Hands off the treasures that belong to Lord Vishnu

 

The news has been splashed from Auckland to Alaska. The temples of India contain several billion dollars worth of treasures. The opening of the vaults in the Sri Padnamanabhaswamy temple in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, according to a court order comes at a dangerous time for our polity.

The mainstream media continues to sensationalize the size of the treasure. One of them gushes that “treasures tumble out of the temple” — as though this is illegal money stashed in the Cayman Islands. Let’s be clear: these treasures were donated by the temple’s devotees over centuries, and rightfully belong to Lord Vishnu, who cannot even be fully seen from any angle by devotees. He  is the true owner of this wealth and this truth should be internalized.

It is unfortunate that this discovery should take place in Kerala, where the percentage of idol-worshippers is a minority – if one excluded Muslims, Christians and Marxists from the fold. The mere act of opening up the vaults and tunnels is thus fraught with significant dangers for Hindu society and our ancient civilization.

The present times are most inappropriate to try to list the billions of rupees worth of diamonds and rubies and sapphires owned by our temples. We all know that a significant portion of our politicians have a criminal background and even parts of the judiciary are corrupt. The bureaucracy is compromised by a saga of loot and plunder.

In this context, where government finances are completely out of alignment with revenue realities, the temptation will be to use these invaluable treasures to fulfill the insatiable personal and political greed of our politicians to fund populist schemes like “food security” for all with resources belonging to Lord Vishnu. Already more than 80% of the incomes of major temples is used for “secular” causes rather than for “sacred” purposes.

The opening of the vaults in the Sri Padnamanabhaswamy temple in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, according to a court order comes at a dangerous time for our polity. 

It is not improbable that some jholawala economist will calculate — by dividing his mobile number with the pin code — that more than 70% of the people below poverty line can be lifted out of poverty if only this money is available to the government. The unaccountable civil society group under Sonia Gandhi – also called the National Advisory Council —  might formulate a bill (since they are the law framers in the present dispensation) to open up all vaults from the Amarnath to Ayappa temples and from Somnath to Kamakhya.

There will be half-baked debates about using it for “social justice”. The only people who can have some say on this wealth are those who visit the temple on a daily basis and who can chant, in this case, the Vishnu Sahasranamam. I am not even sure if those who are counting these treasures are eligible to deal with the “sacred” on the orders of the “secular”. One can say that this is the last battle waged by Nehruvian secularists against the ‘sacred” even though, in this particular case, it might appear to be a simple case of counting.

Actually counting, enumerating and documenting are secular ways of dealing with sacred treasures in our temples, since the sacred is never documented but just observed and meditated upon.

Some imported white or brown non-resident Indian expert will suggest a way of leveraging these billions and even propose investing a part of it in our stock markets to propel second generation reforms.

Wall Street bankers, with colorful ties and multiple lies, should be tremendously interested. The wealth seen in temples becomes a target for jehadi terrorists and Wall Street bankers – who are no different except for the kind of killing they go for. The memories of the plunder of Somnath are embedded in the brain cells of every citizen of this country.

Let us be clear. The town and the temple are already marked by global terrorists. The Kerala home minister says he will increase the number of pot-bellied constables to protect the treasures, as if the global jehadis can be handled by them.

Quite clearly, this is the most inappropriate time to be listing the Lord’s wealth. When a street is full of thugs and dacoits, no woman would venture out wearing her jewels and finery. One wonders why the courts have got into this, when they should have been focusing on the Hasan Alis, Rajas and Kalmadis of the world.

It is puzzling why the acharya sabhas or Hindu organisations are silent on this issue. They may not have understood the full import of what is happening.

For the sake of Dharma and for God’s sake, our courts and powers should stop digging for treasures in our temples.

R.Vaidyanathan

Anonymous said...

Dear Sor, if available please put some ragavendra tamil devotional songs

July 9, 2011 6:48 AM

BHASKARAN19 said...

Super well written. Yes we are need to worry in the current dangerous time for our polity. Electronic media has become pain now a days. All sorts rumours floating now in the media saying -similar treasure could be in Thiruvur, Srirangam, Thiruvannamali,etc.etc. which will lead to the corrupt politicans to swindle and run a way with it

July 9, 2011 6:53 AM

Anonymous said...

Dear Sir Sri Vaithinathan Hariharan How many Kings, benevolent rich people might have contributed for a long period, even centuries, to the temples for their love and faith in God. Nobody should make a claim on their riches. It is nothing but robbery. For that matter great saints of Saiva, Vaishnava and Madhva expressed their love and bhakti through their songs and they never wrote them thnking there will be many who will recite them and give meaning to thier liking. It is pure for their joy and their closeness to God made them great composers or writers. Puranas, Naalayiram, Thiruvarutpa, Thiruppugaz are to be seen only in that angle and anyone who happen to read them must keep himself or herself in their position and visualise the omnipotent and omnipresence in the same way they visualised. They did not present their works thinking that there will be people in the 21st Century to read their works, in fact for mundane reading. This we fail to understand. In the same way nobody has any right to make a claim on the rich contributions of those who were so large hearted and were having full bhakti and made ornaments to God to beautify the God as they wished and with tears in eyes enjoyed the fully clad God. The very idea that the ornaments are to be utilised for social purpose is nasty. If you have, you give it and do not try to take away from the contributions of emancipated and pure hearted souls. With warm regards ravi

July 9, 2011 9:05 AM

Varadarajan.R said...

Perumaal southu perumaalukke. these are scary times indeed. people do not realize the enormity of the situation. i also heard talks about looking for gold in TN temples.

July 9, 2011 2:09 PM

Anonymous said...

What about the treasure trove in Swiss banks. The Government and looters are conveniently silent and turning a Nelson,s eye to this subject while they want to lay their hands on the God's wealth. People who know only to take and not to give must shut their .... and keep quite. Earlier rulers and kings gave to the temple and were keeping the praja happy. Now the rulers are plundering the wealth of the nation and surreptetiously depositing elsewhere. And Malayasian Axis proves it.

July 10, 2011 11:46 AM

Anonymous said...

It shows that till date nobody has appropriated that wealth. Now the rulers .... what they want to do?

July 10, 2011 12:18 PM

 Anonymous said...

Strangely I saw some posters in Chennai claiming the wealth to T.N. as it was the property of rulers of earlier Rajas. Strange enough?

