Anna Hazare in his fight for New India

Join Anna Hazare in his fight for New India









BY Tilak Jha

There’s anger. There’s frustration. There’s unrest. And there’s bitterness against the menace called corruption and its perpetrators.

One visit to Jantar Mantar where 72 year old Anna Hazare is holding an indefinite hunger strike along with members of India Against Corruption (IAC) and you will witness the electrifying feeling of what Tahrir Square or our own 1921, 1942, 1947 or 1975 would have been like. Reports suggest that similar is the temperament among people across the country.

Where we failed?

The greatest failure of rule of law in our country has been the fact that people stopped believing that honesty too can be a way of life. Ask anyone and the reply comes, ‘Imaandaari ka zamaana kahan raha saab’. Honesty and simplicity are considered to be qualities of failure. This, despite the fact that most of us are most of the time honest in most of the things we deal with in our life. But the belief that being fair and honest is not an option for survival is the greatest failure Indian psyche ever have had. This defeatist mentality has put us in a situation where we stopped questioning corruption and rather accepted it as inevitable.


Raise Your Banner.Raise Your Banner. A protester at the Jantar Mantar
First we ignored clerks and then petty officials. Next we tolerated corrupt bureaucrats and then came doctors, teachers and small leaders. Worse, we kept voting for corrupt politicians, or at least didn’t do enough to vote them out. Now, the situation is so terrible that there is not a single institution in this country which can be trusted. The most powerful institutions are full of most corrupt people. The highest judiciary has either not remain untouched. And the overwhelming numbers of corrupt people have made the situation so complex that no one dares to be honest. Right and honest individuals are suppressed, threatened and murdered.

What else anarchy is if not this?

Remember the killing of NHAI whistleblower Satyendra Dubey in 2004 in Gaya. There have been a series of murders after that. The most famous being the killing of IIM-Lucknow alumni and Indian Oil Officer Manjunath Shanmugham who was brutally murdered in 2005 for sealing a corrupt petrol station in UP. This year itself, in yet another brazen act, a day before the Republic Day of our country, Additional District Collector Yashwant Sonawane, 42, a Maharashtra-cadre officer was burnt alive in broad daylight at Manmad in Maharashtra’s Nashik district by the local mafia during raids to uncover the illegal hoarding of kerosene and petrol.


Up Against Corruption. People at the Jantar Mantar.Up Against Corruption. People at the Jantar Mantar.
We have started ignoring the murder of Right to Information (RTI) activist the way we ignore killing of terrorists and insurgents. Right to Information (RTI) activist Satish Shetty — who exposed many land scams in Maharashtra — was killed on January 12 this year. RTI activist Amit Jethwa was murdered near the Gujarat High Court in Ahmedabad in broad day light on June 26 last year. The Hindu reported in July last year that eight RTI activist have been killed in seven month.

The fortunate development

Fortunately, people are taking note of corruption. As Anna Hazare’s fight enters day 3, the movement is growing wider and broader.


Young marcher gathered for the Candle March at India Gate. Candle March will be taken every eveing from India Gate to Jantar Mantar till the government doesn't meet the demand.Young marcher gathered for the Candle March at India Gate. Candle March will be taken every eveing from India Gate to Jantar Mantar till the government doesn't meet the demand.
On Wednesday in New Delhi, students from Jamia Millia Islamia joined the protest. Jawahar Lal Nehru University student have already been around from day 1. Aligarh Muslim University students union will join on Thursday.

Reports of students from IITs and IIMs joining the protest across the country has also made into the headlines. Delhi University students are organizing “DU for Hazare on Thursday in Hindu College”. Equally overwhelming has been the participation from private institutions like Amity.

It’s not a student alone movement. Office goers, house wives, rickshaw pullers and school children are making pilgrimage to Anna’s temple at Jantar Mantar every day.

This is your chance

There have been cases of corruption earlier as well but our generation has mostly witnessed cases about corruption alone. For the last three decades corruption has gone from bad to worse. Favouritism, nepotism, and all sorts of immoral policies and isms have become the toast of our daily life. It’s showing no sign of stopping.


The candle marchers at the Jantar Mantar on Day 3The candle marchers at the Jantar Mantar on Day 3
Our generation has the opportunity to play a decisive role in setting the agenda for the way this country should be run. It’s good that we are finally witnessing a movement where people from all walks of life, including Bollywood, are coming together for a cause beyond religion, region or caste.

