Sardesai and Sri Bhupendra Chaubey and Mrs Rajdeep Sardesai when Sri Narendra Modi was re elected in the Gujarat elections. Sir, if you have access to your archives, please see the absolute glee in Sri Chubey’s voice when he declared ” I am talking to this man who is shortly going to replace Narendra Modi as the CM of Gujarat”. This was early in the morning when BJP and Sri Narendra Modi were trailing. And he was interviewing Sri Bharat Sinh Solanki. Post 5 PM, Sri Chubey was nowhere to be seen Sir. And faces of all the afore mentioned dignitaries were worth watching Sir.
Sir, do you need any more glaring example than this about where your channel’s loyalty lies???
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Today, when Smt. Sonia Gandhi spoke at the AICC Meeting, not a single word was uttered on either CWG or Adarsh Society. Instead a lot of emphasis was given to teaching RSS some lessons since it was found to be indulging in terrorist activities in this country.
Yeah, come to think of it. Will you speak against something of which you are the beneficiary??
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DPS,
According to market grapevine Reddys are buying Raghav Bahl’s entire stake in CNN IBN. Be careful, you may have to sing a new song to earn your daily bread.
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Bad! These current breed of netas don’t even know how to cover their tracks like their illustrious predecessors used to do. Either this crop is awfully butter-fingered lot or the public/media has figured out all their wily ways.
But one redeeming factor in this gloomy scenario is the brazenness seems to have gone up inversely proportional to clumsy dealings. When one looked up the glorious tradition of CMs (from M’rashtra) having resigned when caught with their dhotis adrift, Manohar Joshi’s name too cropped up. That poor sod had to resign for a ‘Dereservation’ scam. I think that’s the same as ‘denotification’ scam which our own Yeddy-Katta gang recently did. Have they gone the vanaprastha way? No! That’s indeed progress.
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@karihaida….agree , might be a padma award as well …
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A slight twist on the headline is perhaps much closer to reality we all know:
“India’s most corruptive religion has to be secularism”
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DPS,
So started at your usual rhetoric?? …
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*DB*
hehe, i love your quip!
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Indian society (by and large) has been built in such a way that if one is intelligent, he would be better of choosing corruption rather than honest ways.
How many of you here have been 100% honest when buying a plot?
–No bribery to anyone
–Papers showing exact amount that was paid
Even if you bought a flat from a reputed builder, it would have involved corruption at some other level.
If you didn’t do it or didn’t attempt to do it, why do you expect Chavans, Reddy’s and Kalmadis to be honest? You do corruption at your level and they do it at their level.
For a new way of politics, support Loksatta, the only credible party in India today.
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How about ManasGangotri replacing Department of Christianity with Dept of Corruption ?
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Today’s headline news in India Today website: A Raja caused a loss of Rs.1,76,000 crores.
Just to recall an advert for a credit card:
Telecom Scam Rs.1,76,000 crores;
CWG Scam Rs.70,000 crores;
Adarsh Society scam ” Priceless:
There are only some scams money can measure.
A little perspective here. Telecom Scam + CWG Scam put together has cost us, as a nation, a whopping sum of Rs.2,46,000 crores!!!!
And still our esteemed prime minister, the boss to whom he reports, the person for whose sake he is currenlty warming the chair & the party with a 125 year history, all are completely silent on the magnitude of this offence.
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Div,
Not so quick on the draw for Loksatta my friend. P Kondanda Rama Rao of Lokasatta has admitted paying money for the famous ‘paid news’. But the good guy is different in the sense that he actually asked for receipt:). It is there on the last issue of Outlook and you may like to look it up.
So you see it is not about parties – new or old. They differ only in degree of venality. It is more to do with society. As Supreme Court observed a few days back (in the context of dowry deaths), we seem to have seriously lost our moral moorings.
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I think the entire law has to be change in India in order to eradicate corruption. A strict punishment is to be implemented to those who are involved in this corruption.
