N. Ram, chairman of Kasturi & Sons Limited and former editor-in-chief of The Hindu and Frontline magazine, is a political journalist with literary interests. He has written on a range of socio-political subjects and specialized in investigative journalism. Along with Susan Ram, he is the biographer of the great Indian writer, R. K. Narayan, whom he knew well. Ram was elected president of the Contemporary India Section of the 72nd Session of the Indian History Congress (2011). He was awarded the Padma Bhushan for Journalism (1990). He also received the Asian Investigative Journalist of the Year Award from the Press Foundation of Asia (1990); the B. D. Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism (1989); and a Columbia J-School Alumni Award (2003).
<p>Corruption in India today is pervasive, omnipresent, and diverse, covering every branch of the</p><p>Indian state and key sectors of the economy. Far from declining and fading away, as predicted,</p><p>with deregulation and liberalization, it has increased exponentially in the twenty-first century at</p><p>all levels—central, state, and local. It can be seen today as a normal, not a pathological, condition</p><p>within the political economy. In several states, corruption involving politicians, bureaucrats,</p><p>businessmen, and in some cases, criminal elements has graduated to a new qualitative stage,</p><p>transforming itself into a well-oiled, rule- and rate-bound and self-propelled system of collecting</p><p>and sharing the illicit spoils of office. In this seminal book, N. Ram, who led the investigation</p><p>into the Bofors grand corruption scandal, attempts to get a measure of ‘political corruption’ in</p><p>contemporary India, and explains why it has become an intractable problem.</p>
