text: INDIA SPECIAL/CORRUPTION AND AFTER
  India has forced New Delhi to act against corruption and
  the ruling party cannot afford to take the country for
  granted, says Neerja Chowdhury
  cams are suddenly dominating the Indian political scene.
  Gandhian leader Anna Hazare evoked an unprecedented response to his fast for the enactment of the Thanks to a proactive judiciary under the stewardship of Chief Justice S H Kapadia, the government has been forced to take some action, be it in the scam involving the Commonwealth Games or the allotment of 2G spectrum. As a result, former telecommunications minister A Raja is behind bars; a charge-sheet has been filed against Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi's daughter and Rajya Sabha (Indian parliament's upper House) lawmaker Kanimozhi, whose Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam props up the federal government in Delhi.
  Half a dozen corporate honchos are in jail. And finally Congress party lawmaker Suresh Kalmadi has been picked up in the Commonwealth Games scam, though many fear that given the time between the Games and his arrest, the paper trail would have disappeared.
  Though the government was compelled to take some action, it has not been able to notch up the political brownie points it should have, because it is seen to be acting under pressure. It has bestirred itself only when pushed to the wall, and reluctantly, and when India's supreme court has cracked the whip.
  At the popular level, the ruling Congress party is losing ground. The prime minister was the darling of the middle class but the scams have dented his image. The Indian parliament's Public Accounts Committee last week indicted Singh and his office in its draft report, which was leaked, and it had concluded that the prime minister's aloofness had allowed Raja to get away with his 'dubious deals', and that the Prime Minister's Office had not kept the prime minister in the loop. Though the draft report had not been adopted at press time, with sharp divisions surfacing in the PAC on political lines, it reinforced the impression, yet again, of an honest prime minister presiding over a very corrupt regime.
  This is not to say that the prime minister
  is about to resign. Or that there is a threat to
  the government. The government has the
  requisite numbers, as of now, to complete
  its term. But there is a loss of authority and
  credibility, particularly among the middle
  class and in urban India, where the
  Congress party had won in both the 2004
  An angered bystander hits arrested lawmaker Suresh Kalmadi with a slipper in the Patiala House court complex in New Delhi, April 26