Its the corruption, stupid!

I have maintained all through that corruption and practically no accountability of the government officials nad bureaucrats is the root cause of all our problems. You name the problem and its root cause is corruption and unaccountability of government officials.

People also think that we are a poor country but that is not true. Madhu Koda is estimated to have made Rs. 20,000 crores in 2/3 years time. Balaji Bullion has Rs. 650 crores in cash in one bank. I had also read that they had deposited crores of money in cash in a Mumbai bank and nobody asked any questions. Now if Madhu Koda has made this money, believe you me, the bureaucrats and the babus processing the mining applications would have also made a bundle. Now this is just one minister with one department in one small state (supposedly underdeveloped state). Multiply this by the number of states, number of ministers, number of departments, number of bureaucrats and babus and the numbers would be mindboggling. Add the issue of telecom licences by Minister Raja and you talking of Rs. 35,000 crores of citizen’s money gone down the tube.

Lets look at another example. Just today, Municipal Corporation of Delhi admitted that it was paying nearly Rs. 204 crores annually to bogus employees. There were no employees but still salary was being paid. Now who do you think was getting the money? Or where was the money going?

The worst part is that even after the taxpayers and the citizens of this country have lost so much money, still nothing works. Nobody in the government wants to work. I remember when Bansi was the chief minister in Haryana. Even though, people said that he was a corrupt man but one should give him credit for the work he had done. Everything used to work. The roads were the best in Haryana. The guest houses and tourism hotels he built were run and maintained well. I don’t think any government after Bansi Lal was even able to maintain the infrastructure that he built. Today, citizens of this country are dealt with a double whammy. They are not only losing money but also not getting any benefit.

To top this, I can assure you that nobody will be held accountable. Now, if one were to think logically, one would say that it would be very easy to fix responsibility. Everybody who signed papers with respect to the employment of these fake guys in MCD as well as those who signed papers for making the payment to them should be held accountable. But I can assure you that everybody or most of them will get away. Their assets should be seized. It is very difficult to hide so much of money. Clear evidence will be available but the question is “Who will bell the cat?” because everyone in the chain would be involved. You may call me a skeptic but I have my doubts if Madhu Koda will be prosecuted to the fullest extent.

Finally, isn’t it amazing that Madhu Koda was doing what he was doing in grand scale and nobody got wind of it. Contracts worth Rs. 160,000 crores signed in a short time and 48 mining licenses approved in one hour but nobody was intelligent enough to raise a flag. This thing should have been stopped immediately. We can’t get a reply from the government on any issue for years but Koda does what he does and nobody is any wiser.

Do you think people didn’t know what Raja Saheb was doing? Even after the Unitech sold its shares and made a killing, nobody in the government took any action. The licenses could have been put on hold. Approval for sale could have been withheld. But nothing happened. Nothing will.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh talks about global leadership. Can we achieve it on a sustainable basis? I doubt it. I believe global leadership would be automatic once we remove corruption. With corruption out of the way, we will have enough funds to build proper infrastructure. Once infrastructure is there, global leadership will follow automatically.

I hope you will agree with me that its all about corruption and government accountability.

Avinash