Scam Alert

Corruption is not a new phenomenon in India. It is witnessed all over the world in developing as well as developed countries.  It has been prevalent in society since ancient times. Corruption in India has become so common that people now are averse to thinking of public life with it. It has spread its tentacles in every sphere of life, namely business administration, politics, officialdom, and services. In fact, there is hardly any sector which can be characterized for not being infected with the vices of corruption. Corruption is rampant in every segment and every section of society, barring the social status attached to it. Nobody can be considered free from corruption from a high ranking officer to a small clerk. The situation as it stands today is that, corruption is no slur on any individual, it has by now become a way of life, it has been so closely woven into our life patterns that, no one thinks much about it. The position as it stands today is so very pathetic that, it is a wonder who will punish whom for corruption?

Corruption in the Indian society has prevailed from time immemorial in one form or the other. The basic inception of corruption started with our opportunistic leaders who have already done greater damage to our nation. People who work on right principles are unrecognized and considered to be foolish in the modern society. Corruption in India is a result of the connection between bureaucrats, politicians and criminals. Earlier, bribes were paid for getting wrong things done, but now bribe is paid for getting right things done at right time. Further, corruption has become something respectable in India, because respectable people are involved in it. Political corruption is worst in India. It is well established that politicians are extremely corrupt the world over. In fact, people are surprised to find an honest politician. These corrupt politicians go scot-free, unharmed and unpunished. Leaders like Lal Bahadur Shastri or Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel are a rare breed now who had very little bank balance at the time of death. The list of scams and scandals in the country is endless. The Bofors payoff scandal of 1986 involved a total amount of `1750 crore in purchase of guns from a Swedish firm for the Army. The Cement scandal of 1982 involved the Chief Minister of Maharashtra, the Sugar Scandal of 1994 involved a Union Minister of State for food, the Urea Scam and of course no one can forget Hawala Scandal of 1991, the Coffin-gate, fodder scam in Bihar or the Stamp scandal which shocked not only the political arena but the entire society. The major cause of concern is that corruption is weakening the political body and damaging the supreme importance of the law governing the society. Nowadays politics is only for criminals and criminals are meant to be in politics. Elections in many parts of the country have become associated with a host of criminal activities. Threatening voters to vote for a particular candidate or physically prevent voters from going in to the polling booth – especially weaker sections of the society like tribals, dalits and rural woman occurs frequently in several parts of the country. Recently, the Government increased the salary of the M.P.’s from `16, 000 to `50, 000, that is 300% increase to the existing salary. But many of them are unhappy with rise and want the Government to increase the salary to a much more extent. This clearly shows how the politicians are in constant thirst for monetary benefits and not caring about the welfare of the people. Tax evasion is one of the most popular forms of corruption. It is mostly practiced by Government officials and politicians who lead to the accumulation of black money which in turn spoils the moral of the people.

In 2011 India was ranked 95^th out of 178 countries in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index. Some of the largest sources of corruption in India are entitlement programs and social spending schemes enacted by the Indian government. Examples include “Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act” and “National Rural Health Mission”. Other daily sources of corruption include India's trucking industry which is forced to pay billions in bribes annually to numerous regulatory and police stops on its interstate highways. Defense Ministry and Ministry of Communication are regarded as ‘gold mines for making money’. Corruption is also at a high rate in departments like Public Works, Police, Excise and Revenue. Corruption in these departments is rampant at all levels from the highest to the lowest. The registered number of cases of corruption in India under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1947 varied from 300 to 500 between 1981 and 1987 but after the enforcement of 1988 Act, the number now varies between 1800 to 2000 annually.

As of December 2008, 120 of India's 523 parliament members were facing criminal charges. Many of the biggest scandals since 2010 have involved very high levels of government, including Cabinet Ministers and Chief Ministers, such as in the 2G spectrum scam, the 2010 Commonwealth Games scam and the Adarsh Housing Society scam, Coal Mining Scam, mining scandal in Karnataka and cash for vote scam.

Taxes and bribes are common between state borders; Transparency International estimates that truckers pay annually ` 22,200 crores (US$ 4.5 billion) in bribes, to Government regulators and police.

In real state Officials are alleged to steal state property. In cities and villages throughout India, consisting of municipal and other government officials, elected politicians, judicial officers, real estate developers and law enforcement officials, acquire, develop and sell land in illegal ways.

Corruption caused problems in government funded projects are also not limited in the country, aid programs are beset by corruption, bad administration and under-payments. As an example, the report cites only 40% of grain handed out for the poor reaches its intended target. The World Bank study finds that the public distribution programs and social spending contracts have proven to be a waste due to corruption. As an example, India enacted the so-called Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) on August 25, 2005. The Central government outlay for this welfare scheme was ` 40,000 crore (US$7.24 billion) in FY 2010–2011. After 5 years of implementation, in 2011, the programme was widely criticized as no more effective than other poverty reduction programs in India. Despite its best intentions, MGNREGA is beset with controversy about corrupt officials pocketing money on behalf of fake rural employees, poor quality of infrastructure built under this program, and unintended destructive effect on poverty.

