When the will to eliminate corruption goes missing.

That corruption rules the roost in India is a fact well known. The unraveling of umpteen scams in the recent past is ample testimony to this. Satyam, 2G, Commonwealth Games, Coalgate are just some of the examples in an ever growing list. There is so much apathy that the common man now accepts this as part of life seeing no way for the corruption to come to an end. And when the government talks about bringing down corruption, they seem like empty statements at best.

The Coalgate scam is an example of how the government is indifferent to eliminating corruption. The scandal has once again come to the fore as the coal ministry has acknowledged that crucial files relating to the controversial allocation for the coal blocks have gone 'missing'. As reported in the Times of India, some of these documents deal with the financial aspects of the projects as well as the various applicants for these coal blocks. The latter especially was important because it would have given an idea of whether less deserving candidates were allotted blocks at the expense of more deserving ones.

How can documents just disappear into thin air? No doubt the government is expected to provide an answer. But that is likely to remain largely unsatisfactory and one can safely say that the incidence of these files 'reappearing' remain remote.

These instances clearly show that the desire to eliminate corruption just isn't there. Whether subsequent governments will be able to do anything different for the time being remains suspect. More importantly, can such an alarming trend find its way into Corporate India? What if just like the government, corrupt managements also find ways to do away with records that show them in an unsatisfactory light? It is something to ponder upon.