Before I conclude

“Ay, fight and you may die, run and you’ll live. At least a while. And dying in your beds many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one chance to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom.”

Recall the eco of the thunderous dialogues above of William Wallace (Mel Gibson) in ‘Braveheart” in front of the Scott warriors and march against corruption wherever you arE.

SOURCE;isikkim

The Economics of Corruption

The Economics of Corruption

Does corruption really do any long-term, structural damage to the economy?

I was barely ten, but the memory is very clear. There was this news headline about how a huge mansion had come up in the middle of Bihar’s poorest district, shortly after someone finished his tenure as Defence Minister. The amount (speculated upon) stuck in my mind: at a time when the only car in town, the HM Ambassador, used to cost Rs 18,000, the mansion was estimated to have cost Rs 20 crore. Today, nobody remains: neither the Minister, nor his trademark white Ambassador and his mansion (I think). Bihar is now a better place, although I don’t know much anymore about that particular district.

Politicians make incompetent investors
Politicians don’t usually make good investors, especially politicians who have misused power to get money. Most people first make money, and then find power. That is why we are mostly talking about moneyed people (mis)using power, like bosses in corporate life. However, in the case of politicians, who get where they are because they are purveyors of power, there is then no controlling their greed, once they start to get their hands on the money.

It takes a long time, and a very sophisticated politician, who has been in power for very long, before he is able to bring his corrupt instincts under control. The rapaciousness of the earlier Congress governments, which reached their nadir under Indira Gandhi (ironically, the flag-bearer of Socialism) has been replaced by the gentler versions of Rajiv’s and now Sonia’s governance-focused governments. Believe me, things will get a lot better under Rahul.

That is why it takes time for a democracy to evolve; it is accompanied by the growth of ‘political brands'. In the US, the Kennedys, the Bushes, the Clintons, etc have dominated US democracy, while in India, we have the Gandhis, the Scindias, the Karunanidhis, etc. Wherever a politician gets entrenched, corruption tends to fall: his thirst for money satiated, he starts to focus on governance. In UP and Tamil Nadu, we have seen this in fast forward. The second tenures of new powers are always lower on the corruption co-efficient, especially if they have lost power once.

Controlling corruption
There are two ways to bring down corruption: one, build checks and balances through evolution, or the growth of independent institutions like the media and the judiciary. This, however, has created its own set of strange bedfellows: with the media getting concentrated in the hands of a few, you have newer versions of corruption like ‘paid news'. Two, as ‘political brands’ start to dominate the scene, they will slowly change focus from money and corruption to governance. It will be a long, slow, almost invisible process, but you will see it happen over a long time. That is why I wish Rahul would get married…

The most hysterical estimates on CWG expenditure put the numbers at $15 billion spent, and about $2 billion stolen. That is about 12 per cent, which is about 10 per cent in the hands of the politician, net after the middleman’s share. As a percentage of GDP, it is about the same as the alleged mansion-in-the-middle-of-a-district-in-Bihar.

What happens to the money?
The point is, where does the money go? And does it really do any significant harm to the economy? Oh yes, these are emotive issues at the personal level, which is why they help sell a lot of newspapers. But does this do any real, long-term, structural harm?

This kind of money has to stay invisible, and that is its biggest priority. So it must be spent as soon as possible: either as consumption, or in real assets, or siphoned off abroad, where it lies, profitless, in some Swiss Bank, reducing the cost of international capital. All possibilities have a salubrious effect on their respective economies, which is why some pretty rich and otherwise sensible countries don’t mind keeping ‘dirty money’ in their banks.

The rather large amount of black money lying in Indian real estate has helped keep leverage low, and arrested bubble collapses. A lot of this money is thanks to corruption. The lower leverage improves the debt quality of mortgage lenders like HDFC, besides reducing the cost of capital indirectly. Rentals are always below the cost of mortgage finance, making it easier for those who cannot afford housing. As the old saying goes, “Fools build houses, and the wise live in them."

Benami real estate ends up in the hands of drivers and personal staff (like the driver of the BJP politician who owns a flat in Adarsh Housing Society). Benami agricultural land, another favourite investment, is used for sugar cultivation in various North Indian states, creating jobs for landless labourers. In any case, benami holdings have a certain attrition rate as the politician gets older, dies or loses power, whichever is earlier. That is the key selling point of Swiss private bankers.

