India’s battle against black money

By Gautaman Bhaskaran
There has been a popular upsurge in India against corruption in recent months. Kickbacks worth millions of dollars have been taken by politicians during several state operations, including the Commonwealth Games and in the allocation of 2G spectrum for mobile telephone operators.

Much of this money is reportedly stashed away in tax havens, like Switzerland, and the simmering resentment among 1.3 billion Indians – 40% of whom are so poor that they go to bed hungry every night – has now broken out into sheer anger.

The latest to lead a mass movement is Baba Ramdev, a yoga guru living in the north Indian holy town of Hardwar.

A week ago, he came down to New Delhi and began a fast unto death, urging the federal government to tackle graft and bring the unlawfully hoarded money back to the country.

Some 50,000 men and women joined Ramdev in his fast, and when the United Progressive Alliance Government in New Delhi, led by the Congress Party, found things getting too hot for its comfort, sent its security forces in the middle of the night and broke the congregation with the help of tear gas.
About 70 people were injured, some seriously. Ramdev was flown back to Hardwar, where he is continuing with his hunger strike.

Roughly a month ago, Anna Hazare, who professes to be a Gandhian, began a fast unto death in New Delhi pressuring the government to legislate on an anti-corruption Bill, called Lokpal Bill, that will make everybody in the administration, including the prime minister, and the top judges accountable.

The Bill has been pending for 42 years. The government, nervous about the repercussions of Hazare’s fast, agreed to set up a joint panel of ministers and members of the civil society to draft the Bill.

Political shenanigans

When differences began plaguing the talks between the government and the civil society on the contents of the Bill (a key one being whether the prime minister ought to come under its purview), Ramdev jumped into the fray, though in vain, to add further pressure.

If he was a novice in political shenanigans, he was also suspected of hankering after publicity.
As it has become the norm and fashion in India for many to enhance their image (and possibly add to their financial fortunes) through politics, Ramdev’s efforts seemed like an attention-grabbing exercise.

It is also believed that the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, an important opposition political organisation, was behind the whole Ramdev episode. This was a vital difference between Hazare’s non-political fast and Ramdev’s.

The government, now pushed to the wall by the people, fed up with such plundering of national wealth, has been treading cautiously – choosing, for instance, to keep away from criminal-political legal processes
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Corrupt clots

Some important politicians, like former Telecom Minister Raja, Member of Parliament Kanimozhi, chief of the Commonwealth Games Suresh Kalmadi are all in jail pending trials against economic crimes. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government has scrupulously avoided interference, though all of them were connected with his administration.

However, what looks like a setback to the fight against graft is the assumption that the Lokpal Bill will not be ready by June 30, the deadline set by Hazare, when he agreed to call off his hunger strike. Perhaps, given the fact that the Bill has been in cold storage for four decades, it could wait a little longer, if that means a good draft.

More importantly, it will be entirely wrong to presume that the Lokpal Bill will be some kind of magic pill to dissolve the corrupt clots in India’s most significant arteries.

Dozens of commissions have, since the 1950s, probed the evil of unaccounted money. The dozens of commissions have made several hundred suggestions. Some of them have been made into laws, one being the reduction of income tax – from 97.5% in the highest bracket in 1971 to the current reasonable 30%.
Periodically, tax evaders have been given the chance to come clean with no penalties. Many restrictive trade practices have long gone, and far more realistic foreign exchange regulations (once an Indian could take just US$8 when he travelled abroad!) are now in place.

Yet, the black money economy has not shown any sign of a let-up. Rather, it has grown and grown enormously. Obviously, what we are talking about is an attitude problem that no Bill or Act can ever hope to tackle.

Aiding and abetting this are the criminals, who have infiltrated every sphere of governance from the Parliament to the State Assemblies to the judiciary to the police. Unless these men are jailed or kept away from positions of power, any number of Hazares and Ramdevs may not be able to turn India into pristine white.

Gautaman Bhaskaran is a Chennai-India based author, columnist and film critic, and maybe be contacted at gautamanbhaskaran@yahoo.in