On my travels, I have often passed through constituencies where development has really happened, and even if the MP is corrupt, people forgive him his little peccadilloes. ‘Kaam to kiya hai,’ they say.

Other than infrastructure, the two areas worst affected by corruption are public education and healthcare. Government schools are so bad that children are lucky to come out of them with functional literacy, and government healthcare is so bad that more than 80 per cent of our poorest citizens resort to private clinics and quacks. Sickness is one of the main causes of indebtedness in rural India.

So what about teaching our ministers of education and health to build us the best facilities they can think of, and give them the incentive that the better the school or hospital, the more money there is to be made? What do you think? What other ways can you think of to turn endemic corruption in public life to our advantage? Shah Rukh Khan’s advice was excellent but alas not realistically possible.