From Hawala Scam to Coalgate: An Analysis of Financial Scams in India

While corruption has been endemic in India since long, it reached unprecedented heights in the last decade. Scams after scams came to rock the Indian imagination and exposed the rampant corruption that existed with abhorrent ease in public life. The aim of this paper is to highlight such major scams that have taken place in the last two decades, i.e., from Hawala to Coalgate. This paper studies in detail several of such prominent scams and highlights the administrative and the legal lapses that were exploited by their operators. It then discusses the contemporary regulatory framework to combat corruption and examines if the lessons learnt from these incidents helped in strengthening such framework. The author finally concludes with an analysis of the road that lies ahead for our public institutions to ensure that none of such scams resurface again to undermine the general confidence in our public institutions.