Does the name Kenneth L. Lay ring a bell? It should, for, till late last year, Lay was chairman of the infamous American company, Enron Corporation, owner of the Dabhol power unit in Maharashtra. In the early months of 2001, because the Maharashtra state electricity board was unable to honour the power purchase agreement it had been compelled to sign with Dabhol, Lay had threatened to report the matter to the American president, George W. Bush, and have economic sanctions ordered against India. Lay had every right to act as bully; Enron, after all, was the largest contributor to Bush's campaign funds in the 2000 presidential election. Lay had other reasons to feel confident. Both the state government of Maharashtra and the government of India were bound to cave in: after all, Enron had greased the palm of many political persons occupying key positions in the country - the procedure it called 'public education' - so that they would agree to go along with the fantastically high price Dabhol wanted to charge for the power it would produce and sell. All Enron's yesterdays have gone to a dusty death. The Enron Corporation has now earned the dubious credit of recording the largest insolvency in the history of the United States of America. Lay has faded into oblivion, of course after making his private pile. And almost every day facts are tumbling out from hitherto-suppressed records and documents about how this power distribution company had milked the American citizens through grossly dishonest means for years on end. According to one such document, the power crisis in California a couple of years ago was engineered entirely by Enron. Electricity prices were artificially driven up through questionable means and techniques which led to severe power shortage. These techniques had beautiful exotic names such as Fat Boy, Ricochet, Get Shorty, Load Shift and Death Star. The names did not matter; the strategies all stank. One particularly favoured strategy was Load Shift: Enron would purchase power from a generating unit owned by the state of California at $ 250 per megawatt-hour - the maximum chargeable under the price regulatory system operating in the state. It would then re-sell it outside California for almost five times as much. At the next stage, claiming shortage of power availability in the state, it would import, or pretend to import, electricity from outside at a price 500 per cent higher than the maximum chargeable price in California. Very often, no power would actually be sold outside the state. It would be entirely a paper transaction, backed up by certificates issued by dishonest lawyers and equally dishonest auditors. States utilities and ordinary consumers would pay through their nose; private gains are always at public cost. All things, good or bad, however come to an end. The private sector bubble in power distribution has now burst in the US and the nation is outraged. Intense debate is currently on on whether culpability for the financial crimes should or should not reach beyond Enron and impugn its lawyers and auditors as well. Enron was a crooks' opera, but, as the native saying goes, pickpockets too are hand-in-glove with thieves and crooks. A recent judgment in an American court has indicted the firm, Arthur Andersen, the auditors for Enron, in a different case. A charitable trust had made certain investments on the advice of Arthur Andersen; each of these investments has led to heavy losses, economically ruining the trust. The court has given a no-nonsense verdict. Arthur Andersen will have to compensate the trust to the full extent of the losses suffered by it on account of the firm's wayward advice. We have little reason to feel superior. Financial shenanigans of a much worse kind have been perpetrated in India since 1991 following the dawn of the great economic liberalization, according to whose theology the private sector is never wrong. Public financial institutions, such as the Unit Trust of India, the Life Insurance Corporation of India, the Industrial Development Bank of India, the Industrial Finance Corporation of India and so on, have been actively encouraged by New Delhi to imbibe the ethos of private initiative. To cultivate the business ethics of the private sector and imbibe the message of its code have been the dominant culture over the past decade. The present travails of the UTI, for example, owe a great deal to private placements by its officials - either on their own or because of proddings from political bosses - with fly-by-night outfits and shady companies. Stock exchanges were supposed to be the lodestar for investment activities. But where sleaze is the buzz word, everything changes. Private profits can be chalked up by manipulating the stock exchanges, but the alternative route of taking public financial institutions for a ride is no less alluring. True, hard words break no bones. Malfeasance in the Indian economy has reached such levels that neither policy-makers and policy-executioners on the one hand nor the general public on the other are bothered any more about the goings-on; one group thinks they are beyond the reach of criminal law; cynicism, based on harsh experience, has led the other group to believe that the high and mighty can always bypass the law. Liberal economists nonetheless die hard; they are still around, reposing faith in the beneficial effects of a widespread public information system. Taking the cue from their sage counsel, one or two well-intentioned research groups in the country could perhaps take up a detailed study on private placements by public financial corporations in the course of the past decade. No nagging wait for picking up shares at prices quoted in the share market howsoever high or low. No consultation with boards of directors, or just perfunctory consultation. Shares of doubtful -- or politically favoured - private units are bought up wholesale by public financial institutions through the intermediary of that charming device, private placements. The romantic story of these exciting placements should be a bestseller in all seasons. The research called for will be a difficult exercise, a painstaking exercise; not all records will be willingly revealed. But members of parliament could be persuaded to ask the right questions on the floor of either house so as to ferret out the essential information. The facts, once exposed, are bound to transmit the severest of shivers down the spine of innocent citizens. Hundreds and thousands of crores of public money have been transferred through this means into the hands of a few private parties. Article 14 of the Indian Constitution says that all citizens have equal legal rights in this country. A select member of the citizenry however has immensely more financial rights than the nation's overwhelming majority could lay claim to. The latter exist so that they might be rendered into dried lemons by those on the right side of political power-brokers. Another possible research topic comes to mind. Tracing the beneficiaries of the 'public education' programme launched by Enron in the Nineties to swing political decisions in its favour can be an absorbing study. For the study to go anywhere though, it will be necessary to have access to Enron's confidential documents and conceivably also to the records of Arthur Andersen. It will also be necessary to refurbish the memory in regard to the names of the chief minister and the power minister in Maharashtra and the power minister at the Centre at the time the PPA with Dabhol was signed. Equally important will be to recollect the very last act of that 13-day wonder of 1996, Atal Bihari Vajpayee's first prime ministerial tenure. But, then, this will be entering dangerous territory.