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@Bangalore Haida
It might be true that some elements of corruption might enter loksatta as well because almost everyone in the society is corrupt. But the question is, whether in the long run loksatta will promote such people and practices to come to power or whether they will remain clean. If they encourage such malpractices, they will just become another party, I completely agree and I would stop supporting it. However, at this point, I still feel they have a lot more good than bad practices (which cannot be said about the other parties).
To give an example, officially (according to the publicly reported figures), Loksatta raised more money than Congress party of India last year!!!!! That must tell something about both the parties.
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Kelu Janamejaya,
Thanks for getting those figures.
This is what I call connection corruption has for endemic poverty. 246,000 crore represent 2500 basis points for GoI’s tax and non tax revenues for last year. Before 3G auction happened despite the growth story, India was written off by FIIs because one could see that India was precariously staring at fiscal deficit of 10% of GDP. (Highest in the world! )
Since 3G was held with less scope for corruption there was a windfall of almost 60000 crores which economists predicted would knock off 1.5% of fiscal deficit as percentage of GDP. It somewhat restored the confidence of FIIs and sensex went above 20000 level in October 2010.
Corruption takes away much needed resources for a fledgling economy and creates a parallel black economy which has no social obligation to address poverty, health , security and all those values in every country’s constitution.
Corruption should be seen less as an ethical problem and more as an economic problem. But to get clarity country needs to be educated.
Typical Indian response to corruption is either “my values are not impacted here I am very good individual, By giving bribe I am not making any mistake here. But bribe taker will die a dogs death because he is stealing money from me” or “I am in a hurry I need to get this off asap. and paying bribe is OK”
Only when country is educated like in west, people start thinking, “If I pay this bribe now, my country’s fiscal deficit will grow because money unaccounted drives up inflation and diverts resources in a socialist setup where governments are required to address welfare issues” then people may stop bribing and may demand higher and stringent punishment for offenders.
Chachawad is like cancer. It created the ambit of socialism in constitution to loot the country through corruption. They always loot till country almost falls dead as in 1991 and then return to capitalism to buttress the rump of the country and raid that again again. People need to be educated on the peril of corruption leading to poverty and on the peril of appointed leadership which is unaccountable and on the peril of people worship. Almost all of these are impossible without the government intervention. Government intervention is possible only when we get leaders of some calibre and current system prevents any talent in political system. Probably we will die before India realizes this flaw in its existence. As for education, chachawad was very first to see the link between education and rationality and hence they effectively threw out any proposal to educate the country. 76000 world class schools in most rural part of India would have been better investment than on CWG, But chachawad will readily agree if all those schools were to be built in New Delhi where they can extract rent everyday!!!
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Trillions of Dollars in swiss bank, but no efforts to bring it back.
Industrialists loot the farmers land through the state and this is legalised corruption.
Subsidy is provided to the Rich who drive cars which run on Gasoline, because even they are categorized as poor.
The courts in this country is managed by organised corrupt which includes Banks,Mafia and Politicians.
Lets legalise corruption in this country and call it lobbying as there is no will to curb it.
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19Th century`s great thinker of Maharastra LOKHITVADI wrote “In Hindu society there is too much corruption and nepotism because Hindu afraid to break ritual of Hindu religion but do not afraid to break the government law”.In Hindu religion there is no punishment for doing sinful deed. Even in one religious book MUHURTACHITAMANI there is auspicious time also suggested when to steal or dacoity.In Hindu religion never condemned bribery. on the contrary Hindu religion giving encouragement to people offer bribery to GOD and ceeibrities. This year Raja Ganpati of Lalbaug received 5oo million rupee as a bribery from his devotees.We must understand real cause why Hindu did not ashamed to give ot receive brebery.
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there is only one way to fix the Congress scams all over the county…MODIJI MUST BE MADE THE PM OF INDIA. He will not let people loot the INDIAN PEOPLE THIS WAY. I think everyone knows that..that is hwy they are trying to hard to put him in jail and destroying his reputation in the press…
jai hind.
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