04-21-2004, 10:15 PM
Spinster, it is the oldest argument in the book that such corruption is widely prevalent and that therefore in the scale of things Bofors was not that big. There are 2 things (maybe more than 2) wrong with such an argument. First, 2 wrongs do not make a right, wherever there is corruption iit is wrong, no matter who commits it and using comparisons to say that is not a big deal,does not help. It is nobody;s contention (at least not mine) that the BJP is lillly white, but one has to specific and discuss each case separately. The second point is that Bofors happened 20 years ago and for the standards of that day it was the biggest scandal , involving the PM himself. There surely is nepotism in india as elsewhere (the Bush family comes to mind), but it is rare even in India to find large scale corruption by Union Cabinet Ministers, although I am sure one can come up with stories going back to TTK and Mundhra. Over a fifty year period , a half a dozen cases does not count as that much ....