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Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on television Wednesday that he was "dead serious" about fighting high-level corruption, after a run of debilitating scandals. The 78-year-old took to the airwaves to face a live grilling from Indian news editors, in a risky move designed to combat months of bad publicity that have undermined his "Mr Clean" reputation. Singh, the pioneer of India's dramatic economic reforms in the 1990s, accepted that corruption had damaged his government and acknowledged that some people are now calling him a "lame duck." "I regret that these irregularities have happened; they should not have happened," he said during the 75-minute inquisition, most of which he spent facing some unusually aggressive questioning. Singh's coalition government, led by his Congress party, has been lambasted over corruption in the Delhi Commonwealth Games in October and the allegedly fraudulent sale of mobile phone licenses. "I wish to assure you and the country as a whole that our government is dead serious about bringing to book all the wrongdoers, regardless of the position they might occupy," Singh said. He said he had never considered quitting and would "stay the course," urging critics to consider India's impressive economic performance and its growing diplomatic clout. AFP |
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