P.S. I Scammed You!

Steven, a traveller says, “It’s impossible to come to India and not encounter at least one scam or someone trying to rip you off. You take a taxi from any Indian airports, you are scammed by taxi drivers pretending not to know the way to your hotel, saying that the place you’re looking for has moved or is closed, making the meter run fast or offering a reduced taxi fare in return for visiting emporiums. It’s true that visiting India is an over-whelming experience, one that’s easy to love, but also equally easy to hate”.

Unfortunately, every word is true. The scams always starts the same way, be it a travel scam, viral phone scam, receiving a letter congratulating you on winning a lottery you’re sure you never entered. In the last few years, India has witnessed a large number of scams where a big chunk of public money has been looted by the politicians and bureaucrats. Year 2011 – 12 also witnessed strong resentment among people of India against corruption leading to strong nationwide protests against corruption. This is the season of scams and the biggest ever corruption cases in India have been unearthed more recently. In our daily life, most of us must have been a witness to or a victim of the corruption thriving in some or the other part of the country. It could be in the form of a taxi-driver manipulating the meter to jack-up the reading or a government officer taking bribery to promptly transfer your file to the next department or even yourself offering bribe to a traffic police on breaking a signal.

Scheming Crafty Aggressive Malicious

 No one can say with any amount of certainty that the word scam was derived from a British slang word scamp, which means swindler. But almost everyone will agree that India is giving the word an altogether new perspective. No longer is a scam limited to a few swindlers trying to loot a few Crores. Scams in India have gained gigantic proportions with one after the other multi-billion Rupee scams tumbling out of the closest almost every month.

 India is known for its scams since 1948. It started with the Jeep scam in 1948 and the latest being the CWG, 2G scam, UP Food scam in 2010 and the biggest scam of all so far, the “CoalGate” with the loss of whopping Rs. 1, 86,000 crore while food scam is said to be closer to a mark of Rs. 200,000 crore! When we focus on the CoalGate scam, the 1.86 lakh crore being a very big number, CAG does not take into account the losses on account of blocks given away free to government companies and the transaction of handing over a coal block was between two arms of the government. The ministry of coal and a government-owned public sector company (like NTPC). when such transactions have happened, revenue earned from such transactions has been recognised. A very good example is when the government forces the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) of India to buy shares of public sector companies to meet its disinvestment target. One arm of the government (LIC) is buying shares of another arm of the government (for example, ONGC). And the money received by the government is recognised as revenue in the annual financial statement. So when revenues for transactions between two arms of the government are recognised, so should losses. Hence, the entire idea of the CAG not taking losses on account of coal blocks given to public sector companies does not make sense. If they had recognised these losses as well, losses would have been greater than Rs 1.86 lakh crore. If this is all true, what was that Union finance minister P. Chidambaram said about zero losses? He wanted us to believe that almost all companies which have been given free coal blocks have not started to mine coal till date. Hence, there are no losses. This is like saying that I gave away my house for free, but since the person I gave it away to is not able to sell it, hence I did not face any losses. Well, This underscores yet again how totally corrupt, self-seeking, unscrupulous & completely useless our present politicians really are. Another kick, slap and blow to the Government. Coal Mines were allotted to select players without any transparency. Government has no place to hide and nowhere to run with opposition expected to raise the stakes and asking the Government to quit. One thing is certain P.M. is in dire straits and Ms Sonia.. Well, for the time being everything has been dialled down low.

 The second biggest scam we encountered was the 2G Scam involving the process of allocating unified access service licenses. At the heart of this Rs.1.76-lakh crore worth of scam is the former Telecom minister A Raja – who according to the CAG, has evaded norms at every level as he carried out the dubious 2G license awards in 2008 at a throw-away price which were pegged at 2001 prices. This was unearthed in 2010. In any case, unlike in the 2G scam where there were clear transactions between corporate and corrupt politicians, it is not clear that a direct link can be shown in the coal case. In the case of discretionary 2G allocation at less than market prices, at least some of the benefits were passed to the final consumers in the form of more competition and lower call charges. But that was not the case with unused coal blocks, which did not increase availability, or lower the price of coal or power or steel.

