The Great Indian Novel

More than the novel or the pamphlet, it is the bureaucratic document, as expert's report or as a commission of enquiry, that has captured many of the great dramas of the 20th century. It is these reports that will survive as the archives of democracy in India. The Lentin Report on the deaths due to contaminated glycerine at the state run J J Hospital in Mumbai is such a document, a contender for the Great Indian Novel. The report examines four institutions, the hospital, the industry, the Food and Drug Administration and the politician, in painstaking detail showing how individual acts of corruption, each insulated in itself, together led to the tragedy. And, typically, its findings lie unattended till today.