The ultimate judgment has been delivered: the affairs of the world are not a morality play, they are, instead, the spitting image of a power game. And what holds for the world should be equally relevant for a nation.

Perhaps this is always true in the early phase of capitalism: no quarters are given and none are expected, in the corporate goings-on, the shadiest means are deployed to choke competition in the market and eliminate one’s adversaries. The message has finally infiltrated the rules of conduct for national governance. The media are explicit in their reportage and go into the luridest detail. Party B is prepared to enter into a deal with Party A, but conditions have to be fulfilled. Party B wants charges of corruption against its leaders currently pursued by A — which happens to be the party in power at the moment — to be dropped. Not only that. Party B has its arch-enemy in Party C; it demands of Party A that the latter must so arrange things that the goose of Party C is properly cooked.

The details of such deals and bargains are meticulously discussed in newspaper columns and on television channels. No protest is lodged from any direction; no contradictions worth the name are posted; such shenanigans are considered normal and natural phenomena by just about everybody. Issues of principle are taken to be flippancy at best, at worst a nuisance. Survival in power — or ascendance to it — is the desideratum. To survive in power, those holding the reins of governance are prepared to go to any length to buy, through bribery and blackmail, support from whoever is prepared to offer it.

Those aspiring to seize power are no less determined to endorse and practise this fast-emerging new grammar of politics. Ideology has been thrown into the dust heap of history by most of this crowd. The only doctrine holding sway is that of you-satisfy-me-and-I-will-satisfy-you. If the media are to be believed, corporate bodies — including foreign ones — hate to stay neutral; they too have entered the fray, supplying funds necessary to win, or subvert, loyalty. If, in the frenzy of the free-market milieu, you can actually buy up the country’s government, why be bashful?

No queries are raised, and no doubts expressed. Politicians and scoundrels, it is assumed, are synonymous categories. Some would even break out into a philosophical discourse on the being of being: do scoundrels lead politicians up the garden path or is it the other way round? The epistemological debate is adjourned after some while since it gets trapped into circular reasoning.

If we leave the issue at this juncture and proceed, unconcerned, with our daily perambulations, some kind of peace would conceivably descend on the neighbourhood. The problem has, however, another dimension. It is a star-crazy nation and self-promoting political leaders have as much stellar attraction as the heroes and heroines of the tinsel world or the money-lush cricketers. Textbooks at the primary stage of education assiduously preach the doctrine of hero-worship; youngsters are urged to follow the footsteps of the nation’s noble leaders. The new generation cannot be blamed if it takes the primary level texts at their face value. The political leaders, on the testimony of reports carried by the media, are by and large a bunch of crooks indulging in the horridest kinds of roguery without batting an eye. Society, the young ones conclude, expects them to emulate these role models. It would be wrong to suggest that the school texts are preaching amorality; they are actually narrating a new concept of morality which is a reversal of all that has been regarded as axiomatic social behaviour since the advent of civilization: falsehood is henceforth to be preferred to truth, crookery is to supplant honesty, and deceit is by definition superior to what till now had passed as integrity.

Young cadets do not have the subtlety of mind metaphysical callisthenics permits, for instance, a prime minister to develop. They take the obvious as the real. They grow up; they tackle the mystique of matrix algebra and solid geometry, differential calculus is child’s play to them; they do not get lost in the jungle of derivatives of derivatives. But these are only minor appurtenances to help the cause of advancement in life. Going by the example set by the ruling classes, they use these appurtenances to refine the diverse skills in skulduggery so essential to reach the top of the income — and, therefore, social — ladder. Some amongst the new generation, once they have set the goal for themselves, would not even stop from committing the vilest murder; contract killing is increasingly coming into vogue as a respectable profession.

Also take into account the impact of the emerging neo-morality on jurisprudence. Please do not blame the judges if they lose their way. Each of the infringements of legality listed in the Criminal Procedure Code is being exhibited by the perpetration of politicians who preside over the destiny of the nation. These leaders, in other words, establish precedents of breaches of the law. Any smart lawyer, appearing before a trial judge on behalf of a master blackguard, can now quote specific examples of acts and behaviour set by ranking politicians and gently remind the judge of Article 14 of the Constitution. Since all citizens are equal in the eye of law, the lawyer, righteous indignation throbbing through his innards, would demand honourable acquittal of his client. Every now and then, a judge, suffering from a bout of old-fashioned conscience, may think of resigning from his position. But he has to make a living, and it is not easy to survive in today’s society while holding arcane notions of either morality or legality. It is not impossible that friends of the judge will advise him to grow up; when in Rome, it is advisable to do as the Romans do.

A natural development will be for the judiciary, too, to join the fun and games. Judgments will be up for sale. A murderer may go scot-free at a consideration. Different judges will have initially different rates for being persuaded or appeased. Given the wizardry of free competition, these rates perhaps will get equalized. Or maybe not. A morning could soon dawn when, like stock market quotations, newspapers would print quotations of bribes offered and accepted at the different rungs of the country’s judiciary. They would, of course, have already done so for politicians.

And rest assured, the contamination will spread with extraordinary rapidity. There is that old story of the Texan rancher who, at the end of a long, tiring market day in the state capital, purchased, cash down at a thousand bucks, a PhD from the town university; as an afterthought, he bought a PhD for his horse too by putting down on the table another thousand dollars. A similar situation, symptoms suggest, is going to arrive breathtakingly soon in the precincts of India’s academia.

Raymond Chandler is hardly read these days. One suddenly chanced upon the opening sentence of a chapter in that classic, The High Window: “Bunker Hill is old town, lost town, shabby town, crook town.” Is not the republic of India threatening to turn soon into a vast Bunker Hill?