Once upon a time decades ago there was a Bofors scandal. It was a corruption case involving an Indian prime minister, a foreign prime minister, foreign businessmen, Indian middlemen and government officials. The case was never solved. The Indian PM was killed. The foreign PM was killed. The foreign businessman fled India. The main Indian middleman died. The CBI got tired and closed the case. The media got bored and stopped reporting the case. So while the case could not be solved it got resolved.

There followed the anti-Sikh genocide case. Decades passed. Many relatives of the genocide victims pursuing justice died. The media got bored. The case was never solved. It got resolved. The media and the nation moved on to more pressing cases.

There was the Jain Hawala case. It involved illegal funding of politicians and terrorists alike by the same foreign sources. The case was never solved. The court gave it up for insufficient evidence. Later the Chief Justice of India who heard it wanted the case to revive but to no avail. There were other more pressing cases. The case was never solved. It got resolved.  

There was the Koda mining scam. Thousands of crores were looted and stashed abroad. Years passed. The case has not been solved. It is getting resolved. The media started to forget it. It focused instead on the 2G Spectrum Scam. 

In the 2G Scam thousands of crores were looted and stashed in foreign banks. The media took it up. But years have passed. The case hasn’t got solved. But it is getting resolved. Attention from it is beginning to fade away. There was another more pressing case to engage everybody’s attention. It was the Commonwealth Games (CWG) Scam.

In the CWG Scam crores were looted by state ministers, central ministers, CWG organizers and government officials. The case is still receiving some attention. But it is beginning to fade. No major person has been convicted. The media is beginning to show signs of boredom. And there is a more pressing case to engage its attention. It is the Hasan Ali money laundering case.

In the Hasan Ali case billions of US dollars have been stashed by Indians in illegal foreign bank accounts. The case is still being pursued. Three years have passed since the criminal evidence surfaced. But the main accused has still not been convicted although he is in police custody. It is not certain that this case too will be solved. But most certainly it will one day be resolved. Another more pressing case is bound to engage the public’s and media’s attention. When that happens Hasan Ali may be forgotten. Already the Fake Pilot Case has started to overtake it. There are other unsolved scams too numerous to mention.

And all this while, the establishment is obsessed with promoting commerce through cricket. Interspersed with triviality is the debate between the ruling and opposition parties in which protagonists score cheap shots against each other. One would like to call the level of the debate third-rate. In all honesty one cannot.  It is distinctly fifth-rate. 

Time is a great healer. It heals the agony of the people and of the national media. Time helps everyone to forget. That is what journalism is all about. It focuses on the news of the day. Today’s news makes yesterday’s news redundant. But history is unlike journalism. It freezes events in time. It does not forget. It will recall one day the marvel of how the Indian nation could resolve crime or corruption without solving it. And our children’s children and their children will wonder and ask how our generation managed to achieve this. Let them ask. We will not have to answer. We will be dead and gone. Will democratic India remain alive? That is what all of us should start to seriously ponder.   
  
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