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© 2012 Sanjeev Sabhlok's revolutionary blog
I've had direct evidence of WADS OF CASH in suitcases carried by the team of Rajiv Gandhi to Assam in 1985 (Rajesh Pilot was a key member of that team), and of DIRECT CORRUPTION by Hiteswar Saikia CM of Assam on many occasions including one in which he directly asked me in the cabinet room to select a particular cement supplier.
And DIRECT evidence of corruption by Jayalalitha and Mumbai BJP. And of course hundreds of other cases widely known – both within my IAS colleagues and elsewhere through public contacts.
And yet, when I claim that MMS is TOTALLY CORRUPT, that Sonia Gandhi is totally corrupt, and that the ENTIRE set of MPs in India is TOTALLY CORRUPT, some "intellectuals" take offence, demanding proof.
I ONLY BELIEVE IN MYSELF. My standards of proof are EXTREMELY HIGH. No hearsay for me. My eyes are proof. My ears are proof. My judgement is proof. I have said the truth all along.
And of course even Arvind Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi have said the same thing. And they are right on this.
But if you are still not convinced and need HARD CASH as proof (as if there isn't enough evidence of that floating around), here's one more proof: EC cancels Jharkhand RS polls after Rs 2.15 cr seized.
seizure of Rs 2.15 crore cash by Income-Tax authorities from a vehicle reportedly owned by the brother of one of the Independent candidates barely hours before polls.
What more proof is needed?
It is well understood and widely documented that the electoral system is DEN OF CORRUPTION. India's electoral system is totally anti-people.
The reality is obvious except to those who have bound their eyes with THICK WADS OF WOOL.
I would like us to fight for state funding of elections so that honest people have AT LEAST SOME CHANCE of contesting elections.
Retired Vice Admiral Admiral Barry Bharathan, a prominent member of the Freedom Team of India has written this excellent write-up which I thought deserves wide dissemination.
WHEN THE RIVER DRINKS UP ITS WATERS
You are incredulous at first. You then scramble for buying up bottled water like the many who can afford it. You don’t want to know as to why the river drinks up the water. You look at someone who starts digging up a bore well with awe and admiration. You think that this will solve your problems. You simply do not want to hear or read anything about the water table.
God Bless Shri Anna Hazare. The debate is not about him or the movement that is being supported by many former bureaucrats, cops, lawyers, and other reputed leaders. The real issue is our readiness to discuss, study, enquire, inquire, debate on something that is below and beneath acceptable norms of administrative and civic conduct. It is akin to describing some woman as being a little pregnant. Human venality has no real answers. At best, it can be controlled. This is the mythical and historical truth from the time Homo sapiens came into being.
All the clamour is our Nation’s admittance of helplessness. The common man is excited and naively feels that there would be rapid reformation. The government heaves a sigh of relief that it has an escape route in the form of the “LOK PAL”. Everyone is only too familiar that the survival angst of Indians invariably calls for short term temporary placebo solutions. We need pragmatic, acceptable quality rules of business that truly addresses the aspect of effective governance.
The concept of the LOK PAL appears laudable but is actually unworkable. Our venerated constitution so wonderfully written has certain basic contradictions. An example is article 39 which directs the state to secure many essentials for the livelihood of its people. Yet article 37 prevents the state from being taken to court if it fails to do so. Article 311 seeks to provide job security to government employees. Yet it has unwittingly made the “government servant” a “People Master. Productivity and performance statistics clearly show abysmal depths of administration. We seem to want to catch the tiger by its tail! We have a political party agnostic government system that remains unchanged over the last six decades. Opacity, diffused accountability, compartmentalized working is the norm since independence. Rules of business, regulations, encourage below the table adjustments. People are conditioned to be supplicant when it comes to dealing with essentialities of documentation for their very existence!
The logic of the LOK PAL to oversee the functioning of the government, review the past misdoings, without any constitutional authority seems perplexing. Assuming that even this is done, how can anyone regulate, implement a system that is not designed for transparent rules of business. The lack of a viable management information system, the absence of any corporate management and the embedded DNA of a welfare state all render Governance sub optimal. Consequently corruption has been integral to our way of life.
The LOK PAL charter simply needs to be optimized by focusing on Governance and rules of business. What affects the day to day to life of the common human? Can we make the rules and regulations people friendly. Can we create internet information highways? Can we improve supply chain management in our towns and villages.
