[HumJanenge] Fight against curroption

M. Rangarajan

(retired Group General Manager, ONGC)

B 2 – 301, SRIRAM SPANDHANA,

Chellaghatta village,

Bangalore – 560037.

Phone: 25227955, 42027955, mobile 9945091581

e-mail: rangajan@yahoo.com / rangajan@gmail.com

dated 9th November 2010.

 

FIGHT AGAINST CURRUPTION AND ERADICATION OF CURRUPTION.

 

Everybody in India wants to fight against curruption and wants to eradicate curruption and make India a curruption free society in the world. Good luck to everybody!! The big question is "How are we going to do it?"

 

There are lager number of agencies to control and eradicate curruption in India like, CVC, CBI, Anti Curruption Bueraus of State Governments, Lokayukta, etc etc. Each one of them is a Toothless Body. They just don't have any powers of prosecute. They have to get permission form the Government and authorities that be, which never comes. Justice Santosh Hegde, Karnataka Lokayukta who has exposed hundreds of currupt people, has openly admitted that he has not been able to prosecute even a single person in his tenure!!

 

May be you  can expose currupt people through RTI - then what? nothing happens and he/she will continue merrily amasing more wealth!!

 

Of course, it is foolish to expect that any Goverment gives these agencies poweres to prosecute - Their pet excuse is that such powers will be misused. Ha! Ha! Government is Politician and there is nothing like an Honest politician, even if there is one, he/she  will be useless and cant do anytahing.

 

Today's centre page article "sub verse"  in The Times of India is good reading!! (reproduced below)

Money for everyone

      The problem is not too much corruption;

                  it's not enough corruption

 

          Prasenjit Chowdhury

That some Indians are so ostentatiously rich while others are not calls for   a social revolution - we all must ask or our democratic right to make    more money. So it is absolutely wrong to demonise the likes of the Reddy  brothers, Madhu Koda, Lalit Modi and Suresh Kalmadi. They are actually martyrs to the cause of social egalitarianism who got waylaid on their way to wealth, I hear people quibbling about right and wrong means. Misplaced value, I must say. Moneymaking is the mantra, by fair means or foul.

We are envious of the grand opportunity for moneymaking available to a handful of lucky officials, keeping in mind that the apex court expressed serious concern over rampant corruption in the preparation for a Rs 70,000-crore bonanza called the Commonwealth Games. Given a chance, we would all want to make money My theory is that we are not all embezzlers for the simple reason that most of us are mortally afraid of being caught pants down.

  Much in the same vein, all the hullabaloo about corruption in India stems from jealousy.

Those who cringe at the prospect of India becoming the most corrupt nation on earth, discount the fact that the desire to be rich has gained a new social      momentum in India. With the passage of the licence-permit raj of the old socialist system that spawned an inefficient regulatory regime, cripplingly high compli   ance and transaction costs, a corrupt bureaucratic system and a rent-seeking political system, newer avenues to make money are now available to office-bearers.

Moneymaking needs versatility and hard work. Osama bin Laden was      known to be in the business of raising ostriches in Kenya. Felling timber inTurkey, breeding camels and setting up factories in Sudan, the combined income from which was to the tune of $50 million a year in 2001. Had he not dissipated himself as a terrorist mastermind, he could have given many a Bill Gates a run for their money!

  Prying into the tales of wealth of the big-buck earners is surely an exercise of anguished Voyeurism but i cannot help it. So I crooned over         Forbes magazine's India Rich List* 2010, to learn how partial Lord Mammon is to the Reliance Industries head (and Antilla'-owning) Mukesh Ambani, or to the UK-based steel baron, Lakshmi Mittal, or to Azim Premji of Wipro who, at number 3, increased his net worth to $17.6 billion from $14.9 billion last year.

                 What do they do with that unconscionable amount of money, however well deserved? That, I guess, is a silly question. Only 10 per cent of India's charity funds comes from individuals and corporates and there are many better options than philanthropy. With lots of money, you can buy a villa in a Pacific island, yacht around the world in medieval luxury and have the prettiest of women prancing around you. You can drive a limousine (or a Bugatti Veyron),                             write with a 333 series John Harrison pen, wear a Franck Muller watch, sip Petrus red wine, or simply open a nunnery.

  It has been revealed that over Rs 5 lakh crore of 'tainted' money has been siphoned illegally out of the country in the last eight years and stashed away by Indians in Swiss banks. Why must we baulk at this sheer scale of acquisitive entrepreneurship by saying that such unaccounted money causes great damage to the national economy? Pink Floyd said: "Money, it's a gas/ Grab that cash with both hands / and make a stash".

I have a personal plan to make money I will open up public urinals. I will charge people who must be willing to pay for relieving themselves in a 'holistic' atmosphere. It would be quite a money-spinner in a crowded India.