“The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.” In these famous lines, John Steinbeck, goes to the root of our present crisis in public morality.

He has also expressed the dilemma of every Indian mother who has to give a name to her son. Unlike the West, where everyone is called Tom, Dick or Harry, parents in India spend months trying to decide their child’s name–they are, after all, forecasting its future. Torn between names that suggest goodness and success, they prudently choose success, which explains why every fifth Indian boy is called Arjun, and no one Yudhishthir.

Mahabharata’s heroes come to mind because there are parallels between the epic’s lament and the things we might say about our leaders today. Our republic has been in a state of continuing crises for months; the epic is a continuing repository of crises in public morality. Just as we have a problem with our governance institutions, so did the epic. What is at stake, both then and now, is our conception of success. Andimuthu Raja, former Minister of Communications, causes us discomfort because he has undermined this conception. Until recently, Raja was a huge success in the world’s eyes—he had power, money and status. Then he fell. We turn to Yudhishthira, the epic’s un-hero, to find out if there another way of engaging with the world. He (and Steinbeck) raise thorny questions: What price are we are willing to pay for worldly success? Is it possible to be both successful and good? Why high status cannot be conferred on a person who is honest and kind?

The problem of silence is at the heart of today’s political crisis. The rage of the Indian public is over an honest Prime Minister who seems to be presiding over one of the most corrupt governments in recent Indian history. In these dark days, people have desperately wanted to clutch on to an honest man. They found one in selfless, ethical Manmohan Singh. So was Bhishma, yet he remained silent when Draupadi was being disrobed. When Draupadi insistently questioned the ‘dharma of the ruler’, everyone remained silent. Then Vidura scornfully spat out at the immorality of silence: when a crime occurs, he said, half the punishment goes to the guilty; a quarter to his ally; and another quarter falls on the silent.

Our prime minister’s silence in the 2G scandal has been deeply disturbing. Soon after Raja announced his fraudulent policy in September 2007, the PM sensed that a crime of huge proportions was afoot. He wrote to Raja objecting to his policy, asking him to be transparent. Raja replied immediately, defending himself. On 3 January 2008, the PM acknowledged this letter—yes, ‘acknowledged’, as though he had acquiesced. This gave Raja the go-ahead to issue the licenses. In May 2010, the PM admitted that Raja had indeed written to him. Why did the Prime Minister fall silent after having objected to the policy?

Raja has shamed us before the world. We, however, have always known the ugly truth: India’s corruption begins when one is born–you have to bribe someone to get a birth certificate. It ends when one dies, when you are forced to ‘buy’ a death certificate. In between lies a dreary life of civic unvirtue, of continuous rishwat and sifarish. Founded on such high ideals, why is India so corrupt? There is nothing wrong with our genes. And the issue that Yudhishthira and Steinbeck have raised is a universal problem. You cannot blame parents for wanting children to grow up to be winners in life’s rat race. But you can teach children to do the right thing–not to be silent when they see a crime. You can also reduce corruption by reform of the institutions of governance.

What makes Draupadi’s question admirable is her insistence on dharma. Huge energies are spent on debates between the political Left and the Right when the real divide is between right and wrong conduct. Manmohan Singh understands this. This is why he promised to attack corruption through governance reforms in 2004 when he came to power. Reforming is never easy—it is like waging a war at Kurukshetra—but it must be done. The purpose of the Mahabharata’s war, we discover at the epic’s end, was to cleanse the earth which was groaning under the accumulated iniquity of its rulers. Our own rulers should prepare for the same fate as befell the sons of Bharata, unless they act now. The rulers of France also lost the faith of their people and suffered that fate in 1789.