When this kind of money is spent on conspicuous consumption, the economy goes balle balle. India becomes great and shining, and the moolah is spread across the political class: workers, minions, tractor and jeep owners, paid voters, paid crowds, paid media — in short, a Jawaharlal Nehru Scheme that pretty much covers the entire economy.

The 2G scam is not very different. The money made is real, although just a fraction of the revenues lost by the government. The mistake the breathless media is making is in the valuation of the spectrum diverted for personal gain. These values are imputed based on current valuation of spectrum-in-short-supply. If supply were to expand suddenly by the release of extra spectrum into the open market, prices would drop substantially. But the acquisition values of the companies subsequently taken over do indicate accurately the kind of money that got made. This, we are agreed, adds up to $10 billion, five times more than the CWG loot.

Economic impact of corruption
So what economic impact does such corruption have? At one level, it delayed the consolidation of the Indian telecom market, creating competition where there would have been none. It allegedly gave some unfair advantage to RCom perhaps, but it doesn’t seem to have been of much help. RCom will suffer more damage now to its financial credibility just when it goes into the 3G launch, than it could have ever hoped to gain from cornering spectrum, through fair means or foul.

Fragmenting markets and limiting monopoly power is a laudable objective for regulators generally; except in this case, it was being done by artificially supporting weak players, who sought unfair advantage through corrupt means. But really, how is it any different from the artificial support systems devised by previous governments for sick public sector units? Right now, in the same telecom sector, PSU telcos are running losses of an annualised amount, which equals what the 2G scam must have given away to the new private telcos…and this is per year. The economic impact of this, therefore, should be the same as the cost of keeping National Textile Corporation alive every year.

Corruption, therefore, is income like any other. It ranks abreast of government wastage, which is a far bigger number. At worst, it is like an indirect tax on the value of goods and services, reducing demand and economic activity in some parts of the economy. It does, however, show up as savings and consequently, investment (into real estate, primarily), so we don’t really know whether the net economic effect is really negative.

It increases the Gini co-efficient (the indicator of income inequality), which is politically and socially undesirable. Worse, it is linked to power and hence is a payoff for the pursuit of power. If we show greater tolerance to the number of affairs that a film star has, it is simply because it is seen as driven by ‘democratic’ choice rather than ill-gotten gains. But the former is stealing, and the latter is adultery — both rank the same in St. Peter’s diary!

-- Sanjeev Pandiya

WHAT INDIANS WANT TO SEE BY 2022

100% literacy, innovation, world-class infrastructure and sustainable development in a corruption-free society are top priorities for Indians, says the report


[New Delhi, 26 March 2009] CII, Yi, and The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) today announced the launch of India@75: The Peoples' Agenda with an objective to spark a transformation of India by the year 2022. The first step towards transforming India into an economically vital, technologically innovative, socially & ethically vibrant leader was to create an aligned agenda. The 'Peoples' agenda' was commissioned to involve people across the country in a visioning of how India could be at 75 years of independence.

"India@75 is the most tested and supported idea in India today" said Professor CK Prahalad. He also adds that "India@75 is an election manifest. If our politicians want to know what people want, they should look to what India@75 has unearthed." Professor Prahalad is the inspiration behind India@75. At the India@60 celebrations, he posed the idea of looking ahead and engaging the populace of India to envision and act for an India@75. He then helped structure and guide the exercise over the past year.

BCG developed an innovative approach that was structured at the grassroots level of the state level, since each state is unique, at its own stage of development, facing its own unique sets of issues. This included hearing & studying 6,000 voices across many different geographies, different socio-economic classes, different age groups, different occupations, different genders and different religions. Unlike any vision document that has come before, this was written by the people of India and every one of their voices is captured in the document.

Mr. Gopal Srinivasan, Chairman of CII India@75 Mission said "Across the country, people had strong aspirations of what they wanted for India@75. The five aspirations that cut across all geographies and people are:


Education and skills is a top priority for all the people: 100% literacy; 200 million college graduates and 500 million skilled workforce
Efficient infrastructure deployment can change the pace of India's growth dramatically
Development has to be environmentally sustainable � that is non-negotiable
Innovation and 'next practices' are key to progress: We must find new ways to do things
Corruption is seen as a major corroding influence eating away the vitality of India: India can become a moral leader in the world"

"In fact India@75 can show us how we can take advantage of this economic situation. Everyone sees India becoming a global leader, and perhaps this crisis is just an opportunity," said Mr. Chandrajit Bannerjee, Director General of CII.

