Spain’s Princess Cristina appeared in court on Monday on charges of tax fraud, the first member of the royal family to stand in the dock, as a lengthy investigation into her husband’s business affairs finally went to trial following allegations for embezzlement of millions of euros in public funds. Israel’s disgraced former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is set to go behind bars for at least18 months in a major graft scandal as the top court upheld his bribery conviction, making him the first ex-Premier in the country’s history to serve a jail term. China has jailed former vice public security minister Li Dongsheng to 15 years in jail for corruption:- the above captivating headlines illustrate the unmistakable point that the world over, the public has started to raise their voice against the rampant and often unbearably frustrating practices of corruption, asserting their prerogatives to a fair and good governance and jolting the administrators and governments to take action before the festering issues snowballed into an unstoppable avalanche of social unrest and mayhem. The recent news also evidently points out the invigorated atmosphere of the legal and the judiciary system which have enabled the culprits to be handed out their deserved punishments.
There is an increasing trend the world over for the governments of pulling up corrupt officials and those abusing power for personal gains and putting them on trial, and the trend continues in India too, the most recent high- profile case being the allegations of corruption by the finance Minister Arun Jaitley during his tenure as the President of Delhi & District Cricket Association (DDCA). What is worrying though is that while in other countries, trials and investigations are allowed to be carried out as a matter of normal procedure, the issue in India acquires a political tone the very moment it appeared in the public domain, with the political parties battling for and against the accused according to their affiliations. The case is true for our state, more so as there has not been any high-profile convictions on any corruption cases in recent memory. Has that meant that the practice of corruption is absent in Manipur? Or is it that the system in the state has been so deeply institutionalized with the practice that it is no longer possible to distinguish corruption practices from normal official procedures?
Conventional wisdom has it that a good and honest government should initiate and affect changes to the harmful practices of corruption. Practical experience, however suggests otherwise. It has been shown that only the collective and constant efforts of the public can successfully fight corruption. It is a scourge which no single man can hope to fight and overcome, however brave, resourceful or resolute. Fighting corruption is a task every single one of us should join hands for, as without our consent and compliance, corruption cannot exist.
