A good slogan, but hard to act on.

Even as 2019 was about to be born, Senator Elizabeth Warren announced that she is running for president in 2020. Like the Clintons and the Obamas she is a lawyer by profession and has taught at Harvard, like Barack Obama did. By announcing first she hopes to raise a lot of money which may discourage other Democrats from challenging her in primaries. Warren is seen to be on the left of her party, supporting a rise in minimum wage, higher spending on infrastructure and holding banks and insurance companies to account. We do not know as yet whether Bernie Sanders, popular with young people because of his socialist policies, will support her or challenge her. Her claim to Native American ancestry has been confirmed or disproved by DNA tests, depending on whether a person is Republican or Democrat supporter. The test apparently showed that there is a strong probability that she had a Native American ancestor 6 to 10 generations ago. The conclusion becomes even more murky because her DNA was compared with indigenous people of Mexico, Peru and Colombia but not Native Americans who are suspicious of DNA tests. "Corruption is poisoning our democracy," she said. "Politicians look the other way while big insurance companies deny patients life-saving coverage, while big banks rip off consumers and while big oil companies destroy this planet." While November 2020 is far away, May is only 5 months from today when a general election must be held in India and every politician is dreaming of becoming the leader of the gang. Prime Minister Modi claims to be the 'chowkidar', which means a 'guard', and came to power promising to get rid of corruption. He claimed that the Congress looted Rs 12 trillion in the ten years of its rule, forgetting to mention that he has looted Rs 11 trillion in just 4.5 years by raising taxes on fuel. Since fiscal deficit is already 115% of the whole year's deficit we don't know what happened to the money. His party, the BJP, has the highest number of elected representatives with serious criminal charges against them. When the Supreme Court suggested barring criminals from standing for elections his "Attorney General KK Venugopal vehemently opposed the suggestion, saying the court cannot legislate when Parliament was seized of the issue". Since 34% of MPs have serious criminal charges against them, while there are others we still don't know about, they have very little incentive to take any serious action. The Parliament had no trouble passing a bill exempting foreign contributions from scrutiny, without debate. Opposition politicians accuse Modi of using investigative agencies against opponents and some states are refusing to cooperate with the Central Bureau of Investigation. Anti corruption has turned out to be a slogan with most institutions being weakened during Modi's tenure, wrote PB Mehta. Anti corruption is an attractive slogan, but how do you implement it against your own party? That is the nub. Happy New Year to everyone.