A Scam-Diseased India: On Corruption

By Hariharan Ramakrishnan:

India is one among the countries in the world having large mass of people under poverty line. One out of every three people happens to be one under the poverty line. Despite the fact that India needs to concentrate on the socio-economic and health development of its people, the government is being ludicrous in spending large amounts of money for just the ‘lucrative’ purposes. Even the money allocated for developing facilities for poor people is swallowed by government officials. The recent stories of scam-ridden government prove it well, be it the 2G Scam, Antrix-Devas Multimedia controversy, Commonwealth games 2010, or the Coal mine scam.

The sorry state of the people in India is due to the temptations of the politicians, bureaucrats and corporates in the country. To start with the 2G scam, it was reported that the loss made by this scam was Rs.176, 645 crore. Former minister A. Raja had been charged with several acts like cheating, criminal act and misuse of power. It’s reported that he received a sum of Rs.300 crore for favouring some ineligible telecom companies by providing license for subscription of 2G services. He had provided licenses to those companies at the cost at which the services were sold at its nascent stages in 2001. He also deliberately preponed the date for submission of applications for license to avoid other companies and to help submit only those companies which he favoured.

Antrix Multimedia, the commercial arm of ISRO had allocated services of 70 MHz S-band transponders to Devas Multimedia in a deal for 20 years which could be renewed after the deal ends. Any discrepancy during service life had to be recovered without additional payment according to the deal. The problem was that it was sold at a cost of Rs.1000 crore which led to the loss of Rs. 2 lakh crore according to the report by Comptroller and Auditor General. This means that the money of people had been used to favour private firms.

The corruption had been at its pinnacle during Commonwealth Games 2010. It was taken for granted that the money of the people is common for every politician and government officials to rob. Complaints from delegations of participating countries about the facilities in the stadium in spite of spending large amount of money and exploiting labourers for just Rs.120-Rs.130 for 8 hours of work in the construction site of the stadium. Rs.150 was paid as the maximum wages for 4 hours of overtime work. Corrupt officials left their stamp on everything, from paper roll to treadmills. Paper-rolls of cost $2 were projected to $80 each, soap dispensers from $2 to $60; mirrors form $98 to $220. A member of the organizing committee had used the money allocated to construct a synthetic tennis court for his son. It is clearly evident that the money of the common man is being used for personal luxury and expensive lives of politicians, who are very much dismissive of the condition of the poor man.

Economists went deep into research to find the basic and least amount of income needed by a person and came up with a figure of Rs.29 for daily survival. The citizen’s condition is much more dismal than that. With the rising inflation and the subsequent sky-rocketing costs every essential product, just like petrol was hiked to unbelievable rate in just a day, it’s the People of India who are victimised.

The current situation shows that politicians hold their positions to make their lives richer at the cost of the common man. Maybe India need not be a super power, but it needs to be good country which houses its 110 crore people with respect and quality life.

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