Even an amendment of article 311 of the Constitution which often works to protect government officials accused of corruption appears to be okay. But, how these legal actions and assets disclosure by top judges will really help fight the scourge of corruption, which has affected almost all aspects of modern life, remains unclear.

One reason for the lukewarm public response to Moily's valiant effort to fight corruption by strengthening government's legal teeth is that the country's educated public does not think that the growing corruption in Indian society is because of the inadequacy of laws or regulatory systems. It is the political and executive interference, systemic indifference and incompetence besides the fear of reprisal among dutiful officers that are often paralyzing the operation of the existing laws and regulatory bodies with honesty, sincerity and dexterity. It needs to be understood that corruption is solely a by-product of the existing system. It may sound a bit too harsh, but the current system rewards corruption.

At the grass-root level, there is no dearth of panchayat committees, police stations, police sub-posts, sub-divisional judicial magistrate's courts in the country. Maybe, their numbers need to be increased further for a deeper penetration of justice and for providing faster relief to the victims of financial greed, social exploitation and deprivation, sexual harassment, local land mafia, political attacks and wrong-doings and official indifference or excesses. But, the fact of the matter is that they are there and are not functioning the way they are expected to do. Many feel that this is where the first layer of corruption takes root. The buck starts here. It does not necessarily stop at the Supreme Court, though. This is because not even a fraction of the incidents of corruption and malpractice ever comes up before any court of law.

The political party-land mafia contrivance forcing deceitful deals with illiterate and poor farmers to cheaply acquire their land for lucrative industrial use or for real estate development for the rich has become a fountainhead of rural corruption. While the cases such as the Ambani SEZs at Haryana, Tata Motors factory at Singur and Rajkishore Mody's five-star entertainment resort, Vedic Village, on lush green farm land on the north-eastern fringe of Kolkata get publicity because of the local people's collective outcry, thousands of similar incidents across the country remain unreported and, as such, unknown outside the affected villages.

The gravity of rural corruption involving the local land mafia and political parties is best exemplified by a recent unsolicited confessional statement of a Marxist party (CPM) leader and West Bengal's land reforms minister, Abdur Rezzak Mollah, in public. Mollah gave a strong call to throw promoters and brokers out of CPM to improve the party's public image. He said: “Communist party belongs to farmers, poor and the middle class, and not to dealers, contractors, land brokers and promoters. If these people are there in the party, they have to be grabbed by the neck and thrown out.” If this is the self-confessed picture of CPM today, one can imagine the state of affairs with other rightist and so-called centrist political parties who openly display their business and mafia links.

The growing nexus among political parties, bureaucracy, judiciary and business is leading to corruption of unbelievable magnitude. The witness to this is India's trillion-dollar-plus 'black' economy growing at a phenomenal rate since the 1991-92 economic reform. This is eating into the vitals of the society and yet prospering under the glare of such powerful regulatory authorities as the Central Bureau of Investigation(CBI), vigilance departments of both the state and central governments and public sector undertakings, Central Vigilance Commission (CVC), Income-Tax department, the Company Law Board (CLB), Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), Enforcement Directorate (ED), Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC), the exchange control department of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) among others.

The corruption in trade, business and the corporate sector is thriving right under the nose of these regulatory agencies. In most cases, it is taking place with active support, co-operation and indulgence of the regulators. No complaints are made. All are happy. The judiciary can do nothing about such corruption as it is not kept in the picture. Moreover, the system is such that corruption has not spared judiciary either. Yesterday's criminal lawyers, staunchly defending law offenders, are today's judges sitting on the bench of high courts and the Supreme Court. But for the public spat between the two Ambani brothers over the pricing of RIL's Cauvery-Godavari basin gas, no one would ever know for certain the extent of support Reliance Industries allegedly gets from the minister in the department of petroleum and natural gas, itself a regulatory body for the industry whose operations it is supposed to oversee.

If such powerful regulatory agencies, all backed by strong central legislations and having authority to arrest any criminal or economic offender, are failing to control corruption, will the enactment of two additional pieces of legislations make any difference in the obnoxious system patronized and pampered by corrupt politicians, ministers, bureaucrats, public servants, businessmen, brokers and contractors? Most likely, it won't. Yet, the efforts of the likes of Veerappa Moily to cleanse corruption in judiciary and the self-criticism of Abdur Rezzak Mollah, who himself is cornered in the Vedic Village land grab scandal, keep the public sentiment against corruption boiling. They remind us of the need for starting a serious nationwide debate on the issue of corruption at all levels and every sphere of life, including health, education, food and sanitation, consumer protection and dispute settlement.

The bitter truth is that the fight against corruption has served more as a political slogan by ruling parties than as a genuine attempt to implement it. Anti-corruption bureaux are mostly after small fries. They are no good at booking influential people with top political connections such as Ottavo Quatrocchi. Taxpayers' money worth crores of rupees are wasted by the government on 'mock' CBI investigations and legal proceedings before the cases are 'dumped' or lost. No question is asked. Time reduces the urgency and the very relevance of a case. Public memory is so short that few remember the promulgation of the much-talked-about Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Act in 1988. Will the government, which is so keen on fighting corruption, explain why the act has not been applied even once during the last 21 years? (IPA)