It is very rare that politicians in India are arrested for the corruption that they commit. If you have relatives or friends in Government, especially if they are in a senior position, then you can be fairly easily convinced that every politician is on the take (except for the few – for example, both Manohan Singh and Atal Behari Vajpayee have impeccable reputations); however, it is the rare case where some politician is prosecuted for indulging in corruption.
Consider the case of the 1980’s, where Rajiv Gandhi came in with a huge majority in 1984, but soon after, charges of corruption in the Bofors scandal laid him bare and unable to answer. VP Singh, the other opposition members, and the media led by The Hindu and the Indian Express put him in such a position whereby he lost his entire majority and lost the 1989 election. It is of course another matter that no one has been convicted for the Bofors scandal.
To some extent, we are no longer shocked by such corruption scandals; but even then, when you hear of the ease with which Madhu Koda allegedly made his money in the corruption scandal without any check, it seems very very strange. Here was this MLA, who became the Chief Minister as an independent and was supported by the Left, the RJD and the Congress in order to keep out the BJP; and while being an independent, he was able to sway mining contracts to this degree that he has apparently made huge sums of money (in the thousands of crores).
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For quite some time now, the location of the Gurgaon – Manesar belt was the area that was promoted as a automobile and components cluster. So you have bigger manufacturers such as Maruti, other manufacturers, and a huge number of automobile components maker. However, in the past couple of years, there has been a number of union problem, labour agitations, etc, that is threatening the viability of this zone. There are a host of reasons for this – in some cases, there are genuine reasons where the workers feel that they are under-paid (and Maruti very rarely sees industrial actions since it pays its workers much more than other companies, and also because it employees a lot more engineers than other companies).; however in other cases, this is more because the workers are provoked by some of the major unions to unionize and fight for more right.
One result of this increased industrial activity is the risk element, and with more strikes and shutdowns in the region, the region has lost some of its attractions. Companies that have tightened their belts over the past economic slowdown no longer have the excess capacity to make up for lost production, and need to move to other regions in order to diversify their risks. If more companies perceive this region to be a risky region industrially, and if there are more law and order problems between company management and workers, then there will be a movement out of the region (link to article).
After a huge amount of controversy, and where it seemed that the judicial system in India is being tagged with the charge of being resistant to declaring their assets, things seem to be turning over. Initially, judges in India (led by the Supreme Court and the Chief Justice) seemed to be totally against the concept of declaring their assets publicly, and were sticking to their stand that the only disclosure of assets would be to the Chief Justice, and this information would not be public. However, a sustained media campaign to push for a more disclosures from the judiciary seems to have had an effect.
What would also have had an effect is a few items that keep on coming in the media about there being an element of corruption in the judiciary, whether that be the campaign against Justice Dinakaran where his case is currently before the Supreme Court collegium (he was recommended for elevation to the Supreme Court, but there is a widespread campaign against him by the lawyers including many leading lights for land appropriation); and that most of the judges, who are totally honest, would object to their being criticized for not being open when they would have no objections to doing so (link to article):