The downtrend of the Congress party can be traced back to one single event when the Bofors scam rocked the nation. The perception of the Congress party subsequently is built around corruption thereafter. Amateur, inexperienced and perhaps innocent late Rajiv Gandhi was crucified by a powerful cartel of middlemen facilitating the destruction of India’s oldest political party. Consequently, the wrong man died and middlemen flourished.  Till today, Congress has reluctantly defended itself despite the established fact that the late Rajiv Gandhi was fooled by his associates to bring about his political death during his lifetime. Later, the Gandhi family handpicked middlemen namely Ahmed Patel, V George became leaders and party-junked PV Narsimha Rao, ND Tiwari, Pranab Mukherjee, Buta Singh, GK Moopanar, K Karunakaran, JB Panaik, SM Krishna, HR Bharadwaj, Shukla Brothers, Jagan Reddy, Mamta Banerjee in their lifetime. The middlemen take over pushed crony capitalism: Anil Ambani, Hinduja, Dhoot’s, BR Raju, Vijay Mallaya, GVK Reddy and many more became rock stars of the corporate world, together they milked the public sector banks with impunity to bring India’s growth story to a grinding halt.  

The government of the day and the proactive courts must reopen the investigation of the BOFORS SCAM with a focus on exposing middlemen rather than the past ruling establishment primarily because the Bofors scam triggered birth to a new class of “dalals” in India and they gained tremendous control over the crucial institutions, establishing India as one of the most corrupt countries in the world.  Though we are fortunate to have had fiscally clean Prime Ministers in the last few decades yet corruption is rampant in the country at every level.  So, where it went wrong? The answer is simple, the country is held hostage at the mercy of middlemen operating in politics, bureaucracy, corporate, legal and media domains. The country is bleeding from corruption and the current sufferings of the desperate poor masses are synonymous with this system's failure.

Today, the sanctity of the four pillars of democracy is in deep crisis because the process that started with the Bofors scandal has vitiated our democracy and spawned so many subsequent frauds and scams. One can't help wondering as to how many subsequent cases of corruption would have been avoided had the Bofors scam not provided a veritable template to the Kalmadis and Rajas that followed. The pride of 1.3 billion countrymen, our defense forces and their valour, demand a just and definitive denouement to this protracted murky saga of treachery to the nation. It is high time that the CBI intervened in Ajay Agrawal’s petition in the Bofors case pending before the Supreme Court with complete details of documents in the box given by Swedish Police in 1997 to reinvestigate the case and bring guilty to books. India must eradicate and punish “Dalals” from the system to leap-bound herself at the global level and lead the new world order. The onus is on the present Narendra Modi government and hyperactive Supreme Court of the country to order reinvestigation in the case without any political overtone and present correct facts to undo the damage done by middlemen by giving them exemplary punishment for breaking the backbone of the vital institutions of this glorious country. It will act as a strong deterrent to the operating middlemen community and certainly, it will clean the toxic system.    

(The writer is Prashant Tewari Editor in Chief, Twitter: prashanttewar11 FB:prashanttewari11@hotmail.com)

The downtrend of the Congress party can be traced back to one single event when the Bofors scam rocked the nation. The perception of the Congress party subsequently is built around corruption thereafter. Amateur, inexperienced and perhaps innocent late Rajiv Gandhi was crucified by a powerful cartel of middlemen facilitating the destruction of India’s oldest political party. Consequently, the wrong man died and middlemen flourished.  Till today, Congress has reluctantly defended itself despite the established fact that the late Rajiv Gandhi was fooled by his associates to bring about his political death during his lifetime. Later, the Gandhi family handpicked middlemen namely Ahmed Patel, V George became leaders and party-junked PV Narsimha Rao, ND Tiwari, Pranab Mukherjee, Buta Singh, GK Moopanar, K Karunakaran, JB Panaik, SM Krishna, HR Bharadwaj, Shukla Brothers, Jagan Reddy, Mamta Banerjee in their lifetime. The middlemen take over pushed crony capitalism: Anil Ambani, Hinduja, Dhoot’s, BR Raju, Vijay Mallaya, GVK Reddy and many more became rock stars of the corporate world, together they milked the public sector banks with impunity to bring India’s growth story to a grinding halt.  

The government of the day and the proactive courts must reopen the investigation of the BOFORS SCAM with a focus on exposing middlemen rather than the past ruling establishment primarily because the Bofors scam triggered birth to a new class of “dalals” in India and they gained tremendous control over the crucial institutions, establishing India as one of the most corrupt countries in the world.  Though we are fortunate to have had fiscally clean Prime Ministers in the last few decades yet corruption is rampant in the country at every level.  So, where it went wrong? The answer is simple, the country is held hostage at the mercy of middlemen operating in politics, bureaucracy, corporate, legal and media domains. The country is bleeding from corruption and the current sufferings of the desperate poor masses are synonymous with this system's failure.

Today, the sanctity of the four pillars of democracy is in deep crisis because the process that started with the Bofors scandal has vitiated our democracy and spawned so many subsequent frauds and scams. One can't help wondering as to how many subsequent cases of corruption would have been avoided had the Bofors scam not provided a veritable template to the Kalmadis and Rajas that followed. The pride of 1.3 billion countrymen, our defense forces and their valour, demand a just and definitive denouement to this protracted murky saga of treachery to the nation. It is high time that the CBI intervened in Ajay Agrawal’s petition in the Bofors case pending before the Supreme Court with complete details of documents in the box given by Swedish Police in 1997 to reinvestigate the case and bring guilty to books. India must eradicate and punish “Dalals” from the system to leap-bound herself at the global level and lead the new world order. The onus is on the present Narendra Modi government and hyperactive Supreme Court of the country to order reinvestigation in the case without any political overtone and present correct facts to undo the damage done by middlemen by giving them exemplary punishment for breaking the backbone of the vital institutions of this glorious country. It will act as a strong deterrent to the operating middlemen community and certainly, it will clean the toxic system.    

(The writer is Prashant Tewari Editor in Chief, Twitter: prashanttewar11 FB:prashanttewari11@hotmail.com)