What explains the deafening silence of the media and the complete absence of public protests in response to a series of damning CAG (Comptroller and Auditor General) reports tabled in Parliament last month? In a scathing social media post, Moneylife India’s managing editor Sucheta Dalal asks what changed since 2012–13, when CAG reports on 'presumptive' losses from 2G and coal block allocations triggered nationwide protests and contributed to the defeat of the UPA government.

Since then, the Modi government has claimed to have transferred Rs 34 lakh crore directly to beneficiaries under ‘Digital India’. These digital transfers, it asserts, eliminated middlemen and saved over Rs 2.7 lakh crore in administrative costs. It has also repeatedly claimed to have eliminated corruption in welfare delivery — a far cry, BJP leaders note, from Rajiv Gandhi’s 1985 lament that only 15 paise of every rupee spent on welfare schemes actually reached the intended beneficiary.

Since 2014, however, the Modi government has........

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