Whiplash

Adarsh stands for ideal, Satyam for the truth and look what we have
done to both. Ironically, both became symbols of corruption, greed and
malfeasance. Yes, greed as Gordon Gekko remarked famously in Oliver
Stone’s epoch making flick – Wall Street – is good, but not at the
cost of destroying everything that good stands for. B Ramalinga Raju
founder of Satyam, revered and feted by business magazines as the
iconic corporate leader proved to be a fraud.

Not only did he commit fraud in his quest to make his tryst with
greed, he also undermined India’s well built image as a software
powerhouse, a nation with soft power sharpened on the whetstone of our
intellectual horsepower. Adarsh and Satyam go against the basic
underlying credo that underpins India. It is to the government’s
credit that it effected an immediate damage limitation exercise by
cauterizing the wound and turning it around through the sale to
Mahindra & Mahindra.

Adarsh being a fantastic cocktail of abuse of power through collective
collusion between bureaucrats, armed forces officers and top state
level politicians. But look at what we have done since. In both cases
investigations have dragged on. While the CBI has arrested the
perpetrators of the Adarsh scam, the real big fish are still out of
the dragnet. Meanwhile a judicial commission appointed by the state
has whitewashed the basic premise of the probe – that the land did not
belong to the Army, nor was it meant for Kargil War widows – what a
joke. Insidious and crafty minded people managed to get the better of
the state by blatantly disregarding coastal regulation zone and floor
space index norms.

This in your face type of scam is scary because it shows that people
don’t care. Why? Because they know they can get away, rule of law is
sound, but prosecution is weak. Raju is a classic example of a
scamster getting out on bail. Yes, he spent 32 months in the slammer,
obfuscated by a longish spell in Nizam’s hospital. The Adarsh brigade
may well follow suit. Conviction is a long way off and the politicos,
bureaucrats and officers involved will be hoping against hope that
they too follow suit.

All hail the new God. The God of greed, slain at the altar of ideals and truth.