BLACK MONEY, BJP AND ECONOMIC REFORMS It required harsh comments from a visibly upset bench of the Supreme Court for the government to hand over the information it has received from foreign countries, particulars that would presumably help identify money illegally held abroad and aid in bringing its Indian-resident holders to book. “Why are you trying to keep a protective umbrella for these people?” the bench of Chief Justice H L Dattu and Justices Ranjana P Desai and Madan B Lokur asked, and asserted that “unless we monitor the probe, nothing is going to come of it”. Why is the Bharatiya Janata Party-led union government proving as reluctant as the earlier Congress Party-led government in recovering the money illegally held abroad and booking its resident Indian holders? The Bharatiya Janata Party had emitted a lot of hot air about the huge amounts of “black money” of Indian origin that are stashed in Swiss banks and even made tall promises that when it came to power it would take prompt action to bring the moolah back The size of India’s black economy has advanced dramatically since the 1990s, according to one estimate, from 40% of the country’s official gross domestic product in 1995-96 to 50% of the same in 2005-06.If we choose to limit our investigation to only what is immediately apparent, namely, the footprints that some of the “crooks” – Jethmalani called even those who were aiding the cover-up by that name – (perhaps) deliberately leave behind (i e, deposits in Swiss bank accounts as one such ruse), then we will never get to the truth of the matter. In the real world of globalised finance, where investment portfolios for the major centres are combined, where the markets (stock, bond, money, real estate, government securities, forex and commodities) tick almost round-the-clock from Tokyo Monday morning to New York Friday 5 pm, via London, Frankfurt, etc, in between (and the digital books are passed at the appropriate times), tracking such practices as “round tripping” – discovering the real footprints – is going to be exceedingly difficult. It would be better to focus on tracing the footprints of the black incomes where they are generated, i e, in India itself.[ excerpts from EPW editorial
Posted on: Fri, 07 Nov 2014 02:54:32 +0000
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