The Twin Towers Of Corruption Demolished!

“Towers of corruption demolished”, the shrill voice rising above the plumes of billowing dust. Somebody called it ‘spectacle demolition’, no less symbolic than the 1992 demolition of a 500-year-old mosque. The voice had its roots in Uttar Pradesh. The Supertech Twin Towers of corruption were brought down at the Supreme Court’s intervention. If the top court hadn’t stood with the residents, corruption would have had a free run. That said, the apex court doesn’t always notice corruption. Graft has to be pointed out to the top court. But for the persistent citizens, the corrupt builders of the Twin Towers would have gotten away and made a clean getaway with nobody the wiser. The residents had gone to court protesting the rise of the Twin Towers from an expanse of the green patch that they said belonged to the ‘community’. This was a case of citizen activism. The top court just happened to be there to facilitate. Left to the bureaucrats and the politicians, with the police thrown in for good measure, the Twin Towers would still be rubbernecking with taunting contempt.

The Supreme Court wasn’t doing any favors to anybody. This is the second-time so-called ‘towers of corruption’ have been brought down. An earlier instance was in Kochi, Kerala—the so-called 100 percent literate State. Corruption is no stranger to ‘God’s Own Country, the name given to Kerala by a brand guru. The brand stuck and Malayalis took it to heart, for real! The Kochi tower, demolished by the same artists who did the Noida Supertech in, has become a movie, which was released recently to lousy reviews. If anything, the press reports of the demolition were by far more exciting. The Kochi tower movie flopped. And it is unlikely ‘Supertech’ will ever be filmed to hit multiple screens worldwide. The real story is, that there is no escaping corruption in India even with escapist films. Since Narendra Modi came to power, corruption has been brushed under the carpet. Even as corruption continues to go around under multiple names. The corruption of Class III and Class IV Government babus, in the name of the British-Raj era ‘bakshish’, continues unabated in the bureaucratic corridors of corruption. ‘Dens of corruption’ was an ‘older’ construct.

Every single BJP Member of Parliament made manna from heaven in the first five years. How? The only Indians who made more (by far more) were the ‘lakhpatis’ who became ‘crorepatis’, and the ‘crorepatis’ who joined the tribe of the ‘arabpatis’. However, nobody can point a finger at the billionaires who are so conveniently Modi-friendly. And, there is nothing to show that India’s crony capitalists got to become billionaires, courtesy of corruption. But then, what is crony capitalism, if it is not a form of corruption? Doesn’t facilitating relatives and friends to get rich overnight amount to corruption? Doesn’t crony capitalism amount to playing dirty? The two-time Narendra Modi regime has turned crony capitalism into an art, the science of which is never spoken about. The Tatas made everything, from ‘pins’ to ‘powerhouse’, but the current crop of billionaires is invested in owning media, and making movies, too. In Spectrum, and in smartphones.