August 9, 2011 8:52 PM

Why now is the right time to bring home the black money from tax havens abroad

Thanks to Baba Ramdev, concern about vast quantities of black  money and illegal wealth of Indians stashed in tax havens abroad  has spread far and wide among the public in our country.  Suddenly Switzerland has become a suspect destination and tax  authorities have said they will monitor Indians travelling to that  country and other tax havens. The current rulers claim that they have done more than any  previous regime to deal with the issue of black money and  tax havens. They question the credibility of earlier governments  of V.P. Singh, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and others, and say that  they did not do anything. However, to set the record straight, there has been a sea  change in the international attitudes to the role of tax havens  prior to global financial meltdown of 2008 and after. While  earlier, there was a certain global indulgence towards them  as “innovative” financial centers, they have since 2008 come  under pressure from powerful Western countries such as USA  and Germany to cooperate in the investigation of money  laundering, tax evasion, and recovery of illegal wealth earned  through criminal and corrupt dealings. There is no more a climate  of tolerance towards illegal financial transactions, and due to  pressure from OECD and international agreements such as the  UN Convention Against Corruption, Switzerland and other tax  havens stand ready to share information and cooperate in the  repatriation of illegal wealth; this has already happened in the  case of Philippines, Peru and Nigeria, and only recently Swiss  banks froze the wealth in the accounts of Tunisia’s ousted  president and forty leading figures in his government. Also, we need to remember that whatever action being taken  by the present Government is due to prodding by the Supreme  Court based on a case filed by Ram Jethmalani and other  senior citizens and not out of its own volition. What has happened now? After the twin towers attack on 9/11 in the USA in 2001,  attention turned to the financing of international terrorism.  Around 2006 many countries in the West realized that  terrorists are using the tax havens for funding of arms  smuggling and terror financing. Because of the secrecy  provided by the banking system in these off-shore  jurisdictions, the terrorists were finding it easier to route  their funds through these locations.  Hence the functioning of the tax havens came under the radar  screen of the US and other Western countries. Then came the financial meltdown in US and Europe in the year  2008, from which these countries are yet to fully recover. The  meltdown impacted US after their sub-prime crisis wherein a  significant number of banks and other financial institutions had to  be saved by the Government. Later it spread to Europe with one  country after another facing severe economic crisis. This is  primarily due to lack of savings by households and consumption  in excess of savings. Crisis of such magnitude with significant  unemployment, made these countries look closely at the tax havens  since their rich citizens were evading taxes by stashing funds in  these locations. It is like a severe crisis in a family wherein members  desperately try to find some money under the rice box or inside  some old books! France and Germany were in the forefront of the fight against tax  havens. UK is a reluctant follower since UK has good number of  tax havens under its own protection. USA is also against its citizens  hiding money in these tax havens. Around late 2007 Germany obtained from an informant data stolen  from the LGT Bank of Liechtenstein and got information about  thousands of names having illegal money in that bank. The chief of  German Post had to resign since his name was there in that list.  The German foreign minister announced that he would share the  data with any other country interested. US, UK, Australia, and  many other countries showed interest and collected the data.  India was not interested. After much prodding by the leader  of opposition in Parliament that time namely, L.K. Advani, the  government approached German authorities and has been able  to obtain data on accounts held by Indians. Even after getting it the Government has not shown interest in  releasing the names. Presumably there are nearly 100 Indian  names. Government hides behind the double taxation treaty with  Germany when this data has nothing to do with that treaty since  it is about Indians illegally holding money in a third country bank  namely that of Liechtenstein. Thus, the global situation is conducive now compared to ten or  twenty years ago to deal with these tax havens. The main reasons  are concern about terror financing in USA and Europe and the  economic meltdown in developed economies which have made  these countries decide not to show any forbearance towards illegal  money stashed in these jurisdictions. So the contention that nothing was done by V.P. Singh, or by  P.V. Narasimha Rao or by Vajpayee is not meaningful since  in those days the global situation was not conducive to raise  issues about tax havens. Actually USA and Europe were praising  these tax havens and even calling them “innovative” financial  centers. Post 2008 the entire situation has changed. Hence the present is the most appropriate time to deal with this  issue and India should take a lead in the campaign to close all  these tax havens and create a new global financial architecture  based on transparency and integrity rather than on privacy and  secrecy R. Vaidyanathan is Professor of Finance in IIM-Bangalore

 

Baba, here’s a Dummy’s Guide to black money & tax havens

Baba Ramdev wants it back, or else…. The government claims it is on the trail, but…. Anti-corruption crusader Prashant Bhushan works up a lather over it and even lambasted a former Supreme Court judge recently for upholding a law that enabled businessmen to save taxes by registering themselves with post-office addresses abroad. Business tycoons are mum on the subject.
Yes, we are talking about tax havens abroad, the place where businessmen allegedly stash away their illegal wealth.
But what are tax havens really? Why do postage-stamp countries like Liechtenstien or the Cayman Islands host them? And why do businessmen and politicians keep their slush money there instead of equally unholy – but handy – places back home? Here’s a Dummy’s Guide to tax havens.
What are tax havens?
Tax havens are countries or principalities or near-sovereign territories that allow you to pay little or no tax and also guarantee you secrecy about the funds you hold in their banks. They are called by other names, too, like offshore financial centres, innovative financial centres, etc, depending on your inclination. One man’s innovations are another man’s black money.

More than half of world trade passes, at least on paper, through tax havens. Getty Images

What is black money? How do I know if the money I get from the shopkeeper is black or white?
It’s not the colour. Black money is simply income on which taxes have not been paid. If you pay your builder cash for booking a flat, you are generating black money for him. Every time you buy something without a bill, you may be facilitating black money generation.
How are tax havens defined?
Nicholas Shaxson in his book Treasure Islands suggests that a tax haven is a place “that seeks to attract business by offering politically stable facilities to help people or entities get around the rules, laws and regulations of jurisdictions elsewhere.”
It is similar to the definition offered by Richard Murphy of Tax Justice Network. Shaxon also suggests that more than half of world trade passes, at least on paper, through tax havens. Over half of all banking assets and a third of foreign direct investment by multinationals corporations are routed off shore.
How many tax havens exist currently?
There are presumably more than 70 tax havens in the world. At least 40 countries/territories market themselves aggressively as tax havens
(Source: Internal Revenue Service, USA, on Abusive Offshore Tax Avoidance schemes –Talking Points, January 2008)
The well-known tax havens are Switzerland,  Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Channel Islands, and Cayman Islands, among others.
Who uses these tax havens?
Of course, tax dodgers and other assorted varieties of crooks helped by institutions and entities like banks.
Raymond W Baker, in his pioneering work on tax havens, says: “I have lost count of the number of anonymous entities existing in these jurisdictions. Several years ago, the British Virgin Islands alone reportedly had 180,000 and the Caribbean as a whole had 500,000. More were being formed at a reported rate of nearly 200,000 a year. The total is certainly well over a million by now, and some experts put the number as high as three million. According to various estimates, half of cross-border trade and investment passes through a tax haven or a secrecy jurisdiction at some point along the way”.
(Capitalism’s Achilles Heel: Dirty Money and how to renew the free market system, page 36, John Wiley & Sons Inc, NJ 2005I).
The US Government Accountability Office reported in 2008 that 83 of the USA’s biggest 100 corporations had subsidiaries in tax havens. Tax Justice Network discovered that 99 of Europe’s 100 largest companies used offshore subsidiaries. In each country the largest users by far were banks.
How much money is stored in these havens?
This is a tricky issue since we are talking about unaccounted or black money. There are estimates, but each one comes with an assumption. There are three interesting questions: How much global money is there in all these tax havens? How much Indian money is stashed away illegally here? How much Indian money is, specifically, in Swiss accounts?
First, let us look at the volume of the untaxed black money that is estimated to circulate in and dominate the global financial markets unquestioned and unsupervised. These monies, which have no declared or known owners, are laundered into the official financial markets of the world through the intervention of tax havens, which are countries that levy no tax or levy what is an apology for a tax, so as to attract capital. These tax havens are largely tiny-tots in the global geography and demography but they hold the rest of the world to ransom, as explained in detail later. These are currently called “secretive jurisdictions”.

