Strategy or economics?

The Indo-US nuclear deal is a hot topic for the intellectuals, the strategic thinkers, the green conservationists, the common man and even the bloggers. The deal is more of economics and less of strategy - the personal economics to be precise. With such deals, India is expected to spend a few trillions of US Dollars to construct tens of nuclear reactors. The construction of such reactors will be given away contracts to big industrial conglomerates from around the world.

Who benefits in the name of energy self-reliance? The politicians that get kickbacks in some countries and kickbacks disguised as dividends in other countries!!!

Corrupt political career is highly profitable, the politicians have shown.

State elections are scheduled for May 2008 in Karnataka, India. The laws in India make it compulsory for the candidates to declare their balance sheets (assets and liabilities) to the Election Commission, which then makes this data public.

The candidates have declared their assets and liabilities. It is well known that barring a handful, most of these have not disclosed their true worth, for they always want to hide their ill-gotten wealth. Most candidates have declared assets worth a few hundred million rupees. At 1US$=INR40, most of these are US$ Millionaires, by their own admissions, not to mention the hidden (called benami /ghost holdings) assets. When compared with their declarations in the previous election about 4 years ago, their assets have grown multi-fold, someone even had a growth rate of 2000%. Note that government salary for these elected public representatives (euphemistically called public servants) is just a few thousand rupees per month. So where did all the money come from? Have they paid income tax? What is their true worth? Does this all not prove my earlier point (in an earlier blog) that various listings of world's richest people may after all be meaningless?

Politicians in India (and world-wide) cut across party lines and collude (like in criminal cartels) to save themselves from investigations. The Vigilance Department in India, created by the governments that are run by the very same politicians, has not been given any power to investigate the elected legislators and members of the parliament, let alone punishing the guilty. Any upright vigilance officer or a judge is likely to be moved aside (transferred), if he / she dares to investigate these politicians.

It is likely that these politicians get away with their ill-gotten money, for they have all the power and are part of the cartel. One cannot hope to see the courts taking suo-moto action to investigate.

What do you get when you combine Nordic rates of taxation and third world corruption? A failed democratic country or a dictatorship.

K Venkatesh

The world's richest...

It is almost an annual ritual that many magazines publish the list of world's richest and wealthiest. Often the net worth of these people are calculated based on their assets such as holdings in their businesses, valuation and other parameters. Has anyone wondered whether these are really the richest? Many of us have.

In my opinion, wealth is not a function of nationality, but the means to become wealthy may somewhat be. The world of uber rich is a bunch of small networks indeed. In India, as in many countries, it is easy to become rich by questionable means and legitimize the wealth with good connections. Often, there is more wealth underground in India (and many other countries) than what is visible. I mean there is a lot of black money that is unaccounted and hence many of these rich do not show up (or at least like to show up) on the world's richest listings. One of the reports in 2008 mentions that of the estimated $2.1Trillion-$2.5Trillion black money, Indians hold an estimated $1.4Trillion, beating the trailers Russians, Britons and Ukranians combined hands-down... Here is the link to the article that mentions these facts.

There are politicians that have legitimized their earnings by owning large business empires ranging from retail chains, firms that only serve government contracts to film and every business conceivable, sometimes openly and sometimes as ghost investors...

So the richest lists represent only those with visible wealth (worth in white), though some of that wealth may have been acquired by dubious means.

Probably the true richest in the world can be easily found in the most corrupt countries (read Transparency International's research)

As (probably) Mario Puzo said, "behind every big wealth, there is a big crime".

K Venkatesh