A study conducted between 2004 and 2005 found that India’s driver licensing procedure was a hugely distorted bureaucratic process and allows drivers to get licenses despite their low driving ability through promoting the usage of agents. Individuals with high willingness to pay make a significant payment above the official fee and most of these extra payments are made to agents, who act as an intermediary between bureaucrats and applicants. The average license getter paid `1080, approximately 2.5 times the official fee of `450, in order to obtain a license. On average, those who hired agents had a lower driving ability, with agents helping unqualified drivers obtain licenses and bypass the legally required driving examination. Among the surveyed individuals, approximately 60% of the license holders did not take the licensing exam and 54% of those license holders failed an independent driving test. Agents are the channels of inefficient corruption in this bureaucratic driver licensing system, facilitating access to licenses among those who are unqualified to drive. Some of the failures of this licensing system are caused by corrupt bureaucrats who collaborate with agents by creating additional barriers within the system against those who did not hire agents.

In Government Hospitals also, corruption is associated with non availability/duplication of medicines, getting admission, consultations with doctors and availing diagnostic services. “National Rural Health Mission” is another health care-related government program that has been subject to large scale corruption allegations. This social spending and entitlement program hoped to improve health care delivery across rural India. The program has been run since 2005 by the Ministry of Health of the Indian government. The Indian government mandated a spending of ` 27,700 crores in 2004–05, and increased it annually to be about 1% of India's gross domestic product. The National Rural Health Mission program has been clouded by a large-scale corruption scandal in which top government appointed officials were arrested. Corruption, waste and fraud-related losses from this government program have been alleged to be ` 10,000 crores (US$2 billion)

Another most highlighted scam is the black money scam. Black money refers to money that is not fully legitimate property of the owner. A white paper on black money in India by the Government of India suggests two possible sources of black money in India. The first includes activities not permissible under the law, like crime, drug trade, terrorism, and corruption, all of which are illegal in India. The second, more likely source is that the wealth may have been generated through a lawful activity but accumulated by failing to declare income and pay taxes. Some of this black money ends up in illicit financial flows across international borders, such as deposits in tax haven countries. This scam can be said to be the almost immediate cause of the anti-corruption movement being faced by the country. The revelation about the huge sums of money being stashed away in Swiss banks served as an impetus to rally against the government that had been ignoring it. The magnanimity of the situation came into focus when Indian businessman Hasan Ali Khan was arrested on money laundering charges which was to the tune of `39,120 crores.

According to a 2010 The Hindu article, unofficial estimates indicate that Indians had over US$1456 billion in black money stored in Swiss banks (approximately USD 1.4 trillion). While some news reports claimed that data provided by the Swiss Banking Association Report (2006) showed India has more black money than the rest of the world combined, a more recent report quoted the SBA's Head of International Communications as saying that no such official Swiss Banking Association statistics exist. Another report said that Indian-owned Swiss bank account assets are worth 13 times the country’s national debt. These allegations have been denied by Swiss Bankers Association. James Nason of Swiss Bankers Association in an interview about alleged black money from India suggests "The (black money) figures were rapidly picked up in the Indian media and in Indian opposition circles, and circulated as gospel truth. However, this story was a complete fabrication. The Swiss Bankers Association never published such a report. Anyone claiming to have such figures (for India) should be forced to identify their source and explain the methodology used to produce them."

In a separate study, Dev Kar of Global Financial Integrity concludes, "media reports circulating in India that Indian nationals held around US$1.4 trillion in illicit external assets are widely off the mark compared to the estimates found by his study." Kar claims the amounts are significantly smaller, only about 1.5% of India's GDP on average per annum basis, between 1948–2008. This includes corruption, bribery and kickbacks, criminal activities, trade mispricing and efforts to shelter wealth by Indians from India's tax authorities.

According to a third report, published in May 2012, Swiss National Bank estimates that the total amount of deposits in all Swiss banks, at the end of 2010, by citizens of India were CHF 1.95 billion (` 9,295 crore, US$ 2.1 billion). The Swiss Ministry of External Affairs has confirmed these figures upon request for information by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs. This amount is about 700 fold less than the alleged $1.4 trillion in some media reports. The report also provided a comparison of the deposits held by Indians and by citizens of other nations in Swiss banks. Total deposits held by citizens of India constitute only 0.13 per cent of the total bank deposits of citizens of all countries. Further, the share of Indians in the total bank deposits of citizens of all countries in Swiss banks has reduced from 0.29 per cent in 2006 to 0.13 per cent in 2010.

Another burning scam was allocating valuable coal block to hundreds of private miners without auction.  According to the CAG draft report, the government extended undue benefits totaling a `10.67 lakh crore to commercial entities by giving them 155 coal acreages without auction between 2004 and 2009.