Now, let us see the latest estimate of the volume of the black money that traverses through the financial system of the world.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimated in 2010 that the balance-sheets of small island financial centres alone added up to $18 trillion — a sum equivalent to about a third of world GDP (Shaxon). The IMF estimates the size of global black money — excluding Switzerland, China, Taiwan and the oil-exporting economies — at US$ $18 trillion. But that’s still an underestimate, says the IMF!
Gian Maria Milesi-Ferretti, an economist for the IMF in Washington, said statistical information on Luxembourg, one of the largest offshore financial centres in Europe, illustrated the extent of the problem. He said: “Luxembourg is one of the few offshore centres that disclose detailed statistics on assets and liabilities held in the financial sector, which makes it invaluable to understand cross-border money flows.” (Just to recollect our school maths, one trillion is 1,000 billion and 100 crore make a billion; GDP is Gross Domestic Product, which is a nation’s income in a year.)
The latest available IMF figures show portfolio assets held by foreigners in Luxembourg to be worth $1.5 trillion at the end of 2008. But looking at statistics provided by the Luxembourg government on portfolio investment liabilities for the country – the mirror image of the asset information held by the IMF – there is a big discrepancy. The investment liabilities in Luxembourg were $2.5 trillion – $1 trillion (€726 billion) more than the assets reported.
Milesi-Ferretti said: “This is a huge difference, almost 40%, and is unlikely to be entirely accounted for by the fact that some countries do not report their portfolio investments or their destination to the fund.”
How much Indian money is kept abroad?
Global Financial Integrity (GFI) — a non-profit research organisation working in the area of tax havens —  has estimated that the present value of illegal financial flows held abroad is nearly $500 billions. Our GDP at the time the report was made was nearly US$ 1,200 billon. This means nearly 40% of our national income is held outside the country. Baba Ramdev and Anna Hazare are on the right track, but whether a fast will get the money back is anyone’s guess.
Here are some numbers in rupees: At Rs 45 to the dollar, the money stashed abroad comes to Rs 22.5 lakh crore (Rs 2,250,000 crore. At the time of the general elections in 2009, experts of the Congress party had disputed the very existence of large volumes of black Indian wealth held abroad.
But there can really be no dispute about the broad size of Indian wealth stashed away abroad. GFI says that more than two-thirds of this amount has been stashed away after the liberalisation of the Indian economy in 1990s. It means that those aspects of liberalisation which facilitated this process must be scrutinised as part of the preventive efforts needed to tackle the accumulation of Indian black wealth abroad on an ongoing basis. (Even Prashant Bhushan has a point).
Now let us look at what kind of black money from elsewhere is lodged in secret Swiss bank accounts. Nearly 1 trillion out of 2.8 trillion Swiss francs (CHR) is black money, says Konrad Hummler, Chairman of the Swiss Private Bankers Association. (See August 2009 Swiss Review, “Atlantic hurricane hits Switzerland in full force”). Julian Assange of WikiLeaks fame has told an Indian TV channel that Indians are the largest investors through Swiss banks. This means out of US$ 1 trillion (the Swiss currency is actually a bit costlier than the US dollar, but we are looking at ballpark figures here). more than half could be owned by Indians. This alone comes to US$ 500 billion. And this is only bank deposits.
Is money kept in instruments other than deposits?
There are other exotic financial products offered by Swiss banks — offshore also — where Indians are invested. Plus there are funds accumulated directly abroad through commissions in defence contracts (remember Bofors?), which is not going out of the country. It just doesn’t come in.
The International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (Money Laundering and Financial Crimes, March 2009, by the US Department of State suggests that 30-40% of the inflows may be sent there by hawala (Couriers take money in rupees, convert it to dollars abroad, and then deliver it where it is needed. They also do the reverse: take dollars abroad, convert it to rupees, and being it back during election time).
During 2007-2008, according that report, formal inflows were US$ 42.6 bn (and so 40 percent of this, $18 bn, could be reflected as illegal “flows” not captured by the law). This sum could be paid for in rupees here but stored in tax havens abroad. These hawala deals are for only one year.
Hence one can conclude that GFI’s estimate of US$ 500 billion is a conservative one and $1.5 trillion could be the outer limit. This means the volume of black money held abroad could be anywhere between Rs 22.5 lakh crore and Rs 67.5 lakh crore at current exchange rates of Rs 45 to the US dollar.)
That’s nothing to sneeze at. We will see in our next instalment how it went and how to bring it back.

R Vaidyanathan is Professor of Finance at IIM, Bangalore

Anonymous said...

money = power. nothing can stand in front of it. no bird will fly over it. the plight of india is self inflicted. politicians come from indian families, homes, schools, elected by indians again and again.as george carlin says "Garbage In Garbage Out"

June 7, 2011 12:41 AM

WHY I AM A HINDU ?

Four years ago, the author of this note  was flying from JFK NY Airport to SFO to attend a meetingat Monterey , CA An American girl was sitting on the right side, near window
seat. It indeed was a long journey - it would take nearly seven hours.
?
I was surprised to see the young girl reading a Bible unusual of young
Americans. After some time she smiled and we had few acquaintances talk.I
told her that I am from India

Then suddenly the girl asked: 'What's your faith?' 'What?' I didn't
understand the question.

'I mean, what's your religion? Are you a Christian? Or a Muslim?'

'No!' I replied, 'I am neither Christian nor Muslim'.
Apparently she appeared shocked to listen to that. 'Then who are you?' 'I am
a Hindu', I said.

She looked at me as if she was seeing a caged animal. She could not
understand what I was talking about.

A common man in Europe or US knows about Christianity and Islam, as they are
the leading religions of the world today. But a Hindu, what?

I explained to her - I am born to a Hindu father and Hindu mother.
Therefore, I am a Hindu by birth.

'Who is your prophet?' she asked.

'We don't have a prophet,' I replied.

'What's your Holy Book?'

'We don't have a single Holy Book, but we have hundreds and thousands of
philosophical and sacred scriptures,' I replied.

