Tipping point

Published : May 06, 2011 00:00 IST

Hasan Ali outside a court in Mumbai. He was arrested for stashing away Rs. 36,000 crore in UBS Bank in Switzerland, but the Enforcement Directorate could not produce any evidence against him. - PTI

Hasan Ali outside a court in Mumbai. He was arrested for stashing away Rs. 36,000 crore in UBS Bank in Switzerland, but the Enforcement Directorate could not produce any evidence against him. - PTI

The huge support for what Anna Hazare espoused came against the background of widespread corruption and government inaction.

THE Anna Hazare mania that gripped large sections of society for five days from April 5, resulting in the government capitulating to his demand for including civil society activists in the committee for the drafting of an anti-corruption law, has baffled many people. The groundswell of support for his cause took the diminutive Gandhian himself by surprise. It is for the first time in the history of independent India that civil society representatives have been included in the drafting committee of a Bill.

In fact, the pent-up anger and frustration of people at the all-pervading corruption in society and the government's perceived inaction in tackling the menace head-on found a voice in Hazare. Scam after scam had hit the headlines and there was news about thousands of crores of rupees being stashed away in tax havens, but all that the government did was to harp on its intent to fight corruption. Nothing really happened.

As late as March, Hazare, a former Indian Army havildar known for his crusades against corruption in Maharashtra, announced in a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh his intention to undertake a fast unto death if the government did not accept his demand by April 5 to include civil society members in the drafting of a Lokpal Bill. He and other civil society activists envisaged the office of the Lokpal to be truly independent and one that was not just advisory in nature, as the government's Lokpal Bill suggested.

Although the Prime Minister claimed that he was serious about fighting corruption, there was nothing on the ground to show that he was indeed so. Even the steps announced by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on January 25 to combat the menace of black money sounded extremely inadequate, if the huge amount of wealth in offshore accounts, anywhere between $500 billion to $1,400 billion, was taken into account. Global Financial Integrity, a renowned NGO, has pegged the illegal money outflow from India at a staggering $460 billion, or about Rs.20,85,000 crore.

The popular perception has been that though the government had the information and the necessary tools at its disposal to trace and prosecute the offenders it did not have the political will to follow the black money trail. The government insisted that international secrecy laws prevented it from disclosing the names that it had got from the German authorities in connection with accounts in a bank there. It said it could reveal the names only if the income tax authorities formally registered cases against the offenders. But this lack of urgency on the part of the government sounded unconvincing.

It was at this juncture that Hazare stepped in. His declaration that the government was merely the trustee of the people to safeguard public money and that it was now failing in its duty to the people, the masters in a democracy, found immediate acceptance. People saw in him a person who could rid them of the menace of corruption.

There are enough reasons for doubts to arise, in the first place, about the government's intentions to tackle corruption. According to legal experts, India has the necessary legal tools to prosecute those who have black money abroad and bring that money back.

Subhash Kashyap, who has filed a public interest petition in the Supreme Court to get black money back to India, says the government has all the details of people travelling abroad frequently every year and it can ask them whether they have accounts abroad and whether the money in those accounts has been made through bona fide means. He says if the information thus gathered is found to be incorrect, the government can confiscate the property of these people in India.

He said the Pune-based businessman Hasan Ali, who was arrested for stashing away Rs.36,000 crore in UBS Bank in Switzerland, was set free as the Enforcement Directorate could not produce any evidence against him. It was only after the Supreme Court intervened that Ali was arrested again.

Noted lawyer and Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy also thinks the government has so far shown no political will to tackle the issue of black money and corruption. Names of powerful people in the UPA government are involved and if they disclose the names, the government will fall, he said. One legal route the government can take without violating any international commitments is to issue an ordinance nationalising the accounts of all Indian passport holders abroad, with the proviso that those who give an affidavit that their accounts are legal would be de-frozen.

According to him, the government can then go ahead and scrutinise all those accounts in which no affidavit has been filed. The Swiss government would be obliged to give details if the Government of India issued such an ordinance. There would be no need for any additional legal framework, he said.

Another tool available with the government, which it has not exercised, is the U.N. Convention Against Corruption. India is yet to ratify it. Signing the U.N. Convention against Corruption would have made it easier for the government to get information and its black money back faster, said the Bharatiya Janata Party's chief spokesman and Supreme Court lawyer Ravi Shankar Prasad. According to him, the government was only indulging in verbal gymnastics to obfuscate the issue.

Public pressure

The widespread support for what Hazare espoused has to be looked at in this context. The fact that people were becoming impatient was evident on January 30, when thousands of people, young and old, students and housewives, retired generals and professionals, marched from Ramlila Ground to Jantar Mantar to serve notice on the government to either wake up and act on the issue of black money and corruption or perish. They demanded that the government adopt the Jan Lokpal Bill and make the office of Lokpal a truly autonomous one, contrary to what the government had suggested.

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