India runs two very different rulebooks on public accountability, and the distance between them keeps growing harder to explain. On August 25, banks wrote off almost the entire value, nearly 99.97% of about Rs 22,000 crore in claims tied to a media baron. Government sources later clarified that this was not a personal loan the media baron took, but claims against him as a guarantor for loans borrowed by several firms. Now, a five-member bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) today (September 1) stayed the August 25 order.

Whatever the fine print, one thing won’t happen: you will not see the names of the media baron or his company flashed on an airport or railway screen as part of a public shaming drive. That kind of exposure is reserved for people much smaller than him.

Look at how India treats minor offences. Traffic police in Tirupati use CCTV footage to publish violators’ names and vehicle numbers on YouTube. In Noida, authorities have suspended the licences of repeat offenders and put up their names at the very spot where they broke the law. In Gurugram, an AI system rolled out in 2026 now flashes a vehicle’s pending fines on public screens at traffic signals for everyone around to see.

The same approach runs through civic enforcement. Tinsukia in Assam runs a “Hall of Shame,” posting CCTV photos of people accused of urinating or littering in public. Morbi does the same on hoardings. Panchkula proposed putting the names of people caught in open defecation on its website; Ulhasnagar proposed their photos on billboards.

Villages in Nadia district once built literal walls naming residents caught urinating in public. In 2020, Uttar Pradesh’s Adityanath government put up large posters across Lucknow naming anti-CAA rioters, along........

© The Wire