'Oh, come on at least tell me who is your God?'

'What do you mean by that?'

'Like we have Jesus and Muslims have Allah - don't you have a God?'

I thought for a moment. Muslims and Christians believe one God (Male God)
who created the world and takes an interest in the humans who inhabit it.
Her mind is conditioned with that kind of belief.

According to her (or anybody who doesn't know about Hinduism), a religion
needs to have one Prophet, one Holy book and one God. The mind is so
conditioned and rigidly narrowed down to such a notion that anything else is
not acceptable. I understood her perception and concept about faith. You
can't compare Hinduism with any of the present leading religions where you
have to believe in one concept of god.

I tried to explain to her: 'You can believe in one god and he can be a
Hindu. You may believe in multiple deities and still you can be a Hindu.
What's more - you may not believe in god at all, still you can be a Hindu.
An atheist can also be a Hindu.'

This sounded very crazy to her. She couldn't imagine a religion so
unorganized, still surviving for thousands of years, even after onslaught
from foreign forces.

'I don't understand but it seems very interesting. Are you religious?'
What can I tell to this American girl?

I said: 'I do not go to temple regularly. I do not make any regular rituals.
I have learned some of the rituals in my younger days. I still enjoy doing
it sometimes..'

'Enjoy? Are you not afraid of God?'

'God is a friend. No- I am not afraid of God. Nobody has made any
compulsions on me to perform these rituals regularly.'
She thought for a while and then asked: 'Have you ever thought of converting
to any other religion?'

'Why should I? Even if I challenge some of the rituals and faith in
Hinduism, nobody can convert me from Hinduism. Because, being a Hindu allows
me to think independently and objectively, without conditioning. I remain as
a Hindu never by force, but choice.' I told her that Hinduism is not a
religion, but a set of beliefs and practices. It is not a religion like
Christianity or Islam because it is not founded by any one person or does
not have an organized controlling body like the Church or the Order, I
added. There is no institution or authority..

'So, you don't believe in God?' she wanted everything in black and white.
'I didn't say that. I do not discard the divine reality. Our scripture, or
Sruthis or Smrithis - Vedas and Upanishads or the Gita - say God might be
there or he might not be there. But we pray to that supreme abstract
authority (Para Brahma) that is the creator of this universe.'

'Why can't you believe in one personal God?'
'We have a concept - abstract - not a personal god. The concept or notion of
a personal God, hiding behind the clouds of secrecy, telling us irrational
stories through few men whom he sends as messengers, demanding us to worship
him or punish us, does not make sense. I don't think that God is as silly as
an autocratic emperor who wants others to respect him or fear him.' I told
her that such notions are just fancies of less educated human imagination
and fallacies, adding that generally ethnic religious practitioners in
Hinduism believe in personal gods. The entry level Hinduism has
over-whelming superstitions too. The philosophical side of Hinduism negates
all superstitions.

'Good that you agree God might exist. You told that you pray. What is your
prayer then?'

'Loka Samastha Sukino Bhavantu. Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti,'

'Funny,' she laughed, 'What does it mean?'

'May all the beings in all the worlds be happy. Om Peace, Peace, Peace.'

'Hmm ..very interesting. I want to learn more about this religion. It is so
democratic, broad-minded and free' she exclaimed.

'The fact is Hinduism is a religion of the individual, for the individual
and by the individual with its roots in the Vedas and the Bhagavad-Gita. It
is all about an individual approaching a personal God in an individual way
according to his temperament and inner evolution - it is as simple as that.'


'How does anybody convert to Hinduism?'

'Nobody can convert you to Hinduism, because it is not a religion, but a set
of beliefs and practices. Everything is acceptable in Hinduism because there
is no single authority or organization either to accept it or to reject it
or to oppose it on behalf of Hinduism.'

I told her - if you look for meaning in life, don't look for it in religions;
don't go from one cult to another or from one guru to the next..

For a real seeker, I told her, the Bible itself gives guidelines when it
says ' Kingdom of God is within you.' I reminded her of Christ's teaching
about the love that we have for each other. That is where you can find the
meaning of life.

Loving each and every creation of the God is absolute and real. 'Isavasyam
idam sarvam' Isam (the God) is present (inhabits) here everywhere - nothing
exists separate from the God, because God is present everywhere.. Respect
every living being and non-living things as God. That's what Hinduism
teaches you.
Hinduism is referred to as Sanathana Dharma, the eternal faith. It is based
on the practice of Dharma, the code of life. The most important aspect of
Hinduism is being truthful to oneself. Hinduism has no monopoly on ideas.- It
is open to all. Hindus believe in one God (not a personal one) expressed in
different forms. For them, God is timeless and formless entity.

Ancestors of today's Hindus believe in eternal truths and cosmic laws and
these truths are opened to anyone who seeks them. But there is a section of
Hindus who are either superstitious or turned fanatic to make this an
organized religion like others. The British coin the word 'Hindu' and
considered it as a religion.

I said: 'Religions have become an MLM (multi-level- marketing) industry that
has been trying to expand the market share by conversion. The biggest
business in today's world is Spirituality. Hinduism is no exception'

I am a Hindu primarily because it professes Non-violence - 'Ahimsa Paramo
Dharma' - Non violence is the highest duty. I am a Hindu because it doesn't
conditions my mind with any faith system.
A man/ woman who change 's his/her birth religion to another religion is a
fake and does not value his/her morals, culture and values in life. Hinduism
was the first religion originated. Be proud of your religion and be proud of
who you are.
Om Namo shiva……………

sent by Ms.Vidya Anantharaman

Anonymous said...

Dear Sir Sri Vaithinathan Hariharan Hinduism is not a religion but the only available source for understanidng the Universal structure. People are not there but the so called people are nothing but the manifestations of the Supreme. In some the manifestation is peaking and in some very lowest ebb. As such there are no births or deaths and no good or bad. This was the teaching of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. Nobody can either contribute or take away to the structure. When the Supreme does some balancing act to maintain equilibrium, the consequent disturbance is mistaken as individual pain or sorrow. This was the theory of Marcus Aralius. So there cannot be any individual suffering or pleasure as there is no individual. This may be hard to digest and understand.But this is what happens in everyday life and it is exhibited in SLEEP. In SLEEP the individual is not there. Waking is not from SLEEP but switching over to the concept of "I", the body which was lost in SLEEP. This is Hinduism and no one can claim that they are to SAVE Hinduism or bring harm to. Any deviatin form this scripture of NO ONE EXISTS is only a conceit and searching for reasons for the fraud. Naratha Bakti Sutram says that there can be no BAD in the manifestatins and there can only be harmony and peace. The superimposed "I", the body conscience is very much limited and from this finite structure the infinite structure cannot be described. It will be only an illusion. That is why Siddas and Rishis went away from the peopole who imagined that they are there. Nammalwar said " Nattarodu Iyalvu Ozithu Nanarananai Namminome". Thank You Sir With warm regards ravi

March 31, 2011 10:58 AM

balayogi said...

