M Veerappa Moily, law minister and a scholar to boot, is “deeply hurt and upset” with former central vigilance commissioner Pratysh Sinha’s remarks on corruption. Sinha, who retired as the country’s top corruption watchdog last week, said in an interview that nearly one-third of Indians are "utterly corrupt" and half are "borderline". That has angered the law minister, who calls him a “frustrated” bureaucrat.

"Having held an office where they could have made a difference but failed to do so, some bureaucrats become saints after retirement," Moily said according to an NDTV report.

"Recently I read a newspaper [interview] in which a top-notch Indian Bureaucrat who recently retired was quoted as saying that every third Indian is corrupt. I am deeply hurt and upset by this - because of a few black sheep, you cannot call the whole country corrupt or condemn the government."

That certainly is right, the few-black-sheep part. A cast majority is so marginalised that they don’t have in their hands to deliver anything, so nobody pays them any bribe.

But then Moily adds: "This is a statement made by a frustrated person. I will not call this treason or sedition but it comes close to it."

Treason? Sedition? Moily, a scholar who recently published a tome on the Mahabharata, cannot be expected to choose his words carelessly, so he must be meaning what he says. Is it an act of treason to say that corruption is so widespread it has become almost palpable? Was Sinha revealing a state secret when India ranks 84th on Transparency International’s list (we get 3.4 points on a rank of 10)? Is it an act of sedition to point out that the poor in India have to bribe petty officials to procure services and goods meant for them under welfare schemes?
 
These remarks (from Moily) come on a day the Supreme Court issued a notice to telecom minister A Raja in the 2G spectrum scam while also slamming the Central Bureau of Investigation. Moily should have been upset at that. Or at financial wheeling-dealings going on under the umbrella of Suresh Kalmadi’s CWG Organising Committee.

We are not taking sides in a war of words between two people who both are part of what the rest of us call (for want of a better word) “system”. Sinha did head the organisation that is supposed to fight corruption and is yet to deliver. If the watchdog did not have teeth, it could have at least barked. If CVC remains toothless, the law minister should tell us why it should remain so.