The Politico-Legal-Bureaucratic-Military combine must seek to get its basics right. Corruption can be stripped by transparent, accountable practices. Let us give our people a sense of belonging, believing and being Indians.
Most refreshing is the way people came together in a peaceful manner. This is the promise of India. Let us quench the thirst of the river.
JAI HIND
I'm pleased at the positive outcome re: LokPal Bill. However, it is very important to keep things in perspective and to note three VERY IMPORTANT things:
A) As Shantanu Bhagwat of FTI has noted, the battle has been won but the WAR is not over. However, I suggest that Shantanu, in his eternal politeness and consideration for the venerable Anna Hazare, has grossly exaggerated the nature of gains made by the LP Bill. In my view, the war has not even begun. This is a cosmetic and essentially irrelevant “reform” at this primitive stage of governance systems in India. The war would need to reform a host of areas:
- electoral
- economic and social policy
- among many, many others.
If the package of reforms is 100, then LP bill is not even 0.5 out of 100.
B) Second, we know that the biggest "fish" in terms of corruption in India is the Congress party, and the heads of the party, the Sonia and Rahul Gandhi combine, are the MOST corrupt people of India. Most corruption in India is at least indirectly controlled by them. True, most of this money is not used by them for personal "aiyashi" but for contesting elections, but such is the nature of corruption that no good cause can justify it.
Let this be VERY CLEAR, and written in stone. The Jan Lokpal will NEVER be able to catch the biggest fish. That is because they will always transfer funds outside India and use underhand means at every stage. There will be an even greater outflow of corrupt money outside India – beginning NOW!
True, Baba Ramdev and his maniacal followers plan to shed the blood of thousands, but even that won't stop corruption. No, my dear Baba, your intentions are good, but you simply don't understand.
C) Finally, let this be very clear as well: Neither Sonia nor Rahul nor anyone else among the politicians in India is BORN corrupt, or otherwise criminally minded. It is the system that FORCES them to do such things. That is why I'm AGAINST witch-hunts and chasing after individuals, because when 99% of the politicians and 90% of the bureaucrats (and police, media, judiciary, etc.) are corrupt, what's the point in catching one or two people? What difference can it possibly make to the life of the common man?
Yes, LP can have an effect if the system reduces corruption to the minimal, say, to 5% of the total politicians and bureaucrats. Then, LP will have an effect. At the moment, it will merely kill a lot of small fish, and the big fish will escape [and I mean KILL, given the language being used by Ramdev's supporters].
Let us become mature enough (and capable enough) of understanding the true drivers of our system. That is not a trivial task. Let us be clear that our SYSTEM makes Indians corrupt. Indians don't have corrupt DNA.
I regret that none of the leaders of the current mass movement display ANY understanding of the causes of corruption and misgovernance in India. That task of leading India to its great future that lies ahead will have to be shouldered by FTI. Of that there is no doubt.
While Equality (socialism) and corruption are lifelong buddies and room-mates, Freedom (capitalism) and corruption are arch enemies. A free India can’t condone even the tiniest bit of corruption. We must become the least corrupt country in the world if we want to be called free. The following four actions will help to eliminate political corruption and also dramatically improve India’s governance:
- Raise the wages of MPs and MLAs at least by a factor of ten while simultaneously getting rid of all of their ‘perks’. Let us pay the Prime Minister of this great nation at least what a middle level business executive of a very large multi-national firm gets, say Rs. 1 crore per year, and MPs Rs.20-30 lakhs each. As it is unpopular for politicians to raise their own salaries, we can help them by setting up an independent commission that would determine their wages. There is also atendency among politicians to add to their perks if their wages are kept low by public pressure – this is a significant problem for India. In India some MPs also allegedly sell some of their perks, such as their free air tickets. That is surely criminal. Perks are also expensive to administer. Let us therefore get rid of all perks once salaries are raised, and only reimburse actual expenses incurred on the job, for instance, eligible travel expenses. Let openness and transparency on such basic matters prevail in India; a free society can’t expect anything less than that.
- We must fund our elections differently – through state funding. The purpose of the wages of MPs or MLAs is not to cover the expenses incurred during elections, but to pay them competitively for their responsibilities. Even if wages are hiked, we will still need to find a way to make the electoral expenses manageable. We can do so by state funding of elections. A simple and effective method that will pay Rs 25 or thereabouts, at current values, for each valid vote cast in favour of a candidate is outlined in Box 3. A system similar to this operates successfully in Australia, where about $2.10 (about Rs 66) is paid at present by the government for each valid vote polled by a candidate.[i]
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- Third, we need to abolish election expense limits while simultaneously building extremely strong audit systems for monitoring the contributions received and expenditures made during elections.