Sanathana dharma Defined in brief, devoid of lengthy treatise or jargons, all aspects of life of a HINDU, I mean a correct Hindu in heart and soul not the show offs, require no labeling by or from anyone, no justification by or for anyone, no approval from anyone, no abstract theories or explanation by anyone, no debate or critical analysis or evaluation based on any -ism, nor even any fanatical following based on any specific methods of life style. One can revel in all these aspects of life of a Hindu and they reveal their splendor by merely living a life of constant self enquiry based on any or many levels /methods of perception available and accessible to the heart, intellect and soul of the individual. This life of self enquiry will manifest the various levels of metamorphosis of one’s spiritual evolution wherein the reverse process of life takes place. That is as we grow through the inevitable multiple and different forms and conditionings, we acquire huge carapace of irrelevant loads of activities to our life thinking that each one is important, indeed they may be /are at different stages of life important, but not vital, the self enquiry strips us of the carapace of important/relevant conditionings of the past and makes us notice the essence of every aspect of life. Sanathana dharma is perhaps the best known way which gives sketchy guideline for this process of soul’s slow but sure search for spiritual enlightenment /evolution/improvement. The crux of the matter is to grasp the essence of spiritual vibrations in every aspect of life in our own way and leave out the extraneous factors, however greatly revered by tradition or promoted by religious institutions or eulogized by the elite. Everything in any process of growth is just a step, important and inevitable, but not a stop. It is so with mother’s milk [our biological aspect of life]; it is so with learning of alphabets, words and numbers [our intellectual aspect of life]; it is so with hugging, kissing and cajoling as babies [our emotional aspect of life]; it is so with our learning and understanding of different concepts [ our philosophical aspect of life]; it is so with all forms of worship, devotion and all its concomitant rituals and religious practices [ our spiritual life] and so on. This is the inherent wisdom. A normal human being has to go through a process to grow in everything or into something. There may be exceptions like a Adi shankara, or a Bhagawan Ramanamaharishi. We can neither avoid the steps nor get struck to them. That’s why I cannot accept the snobbism of so called intellectuals parroting pet slogans like religion without rituals, god without religion or religion without gods, spiritualism without god or religion etc. In fact I have books titled in each part of the slogan. Not only Hinduism but Bharath matha itself is an enigma wrapped in mystery for any one who has not lived it, one must grasp the spirit of it, which is imbued with spiritualism and jeevan. That’s why a true Indian can live anywhere with anything or even without anything. Whereas most of the westerners cannot live even without a specific brand of tissue paper or at least any tissue paper. Unfortunately no westerner has so for understood properly nor can understand either of the above [Hinduism or Bharath matha] fully unless they live it shedding all their conditionings with their heart and soul http://contentwriteups.blogspot.com/2010/02/sanathana-dharma.html

April 3, 2011 10:47 AM

Anonymous said...

Dear Sir Sri Vaithinathan Hariharan Your esteemed self is very corect to state that anything in the process of learning is taking a step towards growth. Presently one has to start with LKG or Pre KG and reach the hihger levels as per their ability or attitude. But in the process of God Learning nobody is willing to go beyond LKG. The reason is that the body conscience and the consequent worldy pleasures. Love for God is lost and God is taken to be boons presenter and in the worst case there is fear of God and His punishments. As per Hindu scriptures God will never hate, never punish, never ridicules and never will have all other unpleasant qualities. The moment the I rise all the bad inclinatins follow. Therefore the I should be submited to the God. I have watched many mothers boasting that their 6 years old kid is well versed with many slokams. The mightyness of the God for the Slokams are menat is totally for gotten and the super imposed I comes into play. Now one can see how lucrative is the jargon "MANA VALAR KALAI" . The MANAM that is to be annihailated is inflated. All the study on God in India have failed to make one humble and simple. This is due to the fact that the people are always encouraged to expand their MANAMS. When you permit your MANAM to get vanished in SLEEP why cannot you do it in waking. The hypocracy is to be given up or take the decision that I will be like a tiger or a lin or a snake or any other carnivorious of herbivorious cfreatures. Here also the hypocracy creeps in. The only solution is the thinking that GOD alone exists and all the other are visuals refected or imagiined. Imagine such a society. People Live but Do Not Live.Nothing will be there to act against Nature and all will be humble , merciful, pleasant . With warm regards ravi

April 4, 2011 1:59 PM

Harisankar said...

i get the feeling that i gave the credit of longest comment to another reader too soon. ;))

June 7, 2011 12:43 AM

hvaidya said...

It is the same person

June 8, 2011 7:52 PM

India's mood darkens as corruption undermines nation's self-confidence

Just a few months ago, India was preening itself in the global spotlight. World leaders were queuing up to visit, and President Obama famously declared that the country was not simply emerging: It had "emerged."
Yet the elation the nation felt then was short-lived. With India's pride buffeted on a daily basis by tales of collusion between politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen and reports of billions of dollars lost to flagrant corruption, the mood among the nation's middle class is distinctly crestfallen.

India is experiencing what some people are calling "a reality check," or what business tycoon-turned-independent member of Parliament Rajeev Chandrasekhar sees as a "psychological crisis of confidence."


"In a sense, we had gotten caught up with the rhetoric and hype about our imminent superpower-dom," the 46-year-old former telecom entrepreneur said in an interview in his office in the heart of New Delhi. "People stopped looking at the system, which still needs a lot of work."

The fundamentals of the Indian success story have not changed: the tremendous power of the country's entrepreneurship unleashed by economic liberalization two decades ago, the rapid growth and spending power of its 300 million-strong middle class, the demographic dividend of its burgeoning young population. And although inflation has risen and foreign direct investment has fallen, India's economy, which emerged almost unscathed from the global financial crisis, is still expected to grow by 9 percent this year.

For years, that success had fed what many business leaders, economists and social commentators now acknowledge was a sense of complacency, a feeling that economic growth and the pursuit of wealth would solve the nation's problems and deliver a bright new future. Today, there is a realization that it is not enough for the government to get out of the way of the private sector and that it actually needs to govern, to deliver services instead of merely lining its pockets.

The idea that India was on an automatic path to becoming a developed capitalist economy was "delusional," said 36-year-old best-selling author Chetan Bhagat. "It doesn't just happen. It needs systemic changes, structural changes, cultural changes," he said. "And the biggest roadblock is corruption." Icons of industry humbled


Doubts about a bright future for India started to set in during the run-up to last summer's Commonwealth Games, with stories of blatant corruption and stunning incompetence shaming the nation.

But when India's comptroller and auditor general  reported in November, just a few days after Obama's visit, that mobile phone operators had been undercharged nearly $40 billion for allocations of 2G frequency bands in 2008, and leaked telephone conversations suggested the existence of an unsavory nexus among politicians, business and the media, the national mood really soured.


