Are Indians becoming progressively less honest? When I voiced the thought to my friend Bidhu Mohanty, who is now director general of Income Tax (Investigation), he went a step farther to wonder if the phrase “business ethics” isn’t a contradiction in terms! It’s not the lurid scams that prompt suspicion but ordinary events. Look at the figures of taxpayers. With 311 million people, the US has 144 million (46.3 per cent of the total) assessees. Only 2.5 per cent (25 million) of a billion Indians file returns.