Way back in February 2002, I wrote an article in The Hindu titled “Is India drifting to ‘kleptocracy’?” It was in the context of the heartless bureaucratic process of ‘rehabilitation’ of a village ravaged by the disastrous Gujarat earthquake of 2001. This is what I prophesied then: “…the country is slowly moving away from democracy towards a system of ‘kleptocracy’ with politicians, for whom democracy is nothing more than a tool to capture power and the license to loot, at the centre of the orbit. Around them in the orbit are the civil servants, the police and even judges, each feathering their own nest.” –
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