The billionaire leaders of industry had been the gods of the new India, people such as Anil Ambani, the head of mobile carrier Reliance Communications, who was voted MTV's youth icon in 2003, and the septuagenarian Ratan Tata, often seen as the embodiment of business with a social conscience.

In the past few months, those icons have been publicly humbled. In February, Ambani was hauled up to the Central Bureau of Investigation for questioning over the 2G scam, while Tata has been to court in an attempt to block release of the taped telephone conversations, which featured him, along with his lobbyist Nira Radia and other top industrialists, politicians and journalists.

" 'Have all my gods got feet of clay?' That is the question every Indian is asking," said marketing and branding guru Suhel Seth. "For the first time, you have a crestfallen India that doesn't have an inspirational icon to look up to."

A leadership vacuum


In a February survey of urban middle-class Indians by the Times of India newspaper, 83 percent said corruption was at an all-time high, two-thirds said the government was not serious about tackling it, and 96 percent said it had tainted the government's image.


"The mood of the nation is now downbeat," said Madhurima Bhatia of Synovate, which conducted the survey.

The crisis of confidence is sharpened, political analysts say, by a leadership vacuum, with the elderly figure of Manmohan Singh standing apparently helplessly at the helm of a government in denial about the scale of the problems.


Singh talks of the corruption scandals as "aberrations" and accuses the news media of sapping India's self-confidence and spoiling its image abroad. It is an argument that seems to only make many Indians angrier.

Singh himself has been forced to agree to appear before a parliamentary panel investigating the mobile spectrum scam. His telecom minister is in jail, and he acknowledged "an error of judgment" when the Supreme Court struck down his appointee to run the country's anti-corruption watchdog because he was facing charges of graft.

Indians see a turning point


Sulajja Firodia Motwani, managing director of the Kinetic Motor Co. and co-chair of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry's Young Leaders Forum, said corruption had a "deeply corrosive impact" on young Indians, who were starting to feel it was limiting their opportunities to succeed.
"Young India wants to run ahead. We want to make a huge new superpower," she said. "On the one hand, there is much enthusiasm on the growth prospects. On the other hand, corruption in our country has reached such an unprecedented scale, it has become all-pervasive, and that certainly is a dampener for youth."

At the end of January, about 30,000 people, most from the traditionally apathetic ranks of the young and the middle class, marched in New Delhi against corruption, mobilized largely by a campaign on Facebook. There was no comparison to the protests that have convulsed the Middle East, and no one is expecting revolution in India. But there is a widespread feeling that the country is at an inflection point, that crisis can be turned into an opportunity, but that India needs to dramatically improve the quality of its governance if it is to fulfill its vast potential.

"Young India has said enough is enough," Motwani said. "We want a new India."
By Simon Denyer
Washington Post Foreign Service

sent by  Hilda Raja

Poison behind the beauty

Time to shake down the Swiss banks

Financial experts used to exhort other countries to follow the example of these innovative financial centres and emulate them in offering imaginative products as well as privacy. But these are now the tax havens where the ill-gotten wealth of tax evaders of many countries is hoarded. A decade earlier, they were the cynosure of the financial world, but the recession in the West has changed the situation beyond imagination. From being innovative financial centres, they have become secretive hubs and every leader in the West is after them. These tax havens are now in the news because developed economies like the USA, Germany, and France feel the need to recover some of the ill-gotten wealth that their citizens have stashed away there. The US government and its congress are concerned about these tax havens due to pressure from sections of economists to “clean up” the global financial system. There are also concerns regarding the financing of terror groups with some of the tainted money from tax havens.

Seventy tax havens

A detailed discussion on tax havens was provided by the Internal Revenue Service of the United States Department of Treasury in a paper on ‘Abusive Offshore Tax Avoidance Schemes’. We quote from that paper: “These are foreign jurisdictions that offer financial secrecy laws in an effort to attract investment from outside their borders. These jurisdictions are commonly referred to as ‘tax havens’, because in addition to the financial secrecy they provide, they impose little or no tax on income from sources outside these jurisdictions. It is difficult to quantify the amount of assets being held offshore or the rate at which the industry is growing. But it is estimated that some $5 trillion in assets is held ‘offshore’ in tax havens. One authority estimated the annual revenue loss to the USA at a minimum of $70 billion.

Tax haven service providers and their clients know their actions are veiled from tax authorities by banking and commercial secrecy laws and by lack of tax treaties or tax information exchange agreements. They create paper entities to disguise the real parties to the transactions, and many are willing to create false documents to disguise the real nature of transactions.At least forty countries aggressively market themselves as tax havens. Some have gone so far as to offer asylum or immunity to criminals who invest sufficient funds. They permit the formation of companies without any proof of identity, perhaps even by remote computer connections.

Generally, though, such extremes are found in emerging nations where the stability and security of the financial, legal and political systems are questionable. The largest concentrations of assets are attracted to the stable secure environments of the established tax havens — those that have existed a number of years and enjoy the diplomatic protection of former colonial powers.”There are in fact more than 70 tax havens, but as the IRS discussion reveals, around 40 of them market themselves aggressively. The popular ones are Switzerland, Luxemburg, Liechtenstein, the Channel Islands, and the Bahamas.

The Liechtenstein affair

Recently, one of the tax havens, namely Liechtenstein, has been in the news. Germany’s intelligence agency seems to have paid an unnamed informer more than $6 million for confidential and secret data about clients of LGT Group, a bank owned by the prince’s family. The revelations have already led to the resignation of the head of Deutsche Post — the former German mail service — which is currently the world’s largest logistics company in the world. Liechtenstein’s leaders are furious and have focussed all their ire at the theft of the data rather than on the facts of the case. The German government has announced that it will share information on accounts held in the tax haven with any government that wants it, without charging any fees for the information. Finland, Sweden, and Norway have expressed interest in the data obtained by the Berlin agency.

But our government has been lukewarm on this issue. It should have immediately despatched senior officials to get the names. But after much hesitation, the government did ask for that free information (curiously under our double taxation treaty with Germany) and recently it did agree in the Supreme Court in response to a petition by Ram Jethmalani and others that “18 Indians have put Rs43.83 crore in a Liechtenstein bank.” Interestingly, in the well-known case of Hasan Ali,a horse-breeder from Pune who was found to have Swiss accounts, the response of the Union government in the Supreme Court indicates that tax demands of Rs71,848 crore have been raised against the said person, his wife and other associates. If this is the tax demand, then the income on which this would have been raised may be more than Rs1.5 lakh crore, taking into account compounding, penalty etc.

