Pro-Active Report

It is a routine which makes us cynical and bad-tempered hacks. Can a journalist in this work environment ever do something 'useful'?Occasionally. Criminalisation of Indian public life is like a mantra these days. Everyone who is anyone is against it—yet no one does anything beyond platitudes. My friend Tony Clifton of Newsweek, a seasoned observer of the sub-continent, believes Indians have become overly smug and complacent, busy patting themselves for the incredibly free and open society they have managed to create "in the face of fantastic odds". This air of perpetual self-congratulation deliberately ignores the mounting and glaring wounds Indian democracy has inflicted on itself—wounds which no one attempts to heal.

Meanwhile, I am happy to report that from the President of India, to the Chief Election Commissioner, to the ordinary citizen, the response to the Outlook criminalisation project has been overwhelming. The only group which has responded with a deathly silence to the list of 72 has been the politician. Not a squeak from them. That, in a way, makes sense. Since all political parties are guilty of encouraging criminality in elections, they have no option but to keep their mouths shut.