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Soren had to quit the government four months ago after a Jharkhand court issued a non-bailable warrant against him in a 20-year-old massacre case. He is on bail. I cannot prejudge the massacre issue but Soren's corruption is proven. The bribe deposited in a bank was recovered to the last penny to suggest his involvement.

Granted, Soren is a tribal leader and commands a solid support of the adivasis in Jharkhand. Granted, the Congress needs his Jharkhand Mukti Morcha on its side for the state election two months hence. But this should not be the basis to condone corruption and to give him a place in the cabinet. The party should have learnt some lesson in the wilderness. People threw it out because they found the Congress leaders and ministers taking money.

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At least, Manmohan Singh should not have allowed his image to be sullied. Was it necessary for him to acquire the taint when Congress president Sonia Gandhi was doing the stitching job behind the scenes? By absenting from the oath-taking ceremony, she did not absolve herself of the blame of bringing Soren to the central cabinet.

The problem with Sonia Gandhi is that she sees nothing wrong in employing any method which brings her success. The example of Laloo Prasad Yadav and his colleagues is already there. She had to accommodate them in the government because the Congress could not reach the magic figure of 272 in the 543-member Lok Sabha without Laloo Yadav's 26 members. Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party, with 34 seats in the Lok Sabha, would have been comparatively better.

The Congress cannot go on compromising on values and still expecting other political parties behaving differently. Mahatma Gandhi, who infused life in the Congress, has said that if the means are tainted, the ends are bound to be tainted. He had a different way to assess honesty. He might be considered a stickler today, but morality demanded uncompromising attitude. "The question is moral, not legal," said Gandhi. He was replying to Sardul Singh Keveshwar's plea that a sum of Rs 500 he had borrowed was "time barred." He was included in the Congress Working Committee. But Gandhi put a question mark against his name following a complaint from the creditor. Gandhi did not clear Keveshwar.

I wonder how far the Congress, not to speak of other political parties, follows the norms set by Gandhi. Maybe, this is because there is no leader of his stature to evoke respect. Also, the politicians of today do not want to listen to such leaders who are themselves wanting in integrity. Who can show the mirror to who is the problem? Had the pre-independence standard been maintained, India would probably have found missionaries to lead the country to prosperity. But the spirit of sacrifice evaporated even before the last British soldier left.

Once India got freedom, the Congress Party members became a new set of masters who wanted reward for the sufferings they had undergone in the national struggle. Almost overnight the party became a squabbling crowd of white-clad, self-seekers, jostling one another for power and pelf. Gandhi had prescribed simple living and high thinking. He had himself discarded all clothes except a loincloth to represent the common man, poor and hardly covered. Still the Congress ministers wear silk khadi, occupy big houses, ride in sleek limousines and lead such an ostentatious life that the emphasis is on extravagance, not on saving. People who once felt proud in living in small houses to show kinship with the poor and hungry masses now want sprawling bungalows.

India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru tried to enforce the norms of integrity. He made his Petroleum Minister K.D. Malaviya quit the government because he could not account for the contribution he had received from a private firm for election. Again, Nehru was the one who set up an inquiry commission to look into allegations of corruption against his favourite Punjab Chief Minister Pratap Singh Kairon and his family members. In contrast, the scandal surrounding the Rs 64 crore kickbacks on the purchase of Bofors guns by the Rajiv Gandhi government remains unsolved even after two decades.

The deal has been so well wrapped in technicalities that it, if pursued, would turn out to be a long drawn legal battle. With the Congress government back in power, the deal may be given a decent burial. Sadly, corruption has so permeated the country that politics has become synonymous with dishonesty.

Manmohan Singh could have stalled Soren's appointment by recalling what Shastri did. He made Finance Minister T.T. Krishnamachari resign from the cabinet when an inquiry commission found him guilty for the way in which the government used proxies. TTK had told a life insurance company to vote in favour of a private party, Mundhra. TTK was close to then Congress president K. Kamaraj but Shastri did not bother to consult him. When Manmohan Singh tries to make compromises because of impending elections, he shocks a host of people who have faith in his integrity.

I am drawing attention to yet another case. It is not related to bribery but to pressure that worked in the re-induction of Soren in the cabinet. The case in point is the act which gives people the right to know. Home Ministry's parliamentary committee passed it more than three years ago when I was the Rajya Sabha member. A diluted form of the bill was accepted so that some kind of right to seek information from the government would be established. Parliament passed the bill last year. Still the notification has not been issued and without that the act cannot come into operation.

The bureaucracy is up in arms because it cannot brook the idea that ordinary citizen can ask why the government decided a particular matter in the way it did. "Democratic accountability," as some concerned citizens have pointed out to the Prime Minister in a letter, is not to the liking of public servants. Aruna Roy, a social activist, won the right to know in Rajasthan after years of struggle. Still the arrangement suffers because of bureaucratic delays.

The non-operation of the information act was brought to the notice of Sonia Gandhi's Public Advisory Council. I thought that would be the end of the matter. But she did not turn out to be that powerful. The Law Ministry favoured several amendments. True, the act is full of holes. But something is better than nothing. The diluted version could have been put into operation till the amended bill got parliament's sanction. But the bureaucracy continues to have its way.

That Sonia Gandhi has not been successful in putting into operation the information act indicates how powerful the bureaucracy has grown. If all impediments in the way of Soren's cabinet induction can be removed, why not the ones in the case of the information act? True, the latter does not give any political dividends.

Kuldip Nayar is an eminent Indian columnist.