Terror funds

Also some of the terror funds might use the tax haven route. The context is the concern expressed by our own National Security Advisor, MK Narayanan, regarding the possibility of terror funds coming through financial markets. There is also a concern that in case some foreign agency knows about the illegal funds kept abroad by our leaders, then they could be blackmailed and policy-making compromised.The debate regarding the existence of such illegal money abroad is settled. It is no more about the maths but about the mechanics of bringing it back. The total amount of funds in all tax havens is estimated in excess of $18 trillion. Switzerland itself may have more than $1 trillion. Nearly one-third of Swiss money is black, says Konrad Hummler, chairman of the Swiss private bankers association

Under pressure from federal authorities, the Swiss bank UBS is now closing the hidden off-shore accounts of its well-heeled American clients, potentially allowing their secrets to spill out into the open. In a step that would have once been unthinkable in the rarefied world of Swiss banking, UBS will shut about 19,000 accounts that prosecutors suspect have gone undeclared to the US Internal Revenue Service. The clients now face stark choices: they can cash their checks, and thereby alert the authorities to any potential wrongdoing, or not cash them, effectively losing their money. Now the US state department is compelling the bank to disclose about 52,000 American accounts. The original charges are that the UBS off-shore accounts have helped Americans to hide $18 billion in 19,000 accounts. As of now, the settlement is that anyone opening an off-shore account has to do it through US regulatory bodies. Opinion against secrecy in banks and tax havens has grown rapidly in the West and today the Western establishment sees the Swiss banking model as virtually an evil. 

What can India do?

If India joins the move by the OECD, G20 nations, the US and UK, to get a convention signed by the G20 with the different tax havens, particularly Switzerland, then the recovery process can be much shorter and successful on a large scale.

Also India can initiate the following specific steps to inform the world that it is serious in this.

1.Let both houses of Parliament in a joint sitting pass a resolution that all illegal wealth stashed abroad belongs to the Sovereign Republic of India (similar to the resolution adopted about Pakistan Occupied Kashmir in the nineties).

2.When Indian leaders die without informing their kith and kin about these illegal funds, the banks abroad swallow it after 7/10 years declaring that it is inoperative without any legal claims. We should declare that even those funds are ours.

3.Let our elected representatives and appointed authorities like CVC, CBI director, etc., clearly indicate at the time of oath-takingor appointment, by an affidavit, that they do not have accounts abroad. Of course, many are not going to declare their ill-gotten wealth, but the column may come in handy in future to formulate charges of submission of false affidavits.

4.The prime minister should provide information about the travels of his cabinet ministers, particularly to tax havens, since these travels are documented by either reports to him or by stamps on passports.

5.Let the government of India reveal the names of the illegal wealth hoarders in Liechtenstein banks about whom information has been passed on by the German government

6.Fully investigate the cases of Hasan Ali and Bofors — both of which are in the public domain.

7.India as a responsible member of world forums can and should demand transparency from these tax heavens to provide information regarding illicit wealth and its source. Therefore, India should raise the issue at the G-20, WTO, IMF, and the UN and also as a member of the Egmont Group, which is an international body to stimulate cooperation amongst Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs) across the globe. More than 100 countries are its members. 

The main issue is to get the funds back and penalise the persons involved. The funds can be ‘sterilised’ and used for infrastructure development. It will be a national disgrace if at some point of time the names of some of our icons and idols are revealed as having illegal money in foreign countries. We owe it to our next generation to clean this up.

Sent by R. Vaidyanathan , Professor of Finance, IIM, Bangaluru

Anonymous said...

I think picking a bone with Switzerland and states like them is not the right way. They have a policy to make their country prosperous through secure banking and financial services. The services are being misused by the corrupt to hide their money. Besides if a nation elects mindless, people with single digit IQ then they qualify to suffer. Plight of India is self inflicted.

May 14, 2011 3:07 PM

Dynasty politics is about protecting ill-gotten wealth

 

The recent finding by Patrick French (India: A Portrait) is that more than two-thirds of the under-40 members of the Lok Sabha are hereditary and many of them are hyper-hereditary, based on their dynasty. Actually many of us forget that since 1885, members of the Motilal Nehru family have presided over the Congress party for 39 of its 125 years. Motilal Nehru was president for two years, Jawaharlal Nehru for nine, Indira Gandhi for eight, and Rajiv Gandhi for seven. Sonia Gandhi holds the record both within the dynasty and the party by having the longest, unbroken tenure of 13 years and is still going strong. The party has become a family enterprise and a non-family man like Narasimha Rao is not even recognised as a former prime minster. Following this tradition, we have Agatha Sangma from Megahalya to Omar Abdullah in Jammu and Kashmir to MK Alagiri in Tamil Nadu, inheriting the political throne.

The important point here is not about the national agenda of these political parties but their functioning and control. Whether it is DMK or the Shiv Sena, where the family battles have come out in open, or the NCP, where the heir apparent has been anointed — the issue is the family business called political parties. It is important to mention that Tamil Nadu is a pioneer of this model wherein the interests of the state, party, government, and people are subsumed for the welfare of the family enterprise. Like in all businesses, it is required to delineate the nature of the business model adopted by these family enterprises. In any business, particularly listed business, the shareholders’ wealth maximisation is the main objective. Unfortunately, these regional parties are not listed on the stock exchanges and hence the correct market valuation may not be available. But the total wealth declared by these leaders (including that of their multiple wives!) during election time in the form of affidavits can be a guide for the net worth of the enterprise.

The preliminary expenses here are related to rabble-rousing on caste or language or pro-poor issues. Another method is to promise largesse in the form of free electricity, free TV, free cinema, free rice, to be paid for by the state exchequer. In this model, the actual business entity need not worry about expenses since post-power, there will be a continuous revenue stream. The family business has to be conducted through various functional departments called commerce, agriculture, irrigation, roadways, education, power, and so on. Some are low-volume, high-margin centres like land allotment or C'Wealth Gamea or second generation mobile telephony spectrum, where one project can earn up to thousands of crores. Other business units, like elementary education, which is a large-scale transfer industry, are low-margin but high-volume business.

Every teacher transferred may provide only thousands of rupees, but the numbers are large. The family also needs to take care of the interests of other families (sub-regional or other caste parties), hence the creation of strategic business units. In this model, the expenses are borne by the government but revenues are enjoyed by the family. It is a win-win model that does not have any comparable international example. The time-frame for maximising the family wealth is specified after one election and that differentiates it from the other regular business models. Due to the short time span, the family can and does become rapacious and they need continuous extraction of higher bribes to meet their collective greed. The turnover and attrition among supporters is also high, since their aspirations also grow. Hence, the need to create powerful entry barriers as well as exit costs.

But if you or your children opt out of politics, then you cannot be a “dacoit capitalist” anymore since your ability to formulate policies is gone and there could even be vendetta by the current rulers. So make sure your son/daughter/wives/sambandhis (children’s in-laws) are in some business unit or the other. Will this business model meet its nemesis? Not for some years yet. One reason it will flourish is the increasing importance of land as a factor of production. In the 60s, capital was scare and land was easily allotted. Now capital is available, even from global sources, but land is scarce and that is the strength of these families. Control of land and its allotment is the primary sonrise (pun intended!) industry. To that extent, the family business will flourish. With further fragmentation, many family enterprises will be either in a merger and acquisition mode or in a small business-smaller reach mode. In such situation, some can go sick. Second, due to the greed of some of these families, the margins demanded from projects may exceed the cost of the project.

The future of India is ironically linked with these 40-50 families with their capacity for rabble-rousing along and their rapaciousness and greed. Let us celebrate our grass-root democracy that enhances such “family values”.
Received from R.Vaidyanathan, Bangalore 

Hemalatha said...

Just a small interpretation - Not only multiple wives, but also multiple live-in companions and their family members.

January 21, 2011 10:31 PM

BHASKARAN19 said...

Oh Super Ms Hemalatha,apt comment -probably unexpected comment from you - gaining confidence - i think it is a wake up call to India - I am trying to recollect what A.B Vajpayee has said in 1974 when India was facing turmoil - thanks to Allahabad Judgement and ruthless Indira's emergency that followed -" I still have great confidence we have a bright future" that became true and the whole country knows what happened in 1977 has become history.

January 22, 2011 6:45 AM

Hemalatha said...

I think that they are taking the Nation's "Pledge" in the literal sense and making it a reality. My actual worry is - At the way these people's family is expanding, one day we all might become brothers and sisters and whom will our grandchildren and greatchildren marry ?

January 22, 2011 7:41 PM

Anonymous said...

If India is to continue shining we have to eliminate imposters at all levels. It is our fault!. I agree that often we have to choose between two evils. I congratulate the author. Efforts like this will definitely help remedy the situation.

January 30, 2011 7:46 PM

Tax Refunds mail- SCAM !! Be Careful!!

This is how the mail starts. If you are expecting any income tax refund, do not get tempted for this easy way.

When you click on the link "CLICK HERE", it takes you to http://beauxartsschool.com/webalizer/web/1/refunds/index.html?id=refund

which looks like a fishy website, as IT Dept websites will always have https or .in or .gov in the web address.

If you select AXIS BANK/ HDFCBANK or any other bank, it will take you to respective Bank's Homepage but the web url address stills remains of http://beauxartsschool.com

. 
 




Do not enter any bank details data in any of these. You will be parted with your hard earned money in a Jiffy

sent by Ms. Mathangi

sury said...
I may add another caution. the moment you open the email, a cookie is created automatically, and if you are doing internet banking, it disables the original cookie of the bank and instead plants this pseudo one. So, if you go to the site again, you will not be able to access at all.
SO NEVER OPEN ANY EMAIL FROM ANY BANK. A FEW DAYS AGO, I RECEIVED A EMAIL LIKE THIS FROM SBI MF. ONLY TO REALIZE THAT THIS IS ALSO OF THE SAME KIND.
SUBBU RATHINAM

January 7, 2011 8:40 PM

Why is government reluctant to retrieve funds stashed abroad?

The Global Financial Integrity — a non-profit research organization working in the area of tax havens — has estimated that the present value of illegal financial flows of India held abroad is at least US$462 billion. This means that the money stashed abroad is nearly 40% of our GDP of US$1.2 trillion. When this became an issue before the last Parliamentary elections, some leaders in the ruling party denied the issue outright. But the current prime minister was gracious enough to acknowledge the gravity of the issue and promised action on coming to power. Since then the whole world has moved against the menace of untaxed money. But the Indian response has been just symbolic, like signing tax treaties, with no decisive attempt to get at the root of the problem.

As early as February 2008 German authorities had collected information about illegal money kept by citizens of various countries in the Lichtenstein bank and the German finance minister offered to provide the names to any government interested in the list. Our government did not take any action for many months and, only after much prodding by the opposition, asked for the list in late 2008. Recently it agreed, in the Supreme Court, in response to a petition moved by Ram Jethmalani and others that “18 Indians have put Rs43.83 crore in Liechtenstein bank”. The list is said to contain names of more than 100 Indians. Interestingly, in the case of Hasan Ali of Pune, who was found to have been operating massive Swiss accounts, the Union government indicated that tax demands of Rs71,848 crore have been raised on the said person, his wife and other associates. If this were the tax demand, then the income on which this would have been raised would be more than Rs1.5 lakh crore. Likewise, the IPL, 2G spectrum, Madhu Koda and CWG scam issues, all point to linkages to tax havens.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) is not inclined to reveal even the “total volume of such money” to an applicant using RTI. During the hearing, ED stated that they cannot either confirm or deny media reports about the likely volume of black money stashed away in foreign banks illegally by Indian nationals.It is suggested that India is updating its double taxation treaty with many countries, including Switzerland. Actually the double taxation treaty is only a part of the solution. Many of these tax havens do not consider tax evasion by depositors in host countries as a crime. Also they have stringent laws to punish bankers providing any information regarding the depositors. Nearly 1 trillion out of 2.8 trillion of Swiss money is black money says Konrad Hummler, the Chairman of the Swiss Private Bankers Association. The steps needed to monitor and control funds which are diverted and used for terror financing from these tax havens also need to be looked at. As early as 2007 the concern was expressed by the then-national security advisor, MK Narayanan, about possibility of terror funds coming in through financial markets. A recent report suggests that “on instructions from finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, the Intelligence Bureau has taken up the task of identifying the sudden quantum jump in the foreign money flowing in the country through withdrawals by foreigners on credit and debit cards issued by the foreign banks.

In the last few years many countries in Europe as well as the US have taken several steps to get back their illegal funds from abroad. For instance, the US got names of more than 4000 clients of UBS bank from Switzerland after persuasion, threats and related legal actions. It has been successfully demonstrated by countries which attempted to recover the assets stashed abroad by their corrupt leaders and businessmen that this can be accomplished. There was a report in India Today (February 18, 2008) regarding foreign travels of Central ministers. It stated that a large number had visited Switzerland, including on personal trips and certainly not for skiing in the Alps. Given all these aspects why is the government not initiating any action?  

One possible reason could be the culpability of our leaders. There was a report in the Swiss journal Schweitzer Illustrierte, which did an expose on politicians of the third world and developing nations who had stashed their wealth in Swiss banks. In its issue dated November 11, 1991, the magazine, citing the newly opened KGB records, reported ‘that Sonia Gandhi, the widow of the former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, was controlling secret account with 2.5 billion Swiss Francs (equal to $2.2 billion) in her minor son’s name’. Interestingly there has not been any defamation suit against the magazine nor any denial of that report, either by the government or by the oldest political party.

\The prime minister has announced to “redouble efforts” to “cleanse the system” in 2011. For a start, can he inform the nation about the total number of foreign trips — including personal trips — undertaken by his cabinet colleagues to various tax havens after UPA-2 came to power?

Sent by R.Vaidynathan