Journalism of Courage
Finance minister P Chidambaram on Wednesday tried to dispel the notion of widespread corruption in the country and said it is wrong to believe that everyone and everything is corrupt.
“We should not believe that India is the most corrupt nation. The scale of corruption is rising as the size of the economic pie is growing,” he said at the Golden Jubilee celebrations of the Central Vigilance Commission.
While stressing that such self-flagellation is the worst king of attitude, the minister further said, “I am not condoning corruption, but I would appeal to everyone not to believe that everyone is corrupt …There is a problem of corruption and we must deal with it.”
The finance minister’s comments come at a time when the UPA government is trying to shrug off allegations of scams during its tenure in sectors such as telecom, coal block distribution, Commonwealth Games and oil pricing.
Meanwhile, referring to issues of corporate ethics, the minister said that self-regulation must be the first step and urged regulatory agencies to intervene only in cases of gross violations by companies or when there are clear cases of criminality so that they do not get over burdened.
