On September 24, 2007, India played Pakistan in the final of the World Twenty20 in Johannesburg. Pakistan needed 13 runs from the last over. The captain, M.S. Dhoni, gave the ball to Joginder Sharma. Misbah-ul-Haq was caught by Sreesanth, and India won by five runs.
Joginder later recalled what Dhoni had told him: “The best thing about Mahi during that over was he told me that if we lose, he would take the responsibility.”
On May 23, 2020, in a conversation with Nalin Kohli of the BJP, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman spoke about the Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme, worth 3 lakh crore rupees, for small and medium businesses. Banks should lend under it, she said, and “the fear of the 3Cs as they refer to the CBI, CVC, and also the CAG should not be in their minds.”
These are the Central Bureau of Investigation, the Central Vigilance Commission and the Comptroller and Auditor General. She added: “if a decision goes wrong, and if there is a loss, the government has given 100 per cent guarantee now.”
A former Director of Collegiate Education in Tamil Nadu had carried out a Government Order. The High Court ordered him to pay costs of 25 lakh rupees personally. In April 2026 the Supreme Court set the penalty aside in C. Poorna Chandran v. Government of Tamil Nadu.
The court held that “a government servant cannot be made to take a stand against the Government.” It added that “no adverse liability can be fastened on the appellant.”
In the Multan Test against Pakistan in 2004, Rahul Dravid captained India because Sourav Ganguly was injured. Dravid declared the innings while Sachin Tendulkar was 194 not out.
Tendulkar later wrote in his autobiography, Playing It My Way: “I was startled to say the least.” And: “Disappointed and upset, I made my way back to the dressing room.”
In April 2009, the Second Administrative Reforms Commission summed up its findings in its Fifteenth Report. “The tendency to have large number of on-file consultations, often unnecessary, leads to diffused accountability,” it wrote. It also found “diffusion of responsibility and accountability among the large number of functionaries.”
It recommended: “The number of levels through which a file should pass for a decision should not exceed three.”
In the Kishkindha Kanda of the Valmiki Ramayana, the monkey army reaches the sea. Someone must leap across to Lanka. The old Jambavan turns to Hanuman, tells him of his birth and his strength, and says: Uttishtha harishardula, langhayasva maharnavam. Rise, tiger among monkeys, leap across the great ocean. He adds that the whole monkey army wishes to see his strength.
Only then does Hanuman enlarge his body. Valmiki describes him as jambavata prachoditah, urged on by Jambavan.
On May 22, 2010, Air India Express Flight 812 crashed while landing at Mangalore. The Court of Inquiry found that the captain continued an unstable approach “despite three calls from the First Officer (H S Ahluwalia) to ‘go around’.” The first call was a question: “Go around?” The last was: “Go around captain…We don’t have runway left.”
The first officer did not take over the controls. The report noted “ambiguity in various instructions empowering the ‘copilot’ to initiate a ‘go around’.”
Early in the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna is confused about his duty. He turns to Krishna: shishyas te ‘ham shadhi mam tvam prapannam. “I am Your disciple, and am surrendered to You. Please instruct me for certain what is best for me.”
The verse is chapter 2, verse 7.
In 1979 the first flight of India’s satellite launch vehicle, SLV-3, failed. Satish Dhawan, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation, faced the press himself. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, the project director, later recalled: “He took the whole blame on himself despite criticisms.” Dhawan told the press that “next year we would succeed because his team was a very good one.”
In 1956 Lal Bahadur Shastri, the Railway Minister, offered to resign after a train accident at Mahbubnagar. Prime Minister Nehru persuaded him to stay. After a second accident, at Ariyalur in November, Shastri resigned again. “It will be good for me and the Government as a whole, if I quietly quit the office I hold,” he wrote.
Nehru accepted, while saying he did not hold Shastri responsible. Sources differ on the death tolls of both accidents.