Tax Extraction or Tax Terrorism?

According to a 2019 Pew Research, two-thirds of Indians perceive corruption to be as big a problem as terrorism and crime, and rank it just below unemployment and rising prices. This fits in with the popular narrative. Corruption is easily our most popular topic of conversation.

Wherever and whenever two or more Indians meet for a serious discussion on the nation's ills, they invariably underline corruption as the main reason for our national plight. Paradoxically, the perceptions of corruption are so endemic that we no longer seem to attach any particular opprobrium to it. Indians are curiously ambivalent about the foibles of others.

We keep electing corrupt politicians and there is no particular social stigma attached to wealth accretion by dubious means. Take the case of two former Test cricket captains, South Africa's Hansie Cronje and our