The cordless revolution obviously hasn't gone far enough. Just a few years ago, ever-increasing freedom was being spoken of as some sort of Darwinian inevitability. Just as homo erectus dispensed with his vestigial organs of the elongated, troublesome and meaningless kind, all organisations that did not need vital nutrients from a parental body would evolve into gritty autonomous creatures in their own right-ready to face an evolving world.

As it turns out, the strings-attached count isn't moving in a direction you'd expect as a dedicated evolutionist. Take the latest fracas to do with the autonomy of the Infrastructure Development Finance Company (IDFC). Remember? This is another financial institution set up by the state with the intention of providing finance to projects that the private sector would be too diffident to get involved with. The Interim Budget made a reference to it-to a proposal to cut this entity loose-that was cheered from the galleries that think most about things like infrastructure, finance and maybe even development (the ones mostly outside Parliament, that is).

Just a short while later, the country is witness to the spectacle of the top management team of IDFC, led by Managing Director Nasser Munjee, submitting an en masse resignation. This kind of thing doesn't happen very often. And when it does, it deserves attention. Munjee and his team are protesting the government's dragging the State Bank of India (SBI) into the picture of IDFC's supposed autonomy. Yes, the government wants to cut the institution loose, as it had promised, but not in the sense of it getting to make too many of its own decisions (you know, like making the public offer that was planned when it was formed).

By the government's proposal, IDFC is to be either merged with or made a subsidiary of the state-run SBI, India's largest bank. This bothers Munjee not only because it replaces one set of cords with another, but also because it violates the original shareholders agreement-according to claims made by his supporters. Whether the non-government shareholders can thwart the government's plans is a matter of governance detail best left undiscussed here. But what is clear is this: the government's itch for control isn't lessening any.

The government, on latest reports, has responded to the drama by spelling out three options. One, IDFC functions pretty much the way it now does, but under SBI as a major shareholder. Two, its management is turned over to SBI. Or three, another outfit is floated to fulfil its infrastructure finance objectives.

Would Munjee fancy any of those? The strange part is not that this is happening. It's that this is becoming a pattern, and one that challenges everyone's received notions of the direction of change in the country. If it hadn't been IDFC, it may well have been some other institution-and without the sort of dramatic move Munjee chose to make, may even have gone relatively unnoticed. Even with India's institutions of higher learning, it took a lot of chest-beating on many influential people's part before the gravity of the issue rang home.

Just as the IIM issue was not really about the B-school fees, this is not just another restructuring. This is bigger. In fact, this is as big as any issue. This is about the way the country is handling its transition from a controlled economy to an open one.

It is at times like these that call for the utmost clarity. And so particularly on first principles. In all these years after independence, the government has done a moderately admirable job of playing the parent to countless institutions and entities that wouldn't exist without its powers of conception and initiation. For that, everyone is thankful.

But the world has moved on, our economic thinking-in the light of increasing evidence of outcomes-has undergone a transformation, and the country has grown up. The country needs no further intervention in the finer details of life, work and value-generation overall. If India is to prosper, the nanny state must recede. And that means snapping the cords of control once and for all.