Corrupt India

India is the 83rd corrupt nation in the Global Corruption Index, a survey of 133 nations conducted by Transparency International (an anti-graft watchdog)!  We are alongside Malawi and Romania recording a score of 2.8 out of 10!  Ten means a country with no corruption. Bangladesh is the most corrupt and Finland the least. Since Independence, we have slowly glided into a corrupt land due to the USSR pattern of governance Nehru adopted, creating a big bureaucracy and never ending formalities and laws thereby institutionalizing corruption. Smt. Indira Gandhi, perpetuated it further by empowering government officials, politicians, police and the judiciary. The rich businessmen, political leaders, vested interests and criminals seem to be the ones who give direction to the policies, laws, rules and regulations of this land.  The whole government machinery has become totally rotten. Scam after scam surface in which the politicians have amassed wealth through graft and other illegal ways.  Is the government promoting and spreading corruption?  Look at the result! One out of three people in India, a fabulously rich nation, today live below the poverty line (earning less than $1/2 a day) and almost half of all our children are malnourished, stunted or underweight. The entire wealth is stacked away as black money by the political leaders and hoarders in secret foreign accounts.  

The laws of the land are always for the poor and the weak. The rich and the powerful are above any law. They, with their money power and connections will always find a way to come out clean with a not-guilty verdict. The poor are hooked by the long arms of the law-enforcing agents and the judiciary. Without adequate resources they cannot find a good lawyer to present their case and in many instances the mighty criminals go scot free and the poor get punished!  The poor are, in general misguided, harassed and exploited. There seems to be a syndicate between the judiciary, government officials and the politicians; could it be the reason why the latter always find a way out from innumerable scams and corruption cases they are charged with.  Further, the powerful media is in the hands of the top political family and its allies and therefore they speak their language. The middle class is being influenced by what the so-called media doles out day by day and they come to support the family and their sycophants who funds these media.  There is a big conundrum here: why is the entire media anti Hindu? Are the ruling Congress funded by rich Moslem nations or rich mafia bosses? Or does the Congress want the votes of the (largely poor) minority community en-block? 

Who made India one of the poorest?

India has 1/3 of the world’s extreme poor people. The priority of the Congress governments has been on programs of political expediencies. The large bureaucracy created by the Socialist First Prime Minister eats away about two thirds of the GDP both at the centre and in the states. These government employees, like the political leaders, are corrupt to the core and they swallow whatever little that is earmarked for the poverty alleviation programs.

The growth achieved has been uneven and states like UP, Bihar, MP, Orissa, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh house the poorest of the world. They have the largest and the fastest growing population too. The bureaucracy eats most of the welfare measures which have failed to penetrate the underlying causes. The contours of inequality survive with the fierceness of a dagger. There are 85 million (7%of the total population) tribal adivasis living in regions where (due to extreme poverty levels and non-development) Naxalite movement is strong.

There are conflicting reports of poverty levels in the country. The Tendulkar Committee says 37% live below the poverty line but the Arjun Sengupta Report states that 77% of Indians live on less than Rs.20 a day! N C Saxena Committee states that 50% of Indians live below the poverty line. World Bank estimates the “below-the-poverty-line” households  may total about 100 million (or about 456 million individuals).  Presence of a massive parallel economy in the form of black money stashed in overseas tax havens is the main cause. That is how the wealth of this nation is plundered by the rulers! The leaders  drain the wealth of India.

It is safe to assume that 50% live below the Poverty Line. Nobody expects a person who is totally absorbed in prolonging his existence to know what is going one in an election!  Of these more than 25% cannot even read or write. (Indian illiteracy is more than 25% today- India  has the highest illiterate population in the world). The female literacy is much lower and they do not know what is going on either. They can be easily swung with favors, or by exploiting religious or parochial sentiments. There is no true democracy here.  

The average income in India was not much different from South Korea in 1947, but South Korea became a developed country by 2000s and India remained one of the world’s poorest. ‘The License Raj- a decision of Nehru-(requiring elaborate licenses and regulations) and the accompanying red tape that were required to set up and run business between 1947 and 1990 doomed our fate. He made all aspects of the economy controlled by the state and licenses were given to a select few. Corruption flourished under this system. The labyrinthine bureaucracy often led to absurd restrictions - up to 80 agencies had to be satisfied before a firm could be granted a license to produce something.  With a new mind set Oxford educated economists under Narasimha Rao started adopting free market policies and India advanced industrially. But by far the Congress rulers continue to be the same (interested only in power and wealth to control the Indian media and thereby the middle class.) They know the poor can be swung easily and they (Nehru, Indira, Rajeev, Sonia, and now Rahul) are adept in the game. The cries of the poor under pangs of hunger and pain go unnoticed. They are powerless. And, after all, their death is not that far.