By all accounts, Mr Ranjit Sinha was never cast in the image of a saint. He is a dramatic signifier of what succeeds, the winning formula for all occasions. We live in a strange world where people at large have to be supplied with their own memories. Remember the disclosures at the time of his appointment? It was given out that he had favoured Lalu Prasad in the Animal Husbandry Scam (better known as Fodder Scam). Also remember that he did not reach there by hitch hiking: the leader of the government and that of the opposition in consultation, assisted by the topmost echelons of the civil service, chose him as the most eligible of the three top contenders for the post. Those short listed came from a fairly large cohort of officers whose annual confidential reports had been gone through with a fine tooth comb. The two top police agencies of the country had carried out confidential sweeps to ascertain their integrity and suitability from other security and administrative angles. After such a thorough process of sifting and sorting out, if all the king's horses and all the king's men could put him on the wall then the political class— because the society itself has been subsumed under politics , the only way is the political way— has a lot to answer for.