In Another feather in the cap of Indian scandal list is Common wealth games loot. Yes, literally a loot! Even before the long awaited sporting bonanza could see the day of light, the grand event was soaked in the allegations of corruption. It is estimated that out of Rs. 70000 crore spent on the Games, only half the said amount was spent on Indian sportspersons. The Central Vigilance Commission, involved in probing the alleged corruption in various Commonwealth Games-related projects, has found discrepancies in tenders – like payment to non-existent parties, will-full delays in execution of contracts, over-inflated price and bungling in purchase of equipment through tendering – and misappropriation of funds. In every scam so far, 2G, CWG, Adarsh etc, the cases are losing the initial sensation and the public is slowly being prepared to see that the cases are closed with some minor officials or some small fry taking the blame and the real criminals escaping with all their false dignity intact to rule us once again as we keep voting for the same people. We deserve such rulers.

Well, now talking about the earlier scams, where listing down seems as simple as doing a catwalk (though I realize even doing a catwalk is not so easy).  Most of us are used to the amounts in thousands of crores, be it in company business figures or mergers and acquisitions or new project costs. Now the scams have graduated to lakhs of crores. But most of us cannot visualize one lakh eighty six thousand crores. The Telgi scam we encountered, had all the suspense and drama that the scandal needed to be busted, the scam that clearly had a lot of support from Government departments where Mr. Abdul Karim Telgi who mastered the art of forgery by printing fake stamp papers that penetrated to 12 states estimated at a whooping Rs. 20,000 crores+. The scam of satyam computer services, being the biggest scam of corporate history to the tune of 14000 crore, that shattered the peace and tranquillity of Indian investors and shareholder community beyond repair. The hallmark of Indian corruption, the Bofors scandal that had a strong emotional because it was scam related to defense services and Indian’s security interests. The fodder scam in 1996, popularly named as “Chara Ghotala” in vernacular language Rs.900 crore, an unholy nexus was traced involved in fabrication of “vast herds of fictitious livestock” for which fodder, medicine and animal husbandry equipment was supposedly procured. The Hawala scandal to the tune of $18 million bribery in 1996, for the first time in Indian Politics gave a feeling of open loot all around the public, involving all the major political players (Including Lal Krishna Advani who was then the leader of opposition) being accused of having accepted bribes through Hawala brokers. The two additions to the list of scandals are IPL Scam, the embezzlement with respect to bidding for various franchisees and the Harshad Mehta & Ketan Parekh Stock market scam that has affected many people where there is no way to forget the unfortunate Rs. 4000 crore, Harshad Mehta scam and over Rs. 1000 crore Ketan Parekh scam which eroded the shareholders wealth in form of big market jolt.  There were/are many other scams that have continuously drained India’s revenues and keep majority of its population unemployed and devoid of basic necessities

The list of scandals in India is just not ending and becoming grave by every decade. Just the other day I read, Rediff has announced India is No. 1 Shop lifters in the world. India tops with annual 2.6 billion USD worth of shop lifting. Though this is irrelevant to the topic of the article, I just thought to say that it’s in our genes that we loot where ever possible irrespective of status of the person. If they are politicians / businessmen, they do it big. Even normal people do the looting if possible. Looking at the way some of these scams have been coming out, it really seems that the rogues are no more interested in smaller fishes. They want shark-sized baits and make life time earnings from their unscrupulous acts. Corruption is an inseparable part of India, I feel sad to write but we are living in a society where govt knows how to extract money from commoners & leave no stone unturned to dupe them. I call it a double standard: while even a small time thief is looked down upon by the society, the looters in the garb of netas and babus are only glorified by the same society. Our netas and babus know this only too well and are pretty comfortable that despite all the screaming headlines of this scams and mega-scams, their shelf life is only till the next mega-mega scams break out and they happen in maddening regularity. And then we say there is no progress in India. Poverty is not going away; there is a huge unemployment, brain drain and so on.