- Finally, a wider set of reforms of the electoral system will be needed, such as making public the property returns of our candidatesin the interest of greater transparency. These and other such reforms are touched upon in Chapter 6.
A One Rupee Freedom Movement
The level of corruption in a society essentially depends on two factors: the opportunity available for corruption and incentive for corruption.
- While I haven’t discussed the issue of opportunity in this chapter, our socialist regime – which empowers our governments to interfere virtually in each activity of ours – has clearly provided a wide range of opportunities for corruption in India to a wide range of political representatives and bureaucrats.
- On the second of these factors, this chapter confirms that Indian politicians have a great incentive to be corrupt.
This is also an apt place to inform the world that not all Indians are moral pygmies. We do continue to have a large number of honest people that the world never gets to see or hear of, because the combination of our socialism and shoddy electoral system prevents anyone but the corrupt from rising to the top. Our system also breaks the back of the honest; completely demoralizes them. The world will, of course, ask us: ‘You’ve had 60 years of independence, so why can’t you get your own house in order?’ To which we must ask the world to be patient, for we have only recently started recognizing the causes of our problems. And we have hardly started our journey on the path to freedom. Our citizens are very sleepy headed and not yet awake either.
We, the sleeping citizens of India, must wake up and take responsibility for allowing these major flaws to develop in our democratic system of governance. We are also responsible for letting the weeds of socialist corruption overwhelm the fledgling tree of democracy and freedom in India. To scare the wits out of our corrupt representatives and to make them start paying attention, let us begin by going to our district officers today, and, for only one rupee each, get our own copy of a recent set of electoral accounts. Then, let us study these accounts and raise the issues we discover in our local press, and write to the Election Commission. That will be a very effective way to start a real freedom moment for India. We can call it the one rupee freedom movement.
[Note: There is a Facebook Group for the One Rupee Freedom Movement]
This is an extract from my book, Breaking Free of Nehru.
[ii] It is assumed as before that Mr Harishchandra expects to poll one vote more than 1/6th of the votes polled, and therefore will not forfeit the security deposit.
NOTE: 13 March 2011. I first came across a link to this Wikipedia entry (see below) on Rahul Gandhi a few days ago on my Facebook page, and when I found time to re-read the Wikipedia entry yesterday it still existed, so I assumed that Wiki editors had checked it.
I did not therefore check the references in detail; particularly given my understanding that the de facto head of Congress controls such kinds of money. One cannot possibly check everything, particularly after having formed a general view over the years that Wikipedia is broadly as reliable as the Britannica.
Bhagwad Jal has investigated this in detail, however, and, upon making a determination, removed the entry from Wikipedia. I'm not sure if that was the wisest course to do, but so be it. This is a citizens' database and let Wiki and its editors work out how they deal with such entries. (Please read his comments below – as well as my comments after that.)
In this case I am clearly guilty of having been misled by a bad source (Wikipedia). I do hope Wikipedia will do a better job in the future, lest its credibility be shot to pieces, at least with me. At the minimum, I'm now going to have to check all references carefully before "believing" what is written on Wiki.
But I personally continue to believe that this claim of significant foreign assets is broadly correct and would like to lower this personal challenge from a precise figure (which was not really the substantive issue) to Rahul Gandhi's disclosing his (and his family's) black money assets clearly held in India and abroad.
That the Congress is a mafia organisation with deep connections to the underworld, rolling in black money, is my firm personal judgement. The current corruption scandals rocking India are merely the tip of the iceberg of corruption that is endemic within the Indian political system. It is simply not possible to enter 'real politics' in India without such significant control over black money. So let Rahul Gandhi prove he doesn't control HUGE amounts of black money.
And so I've now removed the figure of $14 billion from the title of this blog post but continue the personal challenge, as before. I'm SICK AND TIRED of the corrupt leaders of India. Let them be challenged and interrogated.
Under no circumstance can Rahul Gandhi (and his family) escape accountability just because a particular figure cited was erroneous. Let him publish the detailed accounts of electoral expenditure by the Congress party, prove that he has no foreign accounts, prove that he does not control black money. That is impossible. He is fully involved. The size of his involvement is irrelevant. Whether $2.5 million (too low) or $10 billion (more plausible) is irrelevant.
Addendum 17 June 2011 (click for bigger image)
ARCHIVE – THIS IS WHAT I PUBLISHED YESTERDAY. JUST FOR THE RECORD.
Nothing that is inaccurate lasts for very long on Wikipedia. Its aggressive editors expunge it out at once. However, they clearly believe that sufficient evidence exists to suggest that Rahul Gandhi's hidden wealth is in the range of $14 billion ($9.41 to 18.66 billion).
To me the figure is highly believable, given my DEEP AND PERSONAL understanding of how the Congress party works. It is also not a ridiculous figure of the sort that some people have earlier floated around in the India media.
I PERSONALLY CHALLENGE Rahul Gandhi to disprove this figure by publicly disclosing his Swiss bank account details.
At the minimum I challenge him – IF HE HAS THE GUTS – to sue Wikipedia for the devastating damage it is doing to his reputation across the world.
He can pay off The Times of India (which called him an honest man!), but not Wikipedia.
To be doubly sure that Rahul Gandhi doesn't actually pay off even Wikipedia to erase this entry, I've copied this image today, 12 March 2011 for the public record. (Image below)
This entry in Wikipedia also explains, given the huge power of the blogsphere in spreading such BASIC truths, why Rahul Gandhi is likely to be personally behind the proposed Indian law to control Indian bloggers. Shame, Sonia and Rahul (and EVERYONE who has supported them, including MMS, and India's IT billionnaires).
When will India start believing the truth? When will we throw out these corrupt socialists? Please join or support the Freedom Team of India if you want India to not only do 10 times better economically, but to become an exemplar of ethical goverance.
Click for bigger image.
Click for bigger image.
ADDENDUM 13 MARCH 2011
Just to check where I'd seen this Wiki entry first, I searched my FB page and found that I'd seen it first on 9 March 2011 (Thursday). See image below (click for larger size). It was therefore posted at least on 9 March (if not earlier) and Wiki editors had sufficient time to check the credibility of the sources. The Wiki entry states clearly that these people have been cited as billionaires by "various other [non-Forbes] credible sources".
Addendum
http://www.facebook.com/notes/salil-shukla/rahul-gandhi-exposed-by-an-iit-student/10150193649286555
TOI news (19 February) about a major public interest case by Somnath Bharti, FTI member.
(Somnath Bharti's law firm web link. Somnath's blog)
NEW DELHI: A trial court on Friday directed the CBI, anti-corruption branch of Delhi Police and police officials of Parliament Street to report on the action taken by them on 18 specific complaints of corruption in Commonwealth Games (CWG) made by several "eminent citizens" of the country last year.
Admitting the petition filed by former IPS officer Kiran Bedi, RTI activist Arvind Kejriwal and Swami Agnivesh, Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Amit Bansal asked the various investigating agencies to submit a detailed report on their action taken so far by March 9, 2011.
In the petition filed before the court, the petitioners sought direction from the court to "direct the police officials concerned to lodge the FIRs and investigate the matter". The petitioners alleged that despite providing evidence of corruption in the 18 specific complaints in connection with the CWG, the government agencies registered only four FIRs so far.
Arguing before the court, petitioner's counsel Somnath Bharti said, "The petitioners have pursued with these agencies repeatedly but received no response." On November 14, last year many citizens including Swami Ramdev, Kiran Bedi, Anna Hazare, Swami Agnivesh, Archbishop Vincent M Concessao, Justice DS Tewatia and Arvind Kejriwal, among others, marched to the Parliament Street police station to file 18 complaints, meticulously drafted citing the offences, their analysis, associated evidences and details of the possible charges to be slapped against the erring officials.
Bharti further stated that the complainants, who were enabled and mandated by the law, filed all the 18 complaints with the Parliament Street police station as well as with the anti-corruption branch of Delhi Police and the CBI.
"Each of the 18 complaints discloses the commission of many cognizable offences of Indian Penal Code, 1860 and Prevention of Corruption Act but till date there has been no action, whatsoever, by the police or other authorities. Lack of action by the police on the reported crimes will go a long way in discouraging Indian citizens from taking pain to bring to the knowledge of the police such commission of criminal offences," the petition stated.
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