This could be the mother of all mining scams. The mining scam in Odisha, which accounts for over 30 percent of India’s iron ore deposits estimated at ` 3 lakh crore, a scale that dwarfs the Bellary mining scam in Karnataka and the Goa mining scam. This scam was plundering at its best with the Naveen Patnaik led government exploiting the state's minerals to the tune of lakhs of crores of rupees. Apparently, the mine owners had been illegally using fake Transit Passes to transport minerals from Odisha to other states. The plundering was a large scale one and involved many high profile people from the government and bureaucracy. Yet, today, the illegal mining continues. According to the State Vigilance charge sheet, the illegal iron ore mining at these three mines (Serajuddin Mines, Rungta Mines and Indrani Patnaik Mines) alone has caused the loss of a staggering ` 2,352 crore to the state exchequer. Each tonne of iron ore fetches the mining company nearly ` 8,000, while the State government gets a measly royalty of ` 78 per tonne.

The 2G scam is one of the latest scams that have hit the country driving it to incur huge losses. And caught at the centre of the embarrassing controversy was the Telecom Minister, A. Raja himself. The scam became bigger with new revelations of the involvement of politicians, bureaucrats, corporate personalities, media persons and lobbyists. The granting of licenses to various companies led to a massive loss to the exchequer. Also, daughter of political tycoon, M. Karunanidhi, M. Kanimozhi was also arrested on charges of being a co-conspirator in the scandal. The much speculated about 2G Spectrum Scam has been one of the most expensive scams in the nation’s record. Former telecom minister Mr. A. Raja was the person who skillfully siphoned ` 1.76-lakh crore by evading the 2G licensing norms. He awarded the 2G accounts at the price rate of 2001 instead of the increased rate in 2008. As a result India lost an unbelievable huge amount of money. In 2011, “Time magazine” listed the scam at number two on their “Top 10 Abuses of Power” list. The present status of this scam is that both A. Raja and M.K. Kanimozhi has been granted bail on 15^th may 2012 and 28 November 2011 and trial is being conducted in Special CBI Court. In this scam A. Raja was in CBI custody for 469 days that is only one year 3 months and M.K. Kanimozhi was in CBI custody for 188 days that is nearly six months.

The Commonwealth Games held in India was even soaked in controversies and corruption to say the least. While the organizing committee drew flak for various allegations like child labour, sex slavery, environmental impact, racism and financial costs, the one that shocked the nation was the humungous amount of funds that had been mishandled by them. The chairman of the organizing committee was, resultantly, arrested on charges of 'criminal conspiracy and cheating. The open scam and loot that took place during the Commonwealth Game is probably one of the most shameful incidents in Indian history. It certainly disgraced the nation in front of other countries and an international audience. According to estimations, ` 70,000 crore was spent on the game of which only half the amount was actually spent for the event. The investigation performed by Central Vigilance Commission revealed that various hefty payments were made in the name of non-existent parties and voluntarily delay was made in the preparation process which collective lead to misuse of the funds. Suresh Kalmadi the face of this scam at present has been bailed out on the surety of ` 5 lakhs by Delhi high court and he still remains a Lok Sabha MP.

The Scorpene submarines scam was another big corruption scandals faced by the country including the navy. In the scandal, secret Navy documents were sold to the makers of the Scorpene submarine. The Indian government had approved the ` 19,000 crore submarine deal with the French company. The purchase of six Scorpene submarines cost the Indian government a lot more than its actual price.

Hawala Scandal is another much talked about incident of politics and corruption in India which came to mass notice in 1996 and it was all about bribery at the national level worth $18 millions. India’s well-known politicians accepted hefty bribes from the hawala brokers. Hawala scam was probably the first scam that gave the public an idea of the loot of national treasure that was being implemented by the top politicians. The scam revolved around the payments that the politicians received from hawala brokers, who basically fund terrorism around the globe. Many prominent politicians like LK Advani, Arjun Singh, Yashwant Sinha, Kalpnath Roy, VC Shukla, Madhavrao Scindia, Sharad Yadav, Buta Singh, Natwar Singh and Madan Lal Khurana were indicted in this case, but no action was taken against them due to lack of hardcore evidence.

Various laws have been framed from time to time to prevent or at least reduce corruption. The Prevention of Corruption Act came into force in September 1988. It was an improvisation of the Act of 1947. The scope of the 1988 Act was enlarged and widened to include the term 'public servants'. Thus if an offence against a public servant is proved in the court there will be imprisonment of not less than 6 months upto 5 years and also the person may be fined. The Central Government has set up four departments to check corruption—Administrative Vigilance Division in the Department of Personnel and Training, Central Bureau of Investigation, Domestic Vigilance units in Ministries / Departments / Public Undertaking or Nationalized Banks and Central Vigilance Commission.

Laws and rules have to be implemented with strictness and if needed, the outdated ones should be amended in order to check the acts of corruption. Vigilance should be increased so that people think twice before indulging in corrupt practices. Election expenses should be strictly curtailed and finally, without the co-operation of the common man, the evil of corruption cannot be eradicated.