"India@75 is a rallying cry for the young in our country. We want to create a volunteer corps of young people who will work with institutions across the country at the grassroots level to make the vision a reality," says Rajan Navani, Co-Chair of India@75 Mission.

James Abraham, Senior Partner & Director, BCG said "Crisis will come and go. Only a shared aspiration like India@75 can keep us on track and point to the things that we have to get done no matter what."

India@75 is an initiative which goes beyond the realms of just visioning. It seeks to create a movement where everyone can get involved into realizing the dreams of our country. The report has been structured around the ten broad themes that are Education & Skill Development, Technology & Innovation, Agriculture, Businesses, Infrastructure & Urbanization, Health, Environment, Arts, Sports & Literature, Governance & Public Administration and Moral Leadership.

Sorry, Corruption puts India on 18 places in innovation index

India falls 18 places in innovation index

Curruption the big culprit

New Delhi 6 Jan 2009

India, a country that sees itself as a key player in the knowledge economy, is not as innovative as Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, and the Czech Republic.
That’s the finding of the second edition of the Global Innovation Index, or GII, that was released on Tuesday and which ranks India 41 among 130 countries. The index has been created by Soumitra Dutta, a professor at French business school Insead, in association with industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

The US has been ranked first, Germany second and Sweden third in the index.

India was ranked 23 in last year’s index but the two editions aren’t strictly comparable because only 107 countries were ranked last year. “Rather than India falling, other smaller countries have made significant improvements. We have included more countries this time around and that has affected India’s overall position,” said Dutta, whose index lists “regulatory hurdles, corruption and labour issues” as factors hindering innovation in India.

While indices such as this one are a good measure of how a country compares with others on a specific parameter (in this case, innovativeness), they are unlikely to significantly influence decisions by companies to invest in research and development. In the past few years, several multinational firms have made substantial investments in research centres in India.

This report comes at a time when India has launched several efforts to push the cause of scientific research and innovation. The government is set to table the National Innovation Bill in Parliament in its next session; the Bill makes it easier for private investment to flow into research and develop ment. The government also plans to launch a $183 million World Bank-funded programme to accelerate innovation.

The report puts China at 37, eight places down from last year but four places ahead of India. Last year, China was ranked 29 and India 23. Also last year, global research and advisory firm Economist Intelligence Unit ranked India 58 on its list of innovative countries, one rank above China.

Indian policymakers and scientists frequently compare their research and innovation output with China’s, which in the past two decades has overtaken India on several indices that measure scientific prowess of countries.

Though most innovation indices rank countries on their research and development criteria, such as research spends as a proportion of the gross domestic product, or GDP, number of scientific publications and their patent output, newer parameters such as the ones employed by Dutta include soundness of banks, ease of doing business and the number of Internet users in a coun try.

According to Dutta, innovation is far more broad based and not necessarily confined to laboratories. “Innovation is a horizontal exercise. (US President-elect) Barack Obama’s innovative use of the Internet in the recent elections must also count in the country’s (US) metrics as it has a significant long-term impact,” he added.

For ranking purposes, each factor is categorized as input or output. Input factors reflect how conducive a country is to innovation and output factors to how effectively a country translates innovation into knowledge, competitiveness and wealth.

“These results are averaged and on the basis of that, global ranks are calculated,” Dutta said.

He added that China came ahead of India thanks to “the strength” of its foreign direct investment, or FDI, inflows; the report also lists China’s ease of accessing credit and the “wide variety of its manufacture imports and exports”.

Dutta said all significant inputs for this report were collected in early 2008. “This was before the financial crisis kicked in and I expect significant changes in the top 10 when we prepare the next report.” An expert said he wouldn’t try to read too much into the rankings.

Sujit Bhattacharya, professor at the school of social sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, said: “Innovation is now a very broad term and rankings are extremely relative. It’s more useful to look at the input variables, see how India fares on individual ones, and then implement measures to address them. Giving equal weightage to all variables, and averaging them out doesn’t help much.”

Source: Livemint.com