 Why? A big chunk of public money has been vanishing into the thin air. Well, that is not a big deal isn’t it?  We are Dildaar Indians. Big deal is all these scammers are still alive, enjoying their empires. And the sufferer is an honest man, a school teacher or a farmer, who won’t be ever able to buy a car or dream. We are all living just to hear about another scam after another. To the best of my knowledge, its an absolute 0. New scams are unearthed everyday and we forget the old scams. Be it Bofors or Kargil coffin scam, it all just goes on and on for eternity. At first, it takes years together to displace these miscreants from the system through the judicial process. Once they are proved guilty, the Indian laws are not good enough to grind such culprits completely out of the system. Sad but truth!

 We have the best engineers, doctors, teaching institutes, largest man power, and money. We have everything that is needed to make our country a powerful developed nation , then why still one-third of population is uncivilized, why every second Indian is saying “ki is desh ka kuch nahi ho sakta”, “ye desh gadhdhe mein ja raha hai”. Why the best minds of country are going abroad and working for other nations (NASA 36% Indians, IBM 29% Indians, 14% doctors in USA are Indians and many more). Government makes many policies but no one is bothered whether they are implemented at grass root level perfectly or not. Why every next day we encounter bomb blast, every morning we hear about a new scam? Why? Everything because of the Corruption we face every day.

 Overall, scams and corruption of any sort can be detrimental to the country’s progress. Scams are sophisticated and not intuitive or easy for a lay man to understand. There is a large amount of money involved to create a situation where there is constant effort by smart/shrewd businessmen with the assistance of crooked politicians and bureaucrats to rig the system and get and a big chunk of public money. It has crippled the Indian economy, growth and progress of the nation. As a result of these scams, money is illegally amassed by a few restricting the equal distribution of wealth, hence depriving the common man of the benefits he should get. This money can be used for education, providing potable drinking water in remote villages, health/child care and also address other important issues. India still awaits a fair system and a strong Government to tackle the scamsters.

 Anyway let’s hope that this thing will change. The start of the corruption dismantling process has begun and with the courts and the media breathing down the government’s neck, corruption has to scale down or become more sophisticated. We need a recipe for the system change. India needs a new national awakening & an immediate alliance of the good against the evil, resulting in a brand new, 100 % untainted & credible anti-corruption party ASAP. We need a thorough metamorphosis & complete makeover to bid goodbye to the murky past & welcome a glorious future. Only an entirely new breed of good, honest, enlightened, modern, progressive & dynamic politicians & party totally committed to the nation & equipped with an adequate agenda & action-plan can give our aspirations & endeavours an entirely new & different direction, dimension, quality, content & impetus & also firmly lead us into the 21st century. The new leaders must change our politics from the present supremely silly, primitive, anachronistic, completely hollow & hero-based to a serious, modern, ideology, objective, value, principle & agenda-based one, as we see in all welfare nations. . A holistic & scientific national agenda for progress & welfare based on the superb Swedish model must be worked out & made our sole guiding star. From all according to ability & to all according to necessity ought to be made our new national motto. By rewriting the primitive & outdated Indian Constitution, 100% accountability & transparency must be ensured & power decentralized. All our corrupted & destroyed systems, including the 4 pillars of our democracy, must be saved, cured & put in foolproof working condition. Besides, all main problems must be identified & solved thoroughly & systematically. We must thereby also engineer a polarization between the good & the evil & annihilate the latter. It must undo meticulously all the harm done to India & Indians by the completely useless politicians from 1947 to 2012. It must jetstart & turboboost by jailing all the corrupt & retrieving the trillions they've stashed away at home & abroad & invest it instantly in poverty & illiteracy-elimination, welfare & infrastructure including  IT in general & clean water & electricity to all 24x7 in particular & thus give a new hope to the hopeless citizens. Our totally derailed India must thus be put on tracks once again. We must thus reclaim & remake our India & via all necessary system-changes, transform her into the richest, most powerful & best welfare state & also give a new fair deal to each & every Indian.

So, can we live a scam-free life in India for a while now?

                                                                                                            Manasa Rao