INDIA SUMMARIZED

Politicians, and would-be politicians, it seems, have decided to brazen it out. They are no longer apologetic about corruption, nor do they think they have to provide real explanations to searching questions. Thus Nitin Gadkari, the BJP President, asks NDTV what’s wrong if he is pals with contractors who gained from the award of contracts by his PWD ministry when he was minister in the Sena-BJP government in Maharashtra. Sreenivasan Jain, writing in DNA about his NDTV interview with Gadkari, asks this: “Should a toll road company, which has received contracts under Mr Gadkari’s tenure, invest in a venture set up by him, that too so soon after his demitting office?” To which Gadkari replies, in as many words: “Why not… Why can’t contractors and ex-PWD ministers be friends? Or business partners?” Ajit Pawar, till recently Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra, and nephew of Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, is the man who allotted 100 acres of land to Gadkari’s NGO, Pu...