Many chief secretaries and secretaries may have come and gone, and many governments of all hues have come and gone but the amount of beruju (a blanket term covering any irregularities with paper proof, ranging from corruption to advances yet to be settled after the lapse of given time) has been going up and up, almost every year. The Auditor General has prepared and submitted his report every year ever since the government accounts started being subjected to such statutory audits more than four decades ago. One wonders, after so much pinpointing of lapses and financial wrongdoing, things still remain unchanged.

Sometimes, panels were also formed, and suggestions came up for dwarfing the mountains of beruju amounts, but to little avail. Nor did the many man-days lost on debating the beruju issue in the parliament year after year yield anything substantial. Now comes a directive from a panel, called Beruju Settlement Evaluation and Monitoring Committee, to the government offices — that the size of their new beruju amounts must not exceed three per cent of the money spent. The financial indiscipline has run amok because of the culture of impunity. Those responsible for committing beruju and those in authority for taking corrective action were never hauled over the coals for their inaction. But this has handed the Maoists in government a golden opportunity to cut the Gordian knot. But can they seize it?