They say it takes all sorts to make the world. Satiricus quite agrees. Take judges. Satiricus never suspected these serious eminences have a sense of humour. But they do. Lamenting that ?everyone wanted to loot this country? a bench of Justices of the Supreme Court observed, ?The only way to rid the country of corruption is to hang a few of them from the lamp post.? Now, now, Your Honours! Jokes are always welcome, but do august personages like you have to be so intemperate in your language?
Satiricus is so sad to see that these generally gentle gentlemen became so intensely intolerant as to poke fun at our national pastime. To make him still sadder, the judges directly addressed an accused and added, ?The law does not permit us to do it, otherwise we would prefer to hang people like you from the lamp post.? Satiricus is shocked. But the judges are furious. They are furiously funny. They say, ?Everywhere we have corruption. Nothing is free from corruption. Everybody wants to loot this country. The only solution for this menace is to hang some people in public, so that it acts as a deterrent for others.?
And who was the inspiration for this instant humour? He was some dismissed employee of the Bihar Government for his alleged involvement in the Rs. 1,000 crore fodder scam. Aha, the famous fodder scam, which promises to remain evergreen till the cows come home. But if all this fatal fun was meant for a mere employee of the government, what about him who was the government himself? Oh, Satiricus forgot. He has already been punished?by being soundly kicked upstairs. From a State'schief minister he was mercilessly made a major minister of the Central Government. But then, although, as the judges observed, ?everybody wants to loot the country?, not everybody can be made a minister, because we just don'thave that many ministerships, do we?
That apart, corruption is a national pastime in India that is blessed Bharat, and nobody, from lowly Satiricus to high-ranking judges, can blaspheme against it so blatantly. A recent survey had revealed that India was among the world'smost corrupt countries. Is such international recognition easy to come by? Satiricus is sure not. Before that a minister of the Government of India had solemnly assured us that the price of every Indian product had three components?production, distribution and corruption. Before that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had commended corruption in so many words by asserting that corruption was a world wide phenomenon (which made it acceptable). But, believe it or not, before that Prime Minister Nehru had said that corrupt should be hanged!
Oh my God! This means our jocular judges are exactly repeating what our first prime minister said decades ago. No matter. Decades may come and decades may go, but corruption goes on for ever.
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