The mercenaries

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The Indian Express: Jan 23 2013, 02:57 IST

That Om Prakash Chautala, former chief minister of Haryana and one of its pivotal political figures, has been handed a ten-year sentence by a Rohini court, along with his son Ajay Chautala and 53 others, is a sobering moment but it is not entirely unexpected. They were convicted for their role in a large-scale fraudulent teacher-recruitment exercise in 2000, when the Indian National Lok Dal was in power. Om Prakash Chautala has had run-ins with the law previously. He was indicted by the Justice K.N. Saikia Commission as an accessory after the fact in the killing of a political rival, and corruption charges have chased him for over a decade. Also, Haryana has a culture of patronage-based appointments — the Congress is in a bind of its own, as the Punjab and Haryana High Court has recently questioned a batch of physical training instructor appointments made in 2010 under the Hooda government’s watch, and also declared the Haryana Staff Selection Commission “non-functional”.

These subversions of the system are, arguably, especially brazen in Haryana, but they are by no means confined to the state. Across the country, in many states, public appointments in the police, schools and other government agencies are largely the gift of politicians, and each change in government brings about a fresh wave of appointments. This is a repudiation of the very basis of merit-based work, and it distorts all the institutions it touches. This “spoils system” means that public employees are defined by their loyalty to political leaders

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Reader's Comments (2)| Post a Comment

CHAUTALA

sadakchap | 23-Jan-2013Reply | Forward

Chautala and his son deserve thepunishment. But how come, the case against Chautala has been disposed off so fast, while cases agaist some politicians are pending for 20-30 years.

Shameless Inheritors

Ashok | 23-Jan-2013Reply | Forward

Thank God that these so called leaders have not fathered or were incapable of fathering 6000 or 50,000 or even more legitimate children, otherwise we would have found only their own produce filing up all the jobs and positions of power that are proven fields for breeding corruption. We also hope that even amongst the current lot, much as they would like to as inspired by our mythological tales, there is no one biologically capable of such feats. Dynastic political inheritance is the worst evil that the political class has institutionalized in our country. And to rub salt on the wounds of common citizens, this shameless group propagates that they are making sacrifices for the country, a recent example having been witnessed in the recently held meet of a party just to give legitimacy to an ill-legitimate cause. Don't these benefactors of dynasty ever ponder over a most repulsive thought that they become leaders by en-cashing the death of a parent, a family member etc?