This is an abridged version of the Article already published on www.taxguru.in
This article is dedicated to all those die hard honest public servants and professionals who have stood by their morale and were never lured by money or buckled under pressure from their political bosses even at the risk of their being transferred to punishment posting, denial of promotion and even framing them in false cases.
Compiled By: CA Lalit Munoyat (B.Com. (Hons.), CS, FCA, DISA) [email protected]
In 1922, the noted freedom fighter Mr. C. Rajgopalachari wrote in his prison diary that “elections and corruption, injustice and the power and tyranny of wealth and inefficiency of administration will make hell of life as soon as freedom is given to us. The only thing gained from independence will be that as a race, we will be saved from dishonor and subordination”.(Courtesy Professor Dr. Prem Lal Joshi )
1) WHAT IS CORRUPTION? Legally corruption is defined as use of public power for private advantage in ways which transgresses some formal rule or law. It takes various forms like
Bribe for work according to rule | Bribe to work against the rule | Trading in influence |
Patronage | Nepotism | Cronyism |
Electoral fraud | Embezzlement | Kickback |
An unholy political alliance | Involvement in organized crime | |
1) CAUSES OF CORRUPTION
Indiscriminate use of Discretionary powers without accountability and transparency | Lot of futile and redundant bureaucratic and administrative procedures. |
State sponsored religious differences for vote bank politics | Collusion between executive, judiciary and legislature |
Absorption of criminals in the political system which illegal businesses, scams, false harassment cases etc | Sale of political poll tickets and exploitation of illiterate masses |
State sponsored scams with deliberate loopholes installed in the system by policy makers | Forced unification of diverse cultures, castes , regions and religions into single nation through suppression and coercion. |
2) CONSEQUENCES & COST OF CORRUPTION
Political corruption is a major obstacle to democracy and the rule of law. | Economic corruption leads to the depletion of national wealth thereby deterring investment |
Social Corruption results in Frustration and general apathy among a disillusioned public which result in a weak civil society. | Environmental Corruption Developed countries exporting its polluting industry to the underdeveloped and developing countries. Careless exploitation of natural resources has led to ravaged natural environments. |
3) CORRUPTION thus, gives birth to a new system of governance with ample opportunities for individuals and groups to seize and hold political power resulting in a dangerous emergence of a “nexus between corrupt politicians and public servants and unlawful elements in society”.
CORRUPTION- INDIA SPECIFIC
SOME INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT CORRUPTION IN INDIA
An officer in India is considered “HONEST” if he takes the bribe and does the job. Conversely, a “DISHONEST” officer is one who takes the bribe and still doesn’t deliver! | Corruption is A LOW-RISK, HIGH-PROFIT ACTIVITY“. | |||||||||
Today the popular phrase is ‘THICK AS THIEVES’ NOT ‘THICK AS HONEST PEOPLE’. | The UNCORRUPT are odd links in India today, people laugh at them | |||||||||
POLICE ranks second in corruption below the politician. POLICE means:
Partners Of Legally Identified Criminal Enterprise. No offence meant |
WORDS FROM SWISS BANK DIRECTORS :
Indians are poor but India is not a poor country. Rs. 280 lac crore of Indian money is deposited in Swiss banks which can be used for “tax less “budget for 30 years. It can give 60 crore jobs to all Indians. 4 Lane roads from any village to Delhi. Forever free power supply to more than 500 social projects. Every citizen can get monthly Rs. 2000/- for 60 years. No need of world bank loan and IMF loan |
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Once an underworld Don from south (Wardha) stated that it was very easy for a criminal to operate in India provided he knows 3 things:
1) Whom to Bribe 2) When to Bribe and 3) How much to bribe |
India is at the 87th spot in Transparency International’s latest ranking of nations based on the level of corruption as reflected by Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) which is even below Ghana and Rwanda. . Thus it may well be said that in India POWER CORRUPTS; ABSOLUTE POWER CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY. | |||||||||
About 20% of public servants exercise their Powers, control and regulate the remaining 80% of the population. Of the 20% about 90 percent public servants are, class III and class IV employees. Thus just 2% Power is concentrated in the hands of public servants who regulate and control the fate of 80% of the population. For these Bureaucrats the priority of interest as under:
1) SELF IS FIRST, 2) PARTY IS SECOND, 3) CADRE IS THIRD, 4) NATION IS FOURTH, and 5) PEOPLE the last. |
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The Supreme Court castigated the Central Vigilance Commissioner (CVC) Mr. P. J. Thomas as not being a person of integrity and lacs the tenability of Chief Vigilance Commissioner supervising the CBI’s investigations into the 2G spectrum scandal as he himself was Telecom Secretary at the relevant point of time. Well just to remind, the CVC is also an accused in a case filed in 1991 involving irregular import of 2.8 crore palmolein. What a pity? The Moral police himself is immoral. | Indians have “topped the list of BLACK MONEY DEPOSITORS at the (in)famous Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS)” and it vary from $500 billion ( R 25 lakh crores) to $1.4 trillion ( R 70 lakh crores)”. The math of the loot may be disputed, but the fact of the loot cannot be,” L.K. Advani | |||||||||
India’s underground economy is closely tied to illicit financial outflows. THE TOTAL PRESENT VALUE OF INDIA’S ILLICIT ASSETS HELD ABROAD ($462 BILLION) ACCOUNTS FOR APPROXIMATELY 72 PERCENT OF INDIA’S UNDERGROUND ECONOMY. This means that almost three-quarters of the illicit assets comprising India’s underground economy—which has been estimated to account for 50 percent of India’s GDP (approximately $640 billion at the end of 2008)—ends up outside of the country. (Mr. Dev Kar, formerly a Senior Economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and now a Lead Economist at Global Financial Integrity (GFI) at the Center for International Policy) | ||||||||||
India is not a democratic but it may well be termed as KLEPTOCACY which literally means “RULE BY THIEVES” | India is a ‘SUPERPOWER’ in corruption. Ask any officer with vested discretionary power the question: Answer in YES Or NO
HAVE YOU STOPPED TAKING BRIBE ? {YES} {NO} |
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All the regional political parties take to unethical means for extending their support for formation of the government. A Raja Telecom ministry is the result of such coalition government. Can you imagine in a democratic country like India the single largest party may have no say in the formation of government while ONE MAN PARTY HEADED BY MR. MADHU KODA becomes the chief minister of Jharkhand State. No price for guesses, he is behind bar for a scam of about Rs. 8000 crore. | ||||||||||
The Telecom Minister A RAJA VIRTUALLY ROBBED THE NATION OF RS. 176 LAKH CRORES in the allotment of license and the spectrum for additional cellular operators (2G operators) by ignoring the multi-stage bidding process followed with auctioning for the license fee. The ministry went out of its way to facilitate the immediate selling of these licenses for speculative gains without any lock-in measures which led to windfall profits for the new licensees.
Mr. A. Raja also dragged the PMO by stating that he has sought guidance and permission from the Prime Minister at every stage. On the top of it Mr. Raja’s calmly states that he has actually served the country by eliminating monopolies, lowering tariffs, and raising growth of cellular usage.. The scandal swept up as high as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who had to explain to the Supreme Court why he sat on a request for permission to charge Raja with corruption. Moreover in a rare move, the Supreme Court reprimanded Manmohan Singh for failing to probe ex-telecoms minister Andimuthu Raja over allegations he had sold licences too cheaply. |
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The total spending for the 2009 Lok Sabha elections is pegged at a whopping Rs. 10,000 crore. The breakup of this spending throws up some interesting insights too.
Rs 1,300 crore (Rs 13 billion) by the Election Commission Rs 700 crore (Rs 7 billion) by the Centre and state governments Rs 8,000 crore (Rs 80 billion) were spent by political parties and individual candidates. |
INDUSTRIAL CORRUPTION : The CBDT has asked a committee to probe taped commercial transactions of corporate lobbyist Niira Radia and Tata Realty and Infrastructure Ltd (TRIL), a Tata group firm, and real estate firm Unitech, in 2007, among others. The government is investigating if Unitech used the money to pay for the telecom licence it was awarded in early 2008. Unitech paid the Department of Telecom 1,651 crore in January, 2008, for the 2G licence. It did not have any experience in the telecom sector and was a real estate firm then. In October, 2008, Unitech formed Uninor, a joint venture with Norwegian teleco Telenor. It paid 6,200 crore for new shares in Uninor. | |||||||||
PARLIAMENTARY SHAME The MPS asked for a whopping 400% in their pay packets including perks and cited the recommendation of Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC). The average pay packet including , accommodation, travel, medical facilities and water charges works out to be worth more than Rs 44 lakh annually. After the hikes our MPs will cost the country 68 times more than what an average Indian earns annually. The very same people who are egoistic to the core, time and again PREVENTED THE PASSING OF WOMEN’S RESERVATION BILL in the parliament. The same government now vehemently opposing the demand of JPC to probe spectrum allotment.
It may be recalled that when the PENSION SCHEME for Members of Parliament was proposed in the days of Morarji Desai, when he was the Prime Minister of India, he simply rejected the idea saying that in India only rich people alone could think of becoming a member of parliament .As such there was no justification for granting pension to a Member of Parliament |
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JUDICIAL CORRUPTION : SATYA MEV JAYTE: JUDGES TELLING LIE: MUST READ
The Economic Times’ Political Bureau reported that SUPREME Court judge HL Gokhale has contradicted former Chief Justice KG Balakrishnan’s claim that he was unaware of the name of the minister who tried to influence a Madras High Court judge regarding A Raja case. Justice Gokhale said that in his letter to then Chief Justice of India Balakrishnan Justice Reghupathi clearly mentioned the minister was A Raja. Justice Gokhale, now a judge of the Supreme Court, contradicted Balakrishnan’s claim: “I may point out that Justice Reghupathi’s letter was already with him and in the second paragraph thereof Justice Reghupathi had specifically mentioned the name of Raja. WHO IS TELLING LIE : 1) FORMER CHIEF JUSTICE KG BALAKRISHNAN OR 2) JUSTICE GOKHALE We perhaps need 2 senior supreme court LIARS , sorry, Lawyers to argue the matter. But then what is the guarantee that the episode will not meet the fate of infamous case of the 1999 BMW hit-and-run case Advocate Anand, a former Rajya Sabha member, and Public Prosecutor I.U. Khan, had been caught on camera in a sting operation conducted by NDTV, in the 1999 BMW hit-and-run case, when they were trying to convince chief witness to withdraw his statement. The Delhi High Court had, in August 2008, declared both the lawyers as guilty of contempt of court and had imposed a 4-month ban from practicing. However, the Supreme Court issued a show cause notice to Anand seeking an explanation as to why he must not face a more severe punishment, including jail. REPORTS INDICATE THAT THE FORMER SENIOR ADVOCATE TENDERED AN UNCONDITIONAL APOLOGY VIDE AN AFFIDAVIT, STATING THAT HE FACES “GREAT HUMILIATION AND LOSS OF REPUTATION WHICH IS WORSE THAN DEATH”. When prosecution & defense lawyer together team up along with corrupt police / public servants and manipulate evidences / records , the court is helpless and will acquit the accused for lack of evidences even though the presiding judge is of impeccable integrity , honesty , he is help less. Add to this , if the presiding judge happens to be corrupt & teams up with the criminal nexus , the result is devastating , the rich criminal will get away & the innocent will suffer punishment in some cases even death sentence.( Source Bar & Bench News Network Mar 10, 2010 and comments thereon) Further the Supreme Court passed strictures stating that “something is rotten in Allahabad high court ” which is country’s largest HC, stressing that the judges there passed “shocking orders” and behaved “in a totally unacceptable manner”. MUST READ |
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Once there was a fight between the inmates of Haven (Swarg) & Hell (Narak) in the sky and the inmates of Swarg threatened the other to take the matter to the court of the Almighty. The inmates of Narak smiled wickedly and said “ WHERE YOU WILL GET THE LAWYERS FROM TO FIGHT THE CASE FOR YOU ?. (Only in a lighter vein: No offence meant) | ||||||||||
COMMON WEALTH GAMES : The Congress-party led coalition government came under fierce criticism for mismanagement and ineptitude over the sporting extravaganza which cost up to $6 billion.
A Treadmill was hired for a 45 days for Rs. 9,75,000/-. A comfort chair hired at Rs 8,378 apiece. A 100-litre Refrigerator was hired for Rs 42,202 each OPEN LOOT OF TAXPAYERS’ MONEY |
LOAN BRIBERY CASE
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) arrested eight people, accusing them of bribery for corporate loans. While the size of the scandal is not yet known, local media have reported it could run into HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS. The bribes were allegedly paid by private finance firm Money Matters Financial Services , which acted as a “mediator and facilitator” for the loan beneficiaries, the CBI said. |
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AADRASH HOUSING SOCIETY CASE
Local media say APARTMENTS WITH A VALUE OF $1.8 MILLION WERE SOLD FOR AS LITTLE AS $130,000 each in the apartment block, which faces the Arabian Sea in one of the world’s most expensive stretches of real estate in Mumbai
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SATYAM COMPUTER CASE
The founder of Satyam Computer Services , one of India’s top software firms, resigned in January 2009 after admitting profits were falsely inflated for years. THE FRAUD, ESTIMATED AT $1 BILLION, was India’s largest corporate scandal and was dubbed “India’s Enron”. With clients abandoning it, shares were hammered down to near-penny-stock levels. |
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INDIAN TYPOLOGY OF CORRUPTION- REDEFINED | ||||||||||
1.CHAI-PANI
Lowest Level |
2.DIWALI GIFT
Clerical Level |
3.BRIBE
Officer Level |
4.SCAM
Bureaucratic Level |
4.LOOT
Regional Political Level l |
6.ROBBERY
Central Ministry Level |
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7.MORTGAGE | ||||||||||
MORTGAGE- Yes if given their way, a bunch of immoral politicians may not hesitate in mortgaging the entire nation for their personal gain. Going back to East India Company | ||||||||||
GOD’S HELPLESSNESS: Perturbed by annual CPI rankings, many prime ministers and presidents of corrupt countries approached God for help in eliminating corruption. God’s response was that it might not happen in their lifetime. It was a shock to them and all of them wept bitterly on God’s shoulder. Indian prime minister also sought God’s help and advice so that he could also eliminate corruption from India. The response of God was “NOT IN MY LIFE TIME” and God commenced shedding tears on his shoulders. | ||||||||||
WARNING The spread of extremist violence (mainly naxals), increasing tendency of common people to take laws into their own hands are some of the examples we will face in near future with higher intensity and with bigger impact on everyone in the country. If we don’t take Gandhiji’s civil disobedience approach to make this happen, then there is a high possibility that our children will take the “guns and bullets” approach to stop repeat of East India Company. | ||||||||||
SOME OF THE MAJOR SCAM/LOOT IN INDIA | ||||||||||
Nagarwala Scandal | Sukhna Land Scandal | 2G Spectrum Scam. | Cash For Votes Scandal | |||||||
Oil for Food Programme Scam. | Common Wealth Games(CWG) Corruption | Satyam Software Services Scam. | Bofors Scam | |||||||
Animal Fodder Scam. | Telgi Stamp Papers Scam | St Kitts Forgery. | Ketan Parek Stock Market Scam | |||||||
K C Bhansali Scam. | Harshad Mehta Stock Market Scam | Adarsh Housing Society by Military and Politicians | Sugar Import Scam. | |||||||
Medical Council of India(MCI) Scam. | The Great IPO scam | US 64 of UTI scam | HDW submarine Scam | |||||||
WESTLAND helicopter scam | Kuo oil deal scam | Cement scam | IRAQ oil scam | |||||||
Note of dissent: How many of us can actually claim with all honesty that we have never given a bribe? To be honest, I cannot make this claim myself. So I too am corrupt even if I only paid in order to protect the interests of clients. I simply make a promise not to repeat it off and on. But don’t know how long will I be able to keep it.
Compiled by:
CA LALIT MUNOYAT
B.Com.(Hons.), CS, FCA, DISA
98201 93508