This phenomenon that has been known to pervade India’s corporate sector, politics, financial markets, entertainment and business has not left the sports world untainted.

Ghastly revelations of cricketing icons, managing authorities and business groups enmeshed in the latest spot fixing and betting saga and violating the code of ethics and propriety poured out from every corner of newspapers and every news channel.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) tried to maintain a deafening silence on the apparent conflict of interest in the activities of the India captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s and BCCI President, N. Srinivasan, owner of the Indian Premier League team Chennai Super Kings (CSK), and his son-in-law and team principal, Gurunath Meiyappan’s arrest but critical voices could not be muted.

It was not until the Indian game reached its lowest levels of credibility that the newly instated BCCI treasurer, Ravi Savant mustered some strength to give a categorical call, “Dhoni should be given a notice for conflict of interest if this was not part of his contract earlier. Dhoni should immediately disassociate himself from the management firm while he is captain.”

The allegations surrounding Dhoni are to do with his past ownership of 15 percent stake in Rhiti Sports Management that manages his commercial interests and of other Indian team and CSK players like Suresh Raina and Ravindra Jadeja as well as management of marketing of CSK.

The moot point of concern is that Dhoni, both as India captain and team selector, stood a chance to unduly benefit from a gain in share of profits from deals involving these players.

So the universal rule that bars relatives and family members of judges or organizers of any public competition or panel or sports from participating in the events was therefore clearly not hindered to by these significant participants of the cricketing world.

Press reports indicate an apparent conflict of interest when yesteryear stalwarts like Sunil Gavaskar, Ravi Shastri and K. Srikkanth held several positions simultaneously; when Gavaskar’s tenure as Chairman of the International Cricket Council’s Cricket Committee clashed with his commentator’s role in television in the year 2008; when both Gavaskar and Shastri signed lucrative deals with the Board while again acting as commentators; and, when Srikkanth donned the role of both brand ambassador of CSK and Chairman of the National Selection Committee.

Though Minister of Rural Development, Jairam Ramesh, may be faulted in not being vocal about the Gandhi Family staying at the helm of Congress political party, to which he belongs, the onus of pointing this conflict of interest can be attributed to him.

And Ramesh draws similarities between the induction of the younger Murty with some Members of Parliament, who appoint their progeny as personal assistants.

His grouse is that, “Why should we blame just the poor MPs? Look at my good friend Narayana Murthy, who has been a source of inspiration for all of us, appointing his son who is undoubtedly an extraordinarily bright man as his executive assistant…this conflict of interest business is a very, very serious issue in Indian politics and government, and Narayana Murthy has demonstrated that it is a serious issue in the Indian corporate sector. There is serious conflict of interest in media as well.”

For those not in the knowhow, Infosys strictly enforces a retirement age of 60 for executive roles and 65 for non-executive positions.

As an Environment Minister, Ramesh had taken up cudgels with multiple fellow Parliamentarians who endorsed or plugged several projects lying outside the domain of their constituencies and for which he earned the charge of being antigrowth and anti-investment oriented.

His “objections” finally cost him his Ministerial seat just as in the case of his contemporary ex-Oil and Gas Minister, Jaipal Reddy, who attempted hard to clean up the ministry of officials found extending allegiance to top private firm like Reliance Industries.

As a matter of fact, conflict of interest is the basis of every other scam rocking the second term of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance at the Center for which it looks likely that it may face an imminent defeat in the general elections of 2014.

From the allocation of 2G Spectrum to Coal blocks the government has been facing flak from every corner and allegations against several key ministers entangled in this web have been erupting by the day.

Last year the Aam Aadmi Party leaders and anti-corruption crusaders, Arvind Kejriwal and Prashant Bhushan, raised red flags against the government for arriving at a “conciliation agreement” in contravention of an Act passed by Parliament, when the Hong Kong-based conglomerate, Hutchinson, sold its Indian telecom business to Vodafone in 2007 and fell into a tax dispute.

Recently, a Railway Minister was forced to resign when his kith and kin were charged with receiving bribes for promising appointments to important positions in government and grant of lucrative contracts.

Experts say that what really compounds the problem is that it has been rather difficult to garner a required quorum of legislators to qualify what defines conflict of interest and implement appropriate measures via a proper mechanism to prevent it.

A non-governmental organization called Social Watch India found in its recent study that out of a total of 543 members in the 15th Lok Sabha, 128 were of business, trading or industrial origins.

Perhaps this could point out the motives of legislators being weaved in their policy-making processes when they preside various standing and other committees.

Going by this study, the Upper House members have been more successful than the Lok Sabha ones in enlisting support to register their “pecuniary interests,” but the fact that this information is graded classified and hence out of public domain, there is no doubt a lack of accountability can be clearly envisaged.

Co-founder of PRS Legislative Research, a not-for-profit research initiative, M.R. Madhavan therefore terms conflict of interest as a grave problem and rather confounding and feels that pushing for public disclosures before endorsement of any product or project by respective legislators can be a way to clear up this systemic problem.

His suggestions include a partial remedy rather than waiting endlessly for a foolproof and final solution and learning from experiences of other nations that have exhibited progress in this area.

The premise of his contention is that, “Lack of transparency is not a small percentage of the problem, it’s actually a lot and there is the appreciation of organized lobbies.”

As the country heads in the direction of more and more insider trading, crony capitalism and corruption, the call for reform and arrest of the drastic fall in standards of ethics, spurious means of business dealings and thus for a sure, devastation, becomes necessary.