Being hit with a sandal is better than being shot.

Shiv Sena MP, Ravindra Gaekwad, boasted of slapping and hitting an Air India duty manager, 60 year old R Sukumar, 25 times with a sandal. In reaction most of the major airlines have banned Gaekwad from flying. This being India his party shamelessly defended him, saying that anyone can commit a mistake, but that does not mean that he should be barred from flying. Yesterday the Congress and Samajwadi Party extended support to Gaekwad. Husain Dalwai of the Congess said,"He is a famous leader in Osmanabad. We should keep in mind how the officer talked to Gaekwad." We should be grateful that the "famous leader" did not shoot the manager dead as Rocky Yadav, the son of a Bihar politician did when his car was overtaken by a 19 year old boy. As is usual in India, Rocky Yadav was let out on bail and all the witnesses 'turned hostile', which means they withdrew their testimonies. Who will take on a politician, or his son, in India? Scholars have been studying why crime and politics are so intimately mixed in India. Elections are expensive and political parties like candidates who have their own money, illicit maybe, and the goons to intimidate opponents, wrote Soutik Biswas. Milan Vaishnav believes that it all started with the zamindari system, writes Pramit Bhattacharya. A zamindar was a landowning baron who exercised his power through "violence and coercion". Indira Gandhi banned corporate donation to political parties, which led to the need for illicit funding. Criminals are naturally attracted to politics because it provides them with immunity. But, why do people vote for them? Is it because they are mostly illiterate and so are not aware of the criminal records of these politicians? No, says Vaishnav. People vote for them because they are seen as strongmen who can get things done. Our civil servants are perhaps the most corrupt in the world, which means that 69% of Indians admitted to having paid a bribe to avail of routine services. Prime Minister Modi must bring an end to the sense of entitlement of politicians and the VIP culture, writes Raghu Dayal. Not just politicians, we have over 500,000 VIPs who throw their weight around. Will Modi stop the VIP culture and the sense of entitlement that goes with it? So far the evidence points the other way. 114 MLAs of the 312 seats, that is 37%, that the BJP won in the UP assembly election this month have serious criminal charges against them. Modi must have known this when these people were selected as candidates. For all his talk of taking on the Gandhi family he seems to be scared of them. Robert Vadra has been mocking him. After saying that civil servants will not be allowed to accept gifts he gave in and last year he surrendered to demands of civil servants to be allowed to go abroad for junkets funded by foreign institutions, which could well be Pakistani or Chinese. Besides, Modi has been in politics since the age of 8 and is used to entitlement. He will give speeches but nothing will change.