The biggest problems of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, less than two years into its second term, can be summarised in two words: corruption and inflation. How the government handles these two issues during 2011 will to a great extent determine its fate over the next three years. The incumbent regime is lucky that the political opposition on the Right and the Left are in disarray. This is why those in power can get away threatening to conduct a mid-term poll which nobody wants. But those in the Manmohan Singh government would be fooling no one but themselves if they believe they can continue to push their luck by dealing with the issues of corruption and inflation in a desultory manner as has been done so far.
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A group of elderly Gandhians began a "fast unto death" here today to protest against the government's alleged "inaction" to fight corruption.
One analyst calls "black money" or illicit money India's curse. He's not off the mark - I have been hearing of and reading about this scourge ever since I was in junior school. Several decades later, the problem has only worsened. The government reckons there are no reliable estimates of "black money" inside and outside the country - a "study" by the main opposition BJP in 2009 put it at anything between $500bn to $1.4 trillion. A recent conservative estimate by the US-based group Global Financial Integrity Index pegs illicit capital flows between 1948, a year after Independence, and 2008, at $462bn - an amount that is twice India's external debt. India's underground economy today is estimated to account for half of the country's GDP.
India has strongly taken up with the US the issue of Indian students duped by the Tri-Valley University in California being made to wear radio collars for monitoring purposes, urging the American authorities to remove them and treat them fairly and reasonably. Maintaining that the fraud was done by the US university, minister for overseas Indian affairs and civil aviation, Vayalar Ravi said on Saturday “we requested the state department to take a lenient view because all the students are innocent.” He said the university had no registration and it was not the fault of the Indian students.
Remove radio tags on duped students: India tells US
The Indian ruling class faced its severest crisis of credibility in 2010. Its past caught up with it and skeletons and scams were spilling out of its closets. The scams have a symbiotic relationship with the black economy. The number of scams is growing and so is the size of the black economy, which has reached a mind-boggling level of 50 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product, that is, it annually generates Rs.33 lakh crore in black income. While the 1980s saw eight major scams, in the period between 1991 and 1996 there were 26 and during 2005-08, there were around 150.
P Sainath
Ask Hassan Ali Khan what he does and he replies with disarming nonchalance that he is a simple scrap dealer with an annual income of Rs 30 lakh. This "simple scrap dealer" has a Swiss bank account with $8 billion in deposits. This figure has been verified by INDIA TODAY from a letter written by UBS, Zurich, to Khan. The Government of India has confirmed the existence of this account in UBS, and ordered him to pay Rs 50,000 crore in tax on that wealth. Khan hasn't paid a rupee. He clearly could not care less. On January 24, Khan was seen placing bets at the Pune Race Course.
Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi
The Aadhaar based smart card scheme will be launched in Maheshwaram mandal in Ranga Reddy district on January 28, which is said to be the first of its kind in the country.
Government on Thursday found itself on the backfoot in the Supreme Court which asked why action has not been taken against those who have stashed black money in foreign countries and asked it to go after the source of money which may be from arms deals, drug trafficking and smuggling.
photo: Anushka Sharma
‘Bagrumba Dance
Distinguished lawyer Anil Divan who is arguing the case related to black money stashed overseas discusses the legal details of the case and is optimistic that the illicit wealth can be brought back to India.
Jagan Mohan's dramatic rebellion against the Congress, his amazing wealth and the sheer irascibility with which he conducts himself fit in nicely if one places him in his family tree - from an ancestor who converted to Christianity to escape poverty to a grandfather who went on to become a mining baron, and a father who changed the course of Andhra politics.
