The following article was written for MyInd Makers. Pasting it here for reference.
After the Union budget 2019, we came to know that this year the Defence budget allocations have been the highest ever – a whopping 3 lakh crores. Alleged economists went on a tailspin. They claimed that as percentage of the GDP, this means nothing! They claimed that this percentage has pretty much remained the same over the years. And the government came back with a very powerful answer for this “allegation”.
Rajiv Gandhi has famously said that if he releases 1 rupee, only 15 paise goes into the hands of the beneficiary. Therefore, all the allocated budget in earlier governments did not necessarily go into the hands of the benefactors! We had lost count on the number of scams that plagued the defence department, with even offices as high as the Chief of Airforce and even the Prime Minister of India getting embroiled in them! Hence, it is not the %age of GDP that actually mattered, but what mattered is the actual amount spent meaningfully and sincerely.
Over the past 5 years, a whopping 3 lakh crore worth contracts have been awarded to equip our armed forces with equipment ranging from basics such as bullet proof jackets to most advanced fighter aircrafts. Not a whiff of corruption anywhere. And this transformational change has not been limited to the Defense department alone!
Neem Coated Urea
Do you remember those long lines farmers used to form outside Fertilizer shops? Do you remember those news items showing agitated farmers protesting the lack of Urea? Do you know why there was a Urea shortage? Because Urea was being pilfered. It was being illegally diverted to Industries so that they can contaminate products, that include milk powder given to babies! What then was the solution? To neem coat this Urea. Then it can only be used as a fertilizer. UPA allowed for only 35% of Neem Coating. Where the remaining 65% went, you can take an educated guess. There has been no respite to the farmer, because he still had to queue up outside the shop. What did Modi do? Made is mandatory that 100% Urea should be neem coated! What is the result? Do you even remotely recollect any news of Urea shortage? Modi himself has mentioned this so many times – CMs used to write to him regularly when he became PM, regarding Urea shortage. Now, no one writes to him about it. If this doesn’t amount to action on corruption, then what does?
The death of the “broker”
Remember that demeaning term – “broker”? Remember the number of times we might have heard that the “middlemen” and “brokers” eat off everything, and the actual beneficiaries don’t get anything? Enter the implementation of the meticulous and robust Direct Benefit Transfer program. First, Jan Dhan accounts have been opened for nearly 34 crore individuals. And then their Aadhar has been linked to these accounts. And then, all subsidies and payments are directly passed on to the beneficiaries themselves!
What does a simple thing like linking Aadhar to DBT achieve? It achieves the elimination of a whopping ~3 crore fake ration cards in the country. It achieves the elimination of a whopping 5 crore ghost accounts. It achieves the elimination of a whopping fake 1.5 crore LPG accounts. It achieved a whopping savings of INR 90,000 crores till March 2018. Ninety Thousand Crore rupees saved for the country! If this doesn’t amount to action on corruption, then what does?
The eviction of the VIPs
There was a time when we used to question why the politicians get allotted so many bungalows. Guess what Modi did – a whopping 1500 powerful occupants of Lutyens bungalows have been evicted, if they didn’t move out. 1500 of them! This includes many former ministers, MPs etc. No wonder they are all ganging up against him! If this doesn’t amount to action on corruption, then what does?
No more greasing the hands of the interviewer.
Remember those days when we heard about having to grease the hands of interviewers for government jobs? In one stroke, Prime Minister Modi has cancelled all interviews for selections to Class 3 officers and below. All selections will be through a merit-based exam that will have no scope of corruption. Have you ever met people who yearn for such jobs but are forced to shell out money? And it is then these people that go on to become corrupt, justifying their action saying they must “earn back” what they paid? If this doesn’t amount to action on corruption, then what does?
All this is fine. What about the big looters? What about the BIG fish?
Friends, recently the former Finance Minister of India, P. Chidambaram, got his millionth extension from the court to prevent his arrest. Imagine a former Finance Minister of India going around the courts seeking anticipatory bail. His son has been arrested and is frequenting the courts too. Imagine the President of the Congress party and his family being out on bail. Our justice systems do not allow for immediate incarcerations. Imagine what kind of actions the CBI was taking if opposition leaders like Chandrababu and Mamta Banerjee ban the CBI from entering the state! There is this detailed twitter thread that speaks of actions on the “big” fish right from 2015 onwards.
The former Coal Secretary of India was arrested in the Coal Scam. He reports directly to the then Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh. What scam can get bigger than this? The pragmatic and transparent coal auctions have fetched nearly INR 3,35,000 crores to various state governments in India.
Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi are under arrest and will be bought back one day. Nearly 10 serious economic offenders have been brought back to the country.
Then there is this whole phone banking mess that the UPA has left behind. Fans of movies would want authorities to swoop into the houses of all bank managers and defaulters and arrest them all! But we live in the real world! The most pragmatic thing is to follow the twin approach of recovering the money and also punishing the big offenders. Public sector banks have recovered nearly INR 2,30,000 crores worth of NPAs till December 2018. Two lakh crores money came back into our banking system. If these steps don’t amount to action on corruption, then what do?
You may get back to me asking are these enough?
Of course we would want a world where there is no corruption. We would definitely want our government offices to get to a place where a citizen can walk in with the supreme confidence that his/her work will get done without ever having to grease anyone’s hands. Modi is doing many right things in that direction. Prime Minister Modi needs all the support he can, to curb this menace of corruption.
0 comments:
Post a Comment