For a long while, certainly the last 15 years, Indians had resigned themselves to the belief that corruption was pervasive, and that the major practitioners of it were the politicians and the bureaucrats. Now, of course, it takes two hands to clap, one to give the gift and the other to clutch it. Industrialists were often in the front of the line of givers, as they wanted one policy distortion to be replaced by another distortion more favorable to them. This influence peddling involved the collusive decision of netas and babus, and everybody, excluding of course the common citizen, lived happily seemingly forever.

The common joker not only lost out in terms of higher prices for the goods and the services he received (no such thing as free corruption) but also had to indulge in some of his own bribe giving. So he gave to the income tax officer for getting his measly tax payments cleared, or to the telephone authorities to allow his phone to work, or to the electricity board to have his connection restored. If one were richer and owned some property, especially in Delhi, then the redoubtable Delhi District Authority (named by the World Bank as the most outstanding example of corruption in the world!) claimed bribes if you wanted to change the color of your bathroom! If one were a poor joker, then one had to pay somebody to be allowed to participate in the food for work program, or get other benefits which one had a right to receive. In other words, a 5 to 10 percent haircut (commission/bribe/speed money) was what every citizen endured for everything except genuine haircuts. In

March, India changed - or so it seemed. One of the desperate-to-keep-afloat dotcoms, tehelka.com, exposed corruption in defence contracts. For the common sucker (i.e. you and me) this was great news; finally, on videotape, a politician seen taking money. And several babus, in this case defence personnel, involved in arranging bribes.

Sweet victories have a habit of turning bitter, perhaps especially in India. No sooner had the expose happened that it was alleged that part owner and major financier of tehelka.com, Shankar Sharma of First Global fame, had (handsomely) profited from prior insider knowledge about the market sensitive information contained in the videotapes. And then the political party that everyone once loved, and now (almost) everyone hated, i.e. Congress, led the moral charge against the BJP. This, for those still living in cocoons, was the same party which first got accused about defence corruption in 1986; the same party that lost its majority in parliament faster than a sinking dotcom, and lost because it was considered corrupt; the same party whose leader, Mr. Narasimha Rao, was accused, and found guilty, of bribing politicians to support the Congress party's desire for power at any cost; the same party whose member was arrested with 36.4 million rupees in his cupboard at home; the same party whose private secretary i.e. the gatekeeper to the crown, is accused of amassing wealth far beyond the dreams of even the corrupt; the same party…you get the picture. The tehelka.com journalists certainly got it too, as predictably, the moral support of the Congress was the kiss of credibility death.

After that brief interlude with a world of possible checks and balances, the Indian joker was back to observing that the corrupt never, ever, got punished in India. And the politicians started trotting out excuses for their practices - serving (sic) the public is a public good, and somebody has got to pay for it! And since the politicians themselves (Indira Gandhi of Congress fame) banned tax-deductible contributions to political parties, it does not take a rocket-scientist to figure out the convenience of the present "public good" system of financing election expenditures i.e. contributions to parties in favour of policy distortions, or justice distortions, and often both.

But the naive jokers had not yet given up the fight. There were elections coming up, and this would be judgment day. Ms. Jayalalitha, former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, was seeking election. Tamil Nadu just happened to be one of the fastest growing states in India over the last twenty years, and a literate state to boot. Ms. Jayalalitha had been convicted of financial corruption, and Indian law made it impossible for such a person to run for political office. Now it is well understood that it is the rarest of rare cases when a politician is convicted in India - it is not just a God given immunity, but immunity provided by a superior power, the self interest of like minded politicians. So a conviction is the rarest medal of honour - at least among political thieves.

But Ms. Jaya ran for election - and run she did. The common jokers - the people of Tamil Nadu - not only elected a convict but elected her with a two-thirds majority. No sooner had this happened than the Governor of Tamil Nadu, a former Supreme Court judge, was only too quick to oblige. In a people's court, the law is irrelevant - at least that is what they must teach budding justices.

The true tehelka is this farce. The people themselves, by an overwhelming majority, say they don't give a damn about corruption. Elsewhere, witnesses turn hostile in high profile cases with increasing, and predictable, frequency. Now you witness a crime; and after oily interventions, you don't. Does anybody ever get punished, even minutely, for her crime? There are only two sets of people left in the "new" India - those in the lunatic fringe, who believe that justice means somewhere, somebody, being punished for crimes committed in broad daylight and observed by all; and those who rant and rave against corruption in high places, but whose self-interest lies in the continuation of the present system. The latter are not all different than the "in the name of the poor" politicians. The tragedy, the despair, is that these are the only people left in India.