We Indians have nothing to hide.

According to a Supreme Court lawyer an employee of Essar Group, an industrial conglomerate, has revealed that the company was tapping phones of several ministers and businessmen between 2001 and 2006. The whistleblower has since denied any links with the lawyer, who says that he has proof of being hired by him. We are used to all this in India. Politicians say something, withdraw it the next day and blame the press for quoting him out of context the day after. Albasit Khan, the alleged whistleblower, has accused the lawyer, Suren Uppal, of " sensing an opportunity to extract money from many corporate bigwigs, you created and concocted this story ". Uppal says that " Essar has won over Albasit Khan ". With money or threats or both? Do these revelations have any importance at all? In India, no. We had the drama of the Radia tapes which implicated politicians, top business fellows and journalists, who are household names. What happened? Nothing. Case closed. Essar apparently has a laid down policy of identifying VIPs, who will be helpful to the company, and providing them with 'hospitality', paying their medical bills and offering employment to their relatives. A survey showed that 66% of businesses believe that some form of bribery is acceptable. Hence, 80% of Indians believe that businesses are corrupt. An even larger number will agree that politicians and civil servants are corrupt. So, nothing happens. Bofors, 2G, Commonwealth Games, coal mines allocation, AgustaWestland, the list of scams is unending. Has anyone big gone to prison yet? No. Only the ordinary folks of Campa Cola compound lost their homes. The Mitrokhin archives reveal how the Soviets paid bribes to ministers in Indira Gandhi's government and maybe to her as well. This kind of revelation is usually followed by the same drama everytime. Opponents scream Congress is corrupt while Congress retorts that so are the others. Then all politicians agree that they are innocent until proven guilty. Which never happens because our munificient judges continue cases forever by which time many of the actors are dead and the nation has forgotten what happened in the distant past. A dispute regarding a property has taken 36 years to resolve. As for bugging phones, it is no big deal. The US National Security Agency can, and probably does, bug our politicians and civil servants at will. Since they store their black money in western banks they are open books to foreign powers anyway. Chinese hackers copy all our government's data at will. Google and Facebook know more about us than we know about ourselves. Maybe that is why the Father of the Nation went about in a loin cloth: A naked man has nothing to hide. Neither